A Tale of the Malacca Jungle
Aboo Din’s first-born, Baboo,
was only four years old when he had his famous adventure
with the tiger he had found sleeping in the hot lallang
grass within the distance of a child’s voice
from Aboo Din’s bungalow.
For a long time before that hardly
a day had passed but Aboo-Din, who was our syce, or
groom, and wore the American colors proudly on his
right arm, came in from the servants’ quarters
with an anxious look on his kindly brown face and
asked respectfully for the tuan (lord) or mem (lady).
“What is it, Aboo Din?”
the mistress would inquire, as visions of Baboo drowned
in the great Shanghai jar, or of Baboo lying crushed
by a boa among the yellow bamboos beyond the hedge,
passed swiftly through her mind.
“Mem see Baboo?” came the inevitable question.
It was unnecessary to say more.
At once Ah Minga, the “boy”; Zim,
the cook; the kebuns (gardeners); the tukanayer (water-boy),
and even the sleek Hindu dirzee, who sat sewing, dozing,
and chewing betel-nut, on the shady side of the veranda,
turned out with one accord and commenced a systematic
search for the missing Baboo.
Sometimes he was no farther off than
the protecting screen of the “compound”
hedge, or the cool, green shadows beneath the bungalow.
But oftener the government Sikhs had to be appealed
to, and Kampong Glam in Singapore searched from the
great market to the courtyards of Sultan Ali.
It was useless to whip him, for whippings seemed only
to make Baboo grow. He would lisp serenely as
Aboo Din took down the rattan withe from above the
door, “Baboo baniak jahat!” (Baboo very
bad!) and there was something so charmingly impersonal
in all his mischief, that we came between his own
brown body and the rod, time and again. There
was nothing distinctive in Baboo’s features or
form. To the casual observer he might have been
any one of a half-dozen of his playmates. Like
them, he went about perfectly naked, his soft, brown
skin shining like polished rosewood in the fierce Malayan
His hair was black, straight, and
short, and his eyes as black as coals. Like his
companions, he stood as straight as an arrow, and
could carry a pail of water on his head without spilling
He, too, ate rice three times a day.
It puffed him up like a little old man, which added
to his grotesqueness and gave him a certain air of
dignity that went well with his features when they
were in repose. Around his waist he wore a silver
chain with a silver heart suspended from it.
Its purpose was to keep off the evil spirits.
There was always an atmosphere of
sandalwood and Arab essence about Baboo that reminded
me of the holds of the old sailing-ships that used
to come into Boston harbor from the Indies. I
think his mother must have rubbed the perfumes into
his hair as the one way of declaring to the world
her affection for him. She could not give him
clothes, or ornaments, or toys: such was not
the fashion of Baboo’s race. Neither was
he old enough to wear the silk sarong that his Aunt
Fatima had woven for him on her loom.
Baboo had been well trained, and however
lordly he might be in the quarters, he was marked
in his respect to the mistress. He would touch
his forehead to the red earth when I drove away of
a morning to the office; though the next moment I
might catch him blowing a tiny ball of clay from his
sumpitan into the ear of his father, the syce, as
he stood majestically on the step behind me.
Baboo went to school for two hours
every day to a fat old Arab penager, or teacher, whose
schoolroom was an open stall, and whose only furniture
a bench, on which he sat cross-legged, and flourished
a whip in one hand and a chapter of the Koran in the
There were a dozen little fellows
in the school; all naked. They stood up in line,
and in a soft musical treble chanted in chorus the
glorious promises of the Koran, even while their eyes
wandered from the dusky corner where a cheko lizard
was struggling with an atlas moth, to the frantic
gesticulations of a naked Hindu who was calling his
meek-eyed bullocks hard names because they insisted
on lying down in the middle of the road for their
Baboo’s father, Aboo Din, was
a Hadji, for he had been to Mecca. When nothing
else could make Baboo forget the effects of the green
durian he had eaten, Aboo Din would take the child
on his knees and sing to him of his trip to Mecca,
in a quaint, monotonous voice, full of sorrowful quavers.
Baboo believed he himself could have left Singapore
any day and found Mecca in the dark.
We had been living some weeks in a
government bungalow, fourteen miles from Singapore,
across the island that looks out on the Straits of
Malacca. The fishing and hunting were excellent.
I had shot wild pig, deer, tapirs, and for some days
had been getting ready to track down a tiger that
had been prowling in the jungle about the bungalow.
But of a morning, as we lay lazily
chatting in our long chairs behind the bamboo chicks,
the cries of “Harimau! Harimau!” and
“Baboo” came up to us from the servants’
Aboo Din sprang over the railing of
the veranda, and without stopping even to touch the
back of his hand to his forehead, cried,
“Tuan Consul, tiger have eat chow dog and got
Then he rushed into the dining room,
snatched up my Winchester and cartridge-belt, and
handed them to me with a “Lekas (quick)!
He sprang back off the veranda and
ran to his quarters where the men were arming themselves
with ugly krises and heavy parangs.
I had not much hope of finding the
tiger, much less of rescuing Baboo, dead or alive.
The jungle loomed up like an impassable wall on all
three sides of the compound, so dense, compact, and
interwoven, that a bird could not fly through it.
Still I knew that my men, if they had the courage,
could follow where the tiger led, and could cut a
path for me.
Aboo Din unloosed a half-dozen pariah
dogs that we kept for wild pig, and led them to the
spot where the tiger had last lain. In an instant
the entire pack sent up a doleful howl and slunk back
to their kennels.
Aboo Din lashed them mercilessly and
drove them into the jungle, where he followed on his
hands and knees. I only waited to don my green
kaki suit and canvas shooting hat and despatch a man
to the neighboring kampong, or village, to ask the
punghulo (chief) to send me his shikaris, or hunters.
Then I plunged into the jungle path that my kebuns
had cut with their keen parangs, or jungle-knives.
Ten feet within the confines of the forest the metallic
glare of the sun and the pitiless reflections of the
China Sea were lost in a dim, green twilight.
Far ahead I could hear the half-hearted snarls of
the cowardly, deserting curs, and Aboo Din’s
angry voice rapidly exhausting the curses of the Koran
on their heads.
My men, who were naked save for a
cotton sarong wound around their waists, slashed here
a rubber-vine, there a thorny rattan, and again a
mass of creepers that were as tenacious as iron ropes,
all the time pressing forward at a rapid walk.
Ofttimes the trail led from the solid ground through
a swamp where grew great sago palms, and out of which
a black, sluggish stream flowed toward the straits.
Gray iguanas and pendants of dove orchids hung
from the limbs above, and green and gold lizards scuttled
up the trees at our approach.
At the first plot of wet ground Aboo
Din sent up a shout, and awaited my coming. I
found him on his hands and knees, gazing stupidly at
the prints in the moist earth.
“Tuan,” he shouted, “see
Baboo’s feet, one two three more!
Praise be to Allah!”
I dropped down among the lily-pads
and pitcher-plants beside him. There, sure enough,
close by the catlike footmarks of the tiger, was the
perfect impression of one of Baboo’s bare feet.
Farther on was the imprint of another, and then a
third. Wonderful! The intervals between
the several footmarks were far enough apart for the
stride of a man!
“Apa?” (What does it mean?) I said.
Aboo Din tore his hair and called
upon Allah and the assembled Malays to witness that
he was the father of this Baboo, but that, in the
sight of Mohammed, he was innocent of this witchcraft.
He had striven from Hari Rahmadan to Hari
Rahmanan to bring this four-year-old up in the light
of the Koran, but here he was striding through the
jungle, three feet and more at a step, holding to
a tiger’s tail!
I shouted with laughter as the truth
dawned upon me. It must be so, Baboo
was alive. His footprints were before me.
He was being dragged through the jungle by a full-grown
Malayan tiger! How else explain his impossible
strides, overlapping the beast’s marks!
Aboo Din turned his face toward Mecca,
and his lips moved in prayer.
“May Allah be kind to this tiger!”
he mumbled. “He is in the hands of a witch.
We shall find him as harmless as an old cat. Baboo
will break out his teeth with a club of billion wood
and bite off his claws with his own teeth. Allah
We pushed on for half an hour over
a dry, foliage-cushioned strip of ground that left
no trace of the pursued. At the second wet spot
we dashed forward eagerly and scanned the trail for
signs of Baboo, but only the pads of the tiger marred
the surface of the slime.
Aboo Din squatted at the root of a
huge mangrove and broke forth into loud lamentations,
while the last remaining cur took advantage of his
preoccupation to sneak back on the homeward trail.
“Aboo,” I commanded sarcastically,
“pergie! (move on!) Baboo is a man and a witch.
He is tired of walking, and is riding on the back
of the tiger!”
Aboo gazed into my face incredulously
for a moment; then, picking up his parang and tightening
his sarong, strode on ahead without a word.
At noon we came upon a sandy stretch
of soil that contained a few diseased cocoanut palms,
fringed by a sluggish lagoon, and a great banian tree
whose trunk was hardly more than a mass of interlaced
roots. A troop of long-armed wah-wah monkeys were
scolding and whistling within its dense foliage with
surprising intensity. Occasionally one would
drop from an outreaching limb to one of the pendulous
roots, and then, with a shrill whistle of fright,
spring back to the protection of his mates.
A Malay silenced them by throwing
a half-ripe cocoanut into the midst of the tree, and
we moved on to the shade of the sturdiest palm.
There we sat down to rest and eat some biscuits softened
in the milk of a cocoanut.
“There is a boa in the roots
of the banian, Aboo,” I said, looking longingly
toward its deep shadow.
He nodded his head, and drew from
the pouch in the knot in his sarong a few broken fragments
of areca nut. These he wrapped in a lemon leaf
well smeared with lime, and tucked the entire mass
into the corner of his mouth.
In a moment a brilliant red juice
dyed his lips, and he closed his eyes in happy contentment,
oblivious, for the time, of the sand and fallen trunks
that seemed to dance in the parching rays of the sun,
oblivious, even, of the loss of his first-born.
I was revolving in my mind whether
there was any use in continuing the chase, which I
would have given up long before, had I not known that
a tiger who has eaten to repletion is both timid and
lazy. This one had certainly breakfasted on a
dog or on some animal before encountering Baboo.
I had hoped that possibly the barking
of the curs might have caused him to drop the child,
and make off where pursuit would be impossible; but
so far we had, after those footprints, found neither
traces of Baboo alive, nor the blood which should
have been seen had the tiger killed the child.
Suddenly a long, pear-shaped mangrove-pod
struck me full in the breast. I sprang up in
surprise, for I was under a cocoanut tree, and there
was no mangrove nearer than the lagoon.
A Malay looked up sleepily, and pointed
toward the wide-spreading banian.
My eyes followed the direction indicated,
and could just distinguish a grinning face among the
interlacing roots at the base of the tree. So
I picked up the green, dartlike end of the pod, and
took careful aim at the brown face and milk-white
Then it struck me as peculiar that
a monkey, after all the evidence of fright we had
so lately witnessed, should seek a hiding-place that
must be within easy reach of its greatest enemy, the
Aboo Din had aroused himself, and
was looking intently in the same direction. Before
I could take a step toward the tree he had leaped
to his feet, and was bounding across the little space,
shouting, “Baboo! Baboo!”
The small brown face instantly disappeared,
and we were left staring blankly at a dark opening
into the heart of the woody maze. Then we heard
the small, well-known voice of Baboo:
“Tabek (greeting), Tuan!
Greeting, Aboo Din! Tuan Consul no whip, Baboo
Aboo Din ran his long, naked arm into
the opening in pursuit of his first-born the
audacious boy who would make terms with his white
“Is it not enough before Allah
that this son should cause me, a Hadji, to curse daily,
but now he must bewitch tigers and dictate terms to
the Tuan and to me, his father? He shall feel
the strength of my wrist; I will O Allah!”
Aboo snatched forth his arm with a
howl of pain. One of his fingers was bleeding
profusely, and the marks of tiny teeth showed plainly
where Baboo had closed them on the offending hand.
“Biak, Baboo, mari!” (Good, come
forth!) I said.
First the round, soft face of the
small miscreant appeared; then the head, and then
the naked little body. Aboo Din grasped him in
his arms, regardless of his former threats, or of the
blood that was flowing from his wounds. Then,
amid caresses and promises to Allah to kill fire-fighting
cocks, the father hugged and kissed Baboo until he
cried out with pain.
After each Malay had taken the little
fellow in his arms, I turned to Baboo and said, while
I tried to be severe,
“Baboo, where is tiger?”
“Sudah mati (dead), Tuan,”
he answered with dignity. “Tiger over there,
Tuan. Sladang kill. I hid here and wait for
He touched his forehead with the back
of his brown palm. There was nothing, either
in the little fellow’s bearing or words, that
betrayed fear or bravado. It was only one mishap
more or less to him.
We followed Baboo’s lead to
the edge of the jungle, and there, stretched out in
the hot sand, lay the great, tawny beast, stamped
and pawed until he was almost unrecognizable.
All about him were the hoof-marks
of the great sladang, the fiercest and wildest animal
of the peninsula the Malayan bull that will
charge a tiger, a black lion, a boa, and even a crocodile,
on sight. Hunters will go miles to avoid one
of them, and a herd of elephants will go trumpeting
away in fear at their approach.
“Kuching besar (big cat)
eat Baboo’s chow dog, then sleep in lallang
grass,” this was the child’s
story. “Baboo find, and say, ‘Bagus
kuching (pretty kitty), see Baboo’s doll?’
Kuching no like Baboo’s doll mem consul give.
Kuching run away. Baboo catch tail, run too.
Kuching go long ways. Baboo ’fraid Aboo
Din whip and tell kuching must go back. Kuching
pick Baboo up in mouth when Baboo let go.
“Kuching hurt Baboo. Baboo
stick fingers in kuching’s eye. Kuching
no more hurt Baboo. Kuching stop under banian
tree and sleep. Big sladang come, fight kuching.
Baboo sorry for good kuching. Baboo hid from
sladang, Aboo Din no whip Baboo?”
His voice dropped to a pathetic little
quaver, and he put up his hands with an appealing
gesture; but his brown legs were drawn back ready
to flee should Aboo Din make one hostile move.
“Baboo,” I said, “you are a hero!”
Baboo opened his little black eyes, but did not dispute
“You shall go to Mecca when
you grow up, and become a Hadji, and when you come
back the high kadi shall take you in the mosque and
make a kateeb of you,” said I. “Now
put your forehead to the ground and thank the good
Allah that the kuching had eaten dog before he got
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.