|
Isabella L. Bird - The Golden Chersonese and the Way Thither
country, speaks Malay fluently, and for a European seems to have a sympathetic understanding of the
Malays, is studying the Chinese and their language, as well as the flora, fauna, and geology of the
country, and is altogether unpretending. I have formed a very high opinion of him and should rely
implicitly on anything which he told me as a fact. This is a great blessing, for conflicting statements on
every subject, and the difficulty of estimating which one comes probably nearest the truth, are among the
great woes of traveling!
I. L. B.
LETTER XVII
The Dindings - The Tragedy on Pulu Pangkor - A Tropic Sunrise - Sir W. Robinson's Departure - "A
Touch of the Sun" - Kling Beauty - A Question and Answer - The Bazaars of Georgetown - The
Chinaman Goes Ahead - The Products of Pinang - Pepper-Planting
HOTEL DE L'EUROPE, PINANG, February 9.
In the evening we reached the Dindings, a lovely group of small islands ceded to England by the Pangkor
Treaty, and just now in the height of an unenviable notoriety. The sun was low and the great heat past,
the breeze had died away, and in the dewy stillness the largest of the islands looked unspeakably lovely
as it lay in the golden light between us and the sun, forest-covered to its steep summit, its rocky
promontories running out into calm, deep, green water, and forming almost land-locked bays, margined
by shores of white coral sand backed by dense groves of cocoa-palms whose curving shadows lay dark
upon the glassy sea. Here and there a Malay house in the shade indicated man and his doings, but it was
all silent.
On a high, steep point there is a small clearing on which stands a mat bungalow with an attap roof, and
below this there is a mat police station, but it was all desolate, nothing stirred, and though we had
intended to spend the early hours of the night at the Dindings, we only lay a short time in the deep
shadow upon the clear green water, watching scarlet fish playing in the coral forests, and the exquisite
beauty of the island with its dense foliage in dark relief against the cool lemon sky. Peace brooded over
the quiet shores, heavy aromatic odors of night-blooming plants wrapped us round, the sun sank
suddenly, the air became cool, it was a dream of tropic beauty.
"Chalakar! Bondo!" Those jarring sounds seemed to have something linking them with the tragedy of
which the peaceful-looking bungalow was lately the scene, and of which you have doubtless read. A
Chinese gang swooped down upon the house from behind, beating gongs and shouting. Captain Lloyd
got up to see what was the matter, and was felled by a hatchet, calling out to his wife for his revolver.
This had been abstracted, and the locks had been taken off his fowling-pieces. The ayah fled to the jungle
in the confusion, taking with her the three children, the youngest only four weeks old. The wretches then
fractured, Mrs. Lloyd's skull with the hatchet, and having stunned Mrs. Innes, who was visiting her, they
pushed the senseless bodies under the bed, and were preparing to set fire to it when something made
them depart.
No more is likely to be known. The police must either have been cowardly or treacherous. The Pyah
Pekket called the next day and brought the frightfully mangled corpse, Mrs. Lloyd, whose reason was
overturned, and Mrs. Innes, on here. It is supposed that the Chinese secret societies have frustrated
justice. A wretch is to be hanged here for the crime this morning on his own confession, but it is believed
that he was doomed to sacrifice himself by one of these societies, in order to screen the real murderers.
|
