16 IN MALAY FOKESTS. 



bullet, which hit the elephant high on the shoulder, 

 had gone perilously near the man's leg. It will be 

 some time before M. hears the last of the shot ; but 

 the chaff of the clubs does not carry the bite of the 

 smiles of the Malays, who give the credit of the 

 whole occurrence to "old kramat" and his guardian 

 spirit. 



Such, briefly, was the history of the animal, and 

 Malias was by no means keen on tackling him. 

 Malias was a local Malay who drew a regular 

 salary from me, and who wandered round the 

 country seeking for, and as far as possible verify- 

 ing, news of game. He was not particularly bright, 

 and, like all Malays, was inclined to be lazy; on 

 fresh tracks, however, he was as keen as possible, 

 and he would follow up a wounded tiger without 

 his pulse giving a stroke above its normal beat. 

 Chance brought us an ally : this was an old man 

 named Pa' Senik, a foreigner from one of the 

 northern unprotected States. He was of another 

 type to Malias, who was a mere villager; for Pa' 

 Senik's youth had been spent at the court of a 

 petty raja, and had been such as might be expected 

 from his surroundings, full of conspiracy and intrigue, 

 love and lust, fair fight and cold - blooded murder. 

 At last he had fallen upon bad days, for another 

 raja ruled in the place of the man he had served, 

 and he had had to fly for his life. He came to 

 Perak, where he was shrewdly suspected of com- 

 plicity in a carefully planned and well - executed 

 dacoity, and then settled down quietly in the Pinjih 

 valley, where until his eyesight failed him he had 



