Baboo's Pirates

________________________________________________
Title:     Baboo's Pirates
Author: Rounsevelle Wildman [More Titles by Wildman]

An Adventure in the Pahang River

There was a scuffle in the outer office, and a thin, piping voice was calling down all the curses of the Koran on the heads of my great top-heavy Hindu guards.

"Sons of dogs," I heard in the most withering contempt, "I will see the Tuan Consul. Know he is my father."

A tall Sikh, with his great red turban awry and his brown kaki uniform torn and soiled, pushed through the bamboo chicks and into my presence.

He was dragging a small bit of naked humanity by the folds of its faded cotton sarong.

The powerful soldier was hot and flushed, and a little stream of blood trickling from his finger tips showed where they had come in contact with his captive's teeth. It was as though an elephant had been worried by a pariah cur.

"Your Excellency," he said, salaaming and gasping for breath.

"It is Baboo, the Harimau-Anak!"

Baboo wrenched from the guard's grasp and glided up to my desk. The back of his open palm went to his forehead, and his big brown eyes looked up appealingly into mine.

"What is it, Tiger-Child?" I asked, bestowing on him the title the Malays of Kampong Glam had given him as a perpetual reminder of his famous adventure.

Dimples came into either tear-stained cheek. He smoothed out the rents in his small sarong, and without deigning to notice his late captor, said in a soft sing-song voice:--

"Tuan Consul, Baboo want to go with the Heaven-Born to Pahang. Baboo six years old,--can fight pirates like Aboo Din, the father. May Mohammed make Tuan as odorous as musk!"

"You are a boaster before Allah, Baboo," I said, smiling.

Baboo dropped his head in perfectly simulated contrition.

"I have thought much, Tuan."

News had come to me that an American merchant ship had been wrecked near the mouth of the Pahang River, and that the Malays, who were at the time in revolt against the English Resident, had taken possession of its cargo of petroleum and made prisoners of the crew.

I had asked the colonial governor for a guard of five Sikhs and a launch, that I might steam up the coast and investigate the alleged outrage before appealing officially to the British government.

Of course Baboo went, much to the disgust of Aboo Din, the syce.

I never was able to refuse the little fellow anything, and I knew if I left him behind he would be revenged by running away.

I had vowed again and again that Baboo should stay lost the next time he indulged in his periodical vanishing act, but each time when night came and Aboo Din, the syce, and Fatima, the mother, crept pathetically along the veranda to where I was smoking and steeling my heart against the little rascal, I would snatch up my cork helmet and spring into my cart, which Aboo Din had kept waiting inside the stables for the moment when I should relent.

Since Baboo had become a hero and earned the appellation of the Harimau-Anak, his vanity directed his footsteps toward Kampong Glam, the Malay quarter of Singapore. Here he was generally to be found, seated on a richly hued Indian rug, with his feet drawn up under him, amid a circle of admiring shopkeepers, syces, kebuns, and fishermen, narrating for the hundredth time how he had been caught at Changhi by a tiger, carried through the jungle on its back until he came to a great banian tree, into which he had crawled while the tiger slept, how a sladang (wild bull) came out of the lagoon and killed the tiger, and how Tuan Consul and Aboo Din, the father, had found him and kissed him many times.

Often he enlarged on the well-known story and repeated long conversations that he had carried on with the tiger while they were journeying through the jungle.

A brass lamp hung above his head in which the cocoanut oil sputtered and burned and cast a fitful half-light about the box-like stall.

Only the eager faces of the listeners stood out clear and distinct against the shadowy background of tapestries from Madras and Bokhara, soft rich rugs from Afghanistan and Persia, curiously wrought finger bowls of brass and copper from Delhi and Siam, and piles of cunningly painted sarongs from Java.

Close against a naked fisherman sat the owner of the bazaar in tall, conical silk-plaited hat and flowing robes, ministering to the wants of the little actor, as the soft, monotonous voice paused for a brief instant for the tiny cups of black coffee.

I never had the heart to interrupt him in the midst of one of these dramatic recitals, but would stand respectfully without the circle of light until he had finished the last sentence.

He was not frightened when I thrust the squatting natives right and left, and he did not forget to arise and touch the back of his open palm to his forehead, with a calm and reverent, "Tabek, Tuan" (Greeting, my lord).

So Baboo went with us to fight pirates.

He unrolled his mat out on the bow where every dash of warm salt water wet his brown skin, and where he could watch the flying fish dash across our way.

He was very quiet during the two days of the trip, as though he were fully conscious of the heavy responsibility that rested upon his young shoulders. I had called him a boaster and it had cut him to the quick.

We found the wreck of the Bunker Hill on a sunken coral reef near the mouth of the Pahang River, but every vestige of her cargo and stores was gone, even to the glass in her cabin windows and the brasses on her rails.

We worked in along the shore and kept a lookout for camps or signals, but found none.

I decided to go up the river as far as possible in the launch in hope of coming across some trace of the missing crew, although I was satisfied that they had been captured by the noted rebel chief, the Orang Kayah of Semantan, or by his more famous lieutenant, the crafty Panglima Muda of Jempol, and were being held for ransom.

It was late in the afternoon when we entered the mouth of the Sungi Pahang.

Aboo Din advised a delay until the next morning.

"The Orang Kayah's Malays are pirates, Tuan," he said, with a sinister shrug of his bare shoulders, "he has many men and swift praus; the Dutch, at Rio, have sold them guns, and they have their krises,--they are cowards in the day."

I smiled at the syce's fears.

I knew that the days of piracy in the Straits of Malacca, save for an occasional outbreak of high-sea petty larceny on a Chinese lumber junk or a native trader's tonkang, were past, and I did not believe that the rebels would have the hardihood to attack, day or night, a boat, however unprotected, bearing the American flag.

For an hour or more we ran along between the mangrove-bordered shores against a swiftly flowing, muddy current.

The great tangled roots of these trees stood up out of the water like a fretwork of lace, and the interwoven branches above our heads shut out the glassy glare of the sun. We pushed on until the dim twilight faded out, and only a phosphorescent glow on the water remained to reveal the snags that marked our course.

The launch was anchored for the night close under the bank, where the maze of mangroves was beginning to give place to the solid ground and the jungle.

Myriads of fireflies settled down on us and hung from the low limbs of the overhanging trees, relieving the hot, murky darkness with their thousands of throbbing lamps.

From time to time a crocodile splashed in the water as he slid heavily down the clayey bank at the bow.

In the trees and rubber-vines all about us a colony of long-armed wah-wah monkeys whistled and chattered, and farther away the sharp, rasping note of a cicada kept up a continuous protest at our invasion.

At intervals the long, quivering yell of a tiger frightened the garrulous monkeys into silence, and made us peer apprehensively toward the impenetrable blackness of the jungle.

Aboo Din came to me as I was arranging my mosquito curtains for the night. He was casting quick, timid glances over his shoulder as he talked.

"Tuan, I no like this place. Too close bank. Ten boat-lengths down stream better. Baboo swear by Allah he see faces behind trees,--once, twice. Baboo good eyes."

I shook off the uncanny feeling that the place was beginning to cast over me, and turned fiercely on the faithful Aboo Din.

He slunk away with a low salaam, muttering something about the Heaven-Born being all wise, and later I saw him in deep converse with his first-born under a palm-thatched cadjang on the bow.

I was half inclined to take Aboo Din's advice and drop down the stream. Then it occurred to me that I might better face an imaginary foe than the whirlpools and sunken snags of the Pahang.

I posted sentinels fore and aft and lay down and closed my eyes to the legion of fireflies that made the night luminous, and my ears to the low, musical chant that arose fitfully from among my Malay servants on the stern.

The Sikhs were big, massive fellows, fully six feet tall, with towering red turbans that accentuated their height fully a foot.

They were regular artillery-men from Fort Canning, and had seen service all over India.

They had not been in Singapore long enough to become acquainted with the Malay language or character, but they knew their duty, and I trusted to their military training rather than to my Malay's superior knowledge for our safety during the night.

I found out later that the cunning in Baboo's small brown finger was worth all the precision and drill in the Sikh sergeant's great body.

I fell asleep at last, lulled by the tenderly crooned promises of the Koran, and the drowsy, intermittent prattle of the monkeys among the varnished leaves above. The night was intensely hot; not a breath of air could stir within our living-cabin, and the cooling moisture which always comes with nightfall on the equator was lapped up by the thirsty fronds above our heads, so that I had not slept many hours before I awoke dripping with perspiration, and faint.

There was an impression in my mind that I had been awakened by the falling of glass.

The Sikh saluted silently as I stepped out on the deck.

It lacked some hours of daylight, and there was nothing to do but go back to my bed, vowing never again to camp for the night along the steaming shores of a jungle-covered stream.

I slept but indifferently; I missed the cooling swish of the punkah, and all through my dreams the crackle and breaking of glass seemed to mingle with the insistent buzz of the tiger-gnats.

Baboo's diminutive form kept flitting between me and the fireflies.

The first half-lights of morning were struggling down through the green canopy above when I was brought to my feet by the discharge of a Winchester and a long, shrill cry of fright and pain.

Before I could disentangle myself from the meshes of the mosquito net I could see dimly a dozen naked forms drop lightly on to the deck from the obscurity of the bank, followed in each case by a long, piercing scream of pain.

I snatched up my revolver and rushed out on to the deck in my bare feet.

Some one grasped me by the shoulder and shouted:--

"Jaga biak, biak, Tuan (be careful, Tuan), pirates!"

I recognized Aboo Din's voice, and I checked myself just as my feet came in contact with a broken beer bottle.

The entire surface of the little deck was strewn with glittering star-shaped points that corresponded with the fragments before me.

I had not a moment to investigate, however, for in the gloom, where the bow of the launch touched the foliage-meshed bank, a scene of wild confusion was taking place.

Shadowy forms were leaping, one after another, from the branches above on to the deck. I slowly cocked my revolver, doubting my senses, for each time one of the invaders reached the deck he sprang into the air with the long, thrilling cry of pain that had awakened me, and with another bound was on the bulwarks and over the side of the launch, clinging to the railing.

With each cry, Baboo's mocking voice came out, shrill and exultant, from behind a pile of life-preservers. "O Allah, judge the dogs. They would kris the great Tuan as he slept--the pariahs!--but they forgot so mean a thing as Baboo!"

The smell of warm blood filled the air, and a low snarl among the rubber-vines revealed the presence of a tiger.

I felt Aboo Din's hand tremble on my shoulder.

The five Sikhs were drawn up in battle array before the cabin door, waiting for the word of command. I glanced at them and hesitated.

"Tid 'apa, Tuan" (never mind), Aboo Din whispered with a proud ring in his voice.

"Baboo blow Orang Kayah's men away with the breath of his mouth."

As he spoke the branches above the bow were thrust aside and a dark form hung for an instant as though in doubt, then shot straight down upon the corrugated surface of the deck.

As before, a shriek of agony heralded the descent, followed by Baboo's laugh, then the dim shape sprang wildly upon the bulwark, lost its hold, and went over with a great splash among the labyrinth of snakelike mangrove roots.

There was the rushing of many heavy forms through the red mud, a snapping of great jaws, and there was no mistaking the almost mortal cry that arose from out the darkness. I had often heard it when paddling softly up one of the wild Malayan rivers.

It was the death cry of a wah-wah monkey facing the cruel jaws of a crocodile.

I plunged my fingers into my ears to smother the sound. I understood it all now. Baboo's pirates, the dreaded Orang Kayah's rebels, were the troop of monkeys we had heard the night before in the tambusa trees.

"Baboo," I shouted, "come here! What does this all mean?"

The Tiger-Child glided from behind the protecting pile, and came close up to my legs.

"Tuan," he whimpered, "Baboo see many faces behind trees. Baboo 'fraid for Tuan,--Tuan great and good,--save Baboo from tiger,--Baboo break up all glass bottles--old bottles--Tuan no want old bottle--Baboo and Aboo Din, the father, put them on deck so when Orang Kayah's men come out of jungle and drop from trees on deck they cut their feet on glass. Baboo is through talking,--Tuan no whip Baboo!"

There was the pathetic little quaver in his voice that I knew so well.

"But they were monkeys, Baboo, not pirates."

Baboo shrugged his brown shoulders and kept his eyes on my feet.

"Allah is good!" he muttered.

Allah was good; they might have been pirates.

The snarl of the tiger was growing more insistent and near. I gave the order, and the boat backed out into mid-stream.

As the sun was reducing the gloom of the sylvan tunnel to a translucent twilight, we floated down the swift current toward the ocean.

I had given up all hope of finding the shipwrecked men, and decided to ask the government to send a gunboat to demand their release.

As the bow of the launch passed the wreck of the Bunker Hill and responded to the long even swell of the Pacific, Baboo beckoned sheepishly to Aboo Din, and together they swept all trace of his adventure into the green waters.

Among the souvenirs of my sojourn in Golden Chersonese is a bit of amber-colored glass bearing the world-renowned name of a London brewer. There is a dark stain on one side of it that came from the hairy foot of one of Baboo's "pirates."

[The end]
Rounsevelle Wildman's short story: Baboo's Pirates

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN