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One day we crawled up the narrow, rickety ladder that led into the two by four opening of old Wahpering's palm-shaded home. The little punghulo or chief, touched his forehead with the back of his open palm as we advanced cautiously over the open bamboo floor toward his old wife, who was seated in one corner by a low, horizontal window, weaving a sarong on a hand-loom.
Her father, the old punghulo, or chief, of the little kampong, or village, of Passir Panjang, whispered the soft Allah Akbar, the prayer to Allah, in her small brown ear. The subjects of the punghulo brought presents of sarongs run with gold thread, and not larger than a handkerchief, for Busuk to wear about her waist.
"To bring a message to the punghulo," he replied, not noticing the coquetry of the look. "Oh! then you are in haste. Why do you wait? My father is at the canal." "It is about you," he went on, his face glowing. "The Prince is coming back, and we are to be married. My father, the captain, made bold to ask his Excellency to let the Prince be present, and he granted our prayer."
We had sent a runner ahead to notify the punghulo of our arrival, and as we finished our struggle with the last thorny rattan, and tripped over the last rubber-vine, we could hear the shouting of men and the barking of dogs. Evidently we were expected.
Baboo did as he was told, but I think that in his heart he was more grateful that for once he had evaded a whipping than for his remarkable escape. A little later the punghulo came up with a half-dozen shikaris, or hunters, and a pack of hunting dogs. The men skinned the mutilated carcass of the only "good tiger" I met during my three years' hunting in the jungles of this strange old peninsula.
After his return they saw the Prince often, and once when Anak came down to the wharf to bring a durian to the captain of the launch from her father, the old punghulo, she met him face to face, and he touched her cheek with his jewelled fingers, and said she had grown much prettier since he left.
The loom on which Busuk's mother wove the sarongs for the punghulo and for her sons stood by the side of the window, and Busuk, from the sling in which she sat on her mother's side, could see the fishing praus glide by, and also the big lumber tonkangs, and at rare intervals one of his Highness's launches.
Pressed against the wooden bars of their low, narrow windows, we could make out the comely, brown faces of the women. The punghulo, or chief, walked sedately out to the beach, and touched his forehead to the ground as he recognized his superior. The sunlight broke through the enwrapping cocoanuts, and brought out dazzling white splotches on the sandy floor before the houses.
He would never have complained if, according to Malayan custom, he had not been permitted to have seen her until the marriage day. He must marry some one, now that the Prince had gone to Johore, and his father had given up all hope of seeing him a hadji; and besides, the captain of the launch and the old punghulo, or chief, Anak's father, were fast friends.
Never had such presents been seen at the birth of any other of Punghulo Sahak's children. Two days later the Imam Paduka Tuan sent Busuk's father a letter sewn up in a yellow bag. It contained a blessing for Busuk. Busuk kept the letter all her life, for it was a great thing for the high priest to do.
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