122 IN MALAY FORESTS. 



an end of it. It falls to the ground or remains 

 held by the thorns, and the passer-by sees it there 

 no longer luminous and nebulous as at night-time, 

 but in the materialised form of the head of the 

 woman that had been. It was, I have said, the 

 peculiar shape of these balls of fire that made it 

 flash upon me that they were penanggal, and we 

 could then understand the terrors of Baginda Sutan 

 when he found himself alone on the hill known 

 and feared by all as the home of spooks and devils, 

 and saw himself surrounded by numbers of these 

 unholy phantoms. What was really a wonderful and 

 beautiful sight meant to him a diabolical orgie at 

 the meeting-house of the spirits ; and he must have 

 looked upon himself as lost and doomed to a lingering 

 death amongst these horrible graveyard ghouls. 



All night long the lights beguiled the tedium of 

 our vigil, for they did not disappear until a saffron 

 light over the eastern mountains heralded the coming 

 day. Damp with dew, and chill and stiff, we clam- 

 bered down from our seats. The wretched goat awoke 

 and bleated at us reproachfully. We had not seen 

 nor heard anything of the tiger; and the goat had 

 thus been luckier than it knew of, while we had 

 seen something far more interesting than any tiger, 

 and therefore did not take it much to heart. When 

 we emerged from the forest path at the foot of the 

 hill, and were making our way through the padi- 

 fields, we happened to meet the district headman, Haji 

 Mustapha, who was, under me, the chief Government 

 official of Tanjong Malin. I told him of what we 

 had seen, explaining how we had first observed the two 



