3 o TRAPPING WILD ANIMALS 



whatever you say as though it were gospel. I stud- 

 ied them closely, learning their language and 

 customs and carefully avoiding anything that might 

 bring me into disfavor. Day after day, I went with 

 them into the jungle, picking up bits of jungle- 

 craft. Gradually I learned to see the things that 

 they saw in the walls of green about us, and to 

 interpret the sounds the hum of insects, the call 

 of birds, the chattering of monkeys and the cries 

 of other animals and I spent hours with them, 

 squatting in their houses, busy with the rudiments 

 of the Malay language. 



Once during the eighteen months I spent with 

 the hadji, I was haled before the Resident for an 

 investigation, but the natives stuck by me valiantly 

 and I was exonerated. The trouble started one 

 evening when I was sitting on the hadji's veranda. 

 There came a scream from one of the houses, and 

 a native emerged, howling and swinging a knife, 

 slashing at every one within reach men, women 

 and children. He was running amok, a victim of 

 the strange homicidal mania fairly common among 

 the Malays. When a man runs amok, he suddenly 

 begins to kill and he does not care whom his own 

 family or people he has never seen before. The 

 hadji yelled to me to shoot. I pulled out my revol- 

 ver and fired, hitting the man in the left arm. He 

 stopped for a moment ; the other natives seized him 

 and stabbed him to death. At the investigation, the 

 hadji explained to the Resident that I was not 



