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Updated: June 25, 2025
Just as we were fairly off and clear of the other praus, the old juragan repeated some prayers, all around responding with "Allah il Allah," and a few strokes on a gong as an accompaniment, concluding with all wishing each other "Salaamat jalan," a safe and happy journey.
Its captains were burning with ambition, but the Admiral would not give the command, and they dare not disobey. "Day after day went by while the great man hung like a pariah dog on the words of his haughty captive. She scorned his words of love, laughed at his prayers, and sneered at his devotion. Day after day the sun beat down on the burnished decks of the war praus.
At break of day we coasted the island and the next morning we cast anchor in a very good port. The day had scarcely begun when a great number of those praus appeared about us. There were so many of them, who came to trade with us, that some of our men who counted them affirm that there were more than four or five hundred of them around the ships.
Having now been here a fortnight, I began to understand a little of the place and its peculiarities. Praus continually arrived, and the merchant population increased almost daily. Every two or three days a fresh house was opened, and the necessary repairs made.
A fleet of praus, with graceful masts of bending bamboo, surrounds the steamer, the aromatic cargo packed in long bamboo cases. The head-man of the campong, lightly attired in his native brown, with a few touches of contrasting colour in scarf and turban, acts as escort through a maze of weedy paths, and across bamboo bridges in various stages of dilapidation to a couple of dreary villages.
As it was, he imputed our safety and the quick termination of the squall entirely to his own prayers, saying with a laugh, "Yes, that's the way we always do on board our praus; when things are at the worst we stand up and shout out our prayers as loud as we can, and then Tuwan Allah helps us."
"What do you propose doing, captain?" said Mr Gregory at last, and the answer was eagerly listened for. "We are heavily-laden and ought to make land." "Yes, but it must not be in the sight of the praus. It is early in the night yet, and we are evidently in a sharp current." "Yes, a strong current," said the mate.
Night after night the evening gun in the besieged fort sent forth its mocking challenge: still the Dato made no motion. Oh, but it was pitiful! One by one the praus slipped away, first those from Acheen, and then those from Johore, but the valiant Laksamana saw them not. He was blind to all save one.
We aimed wide at first to give those vagabonds that were on board a chance to clear out and join their friends camped on the sands. I didn't want to kill people. Then we got the long gun to bear and in about an hour we had the bottom knocked out of the two praus. The savages on the bank howled and screamed at every shot.
Eight hundred men and women with faith and hopes, with affections and memories, they had collected there, coming from north and south and from the outskirts of the East, after treading the jungle paths, descending the rivers, coasting in praus along the shallows, crossing in small canoes from island to island, passing through suffering, meeting strange sights, beset by strange fears, upheld by one desire.
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