THE LIGHTS OF CHANGKAT ASAH. 123 



lights come running down the path above my house. 

 "By the Mercy and Grace of Allah," he exclaimed, 

 " you have been marvellously preserved ! Penanggal 

 in truth were they ; for know that the direction 

 from which those lights came is that of our old 

 disused burial-ground." 



The question is, What were these lights ? They 

 certainly seemed to us to come up from the swamps 

 of the valley, and this would point to their being 

 of the nature of a Will-o'-the-wisp, which is only 

 marsh-gas, CH 4 , a chemical compound of carbon and 

 hydrogen. But in England, at all events, a Will-o'- 

 the-wisp is a small, feeble, flickering light hovering 

 only a few feet (if so much) above the level of the 

 marshes. These lights, on the other hand, were the 

 size of a man's head, shone with a phosphorescent 

 glow, and, as they passed over the summit of 

 Changkat Asah, were at least 700 feet above the 

 level of the plain. Perhaps they were St Elmo's 

 lights. The objection to this is that St Elmo's lights 

 are supposed to be caused by an electric disturbance 

 of the atmosphere, and are generally stationary, at- 

 taching themselves to a fixed point like the mast- 

 head of a steamer ; whereas the night on which we 

 saw these lights was clear and bright, and, as I 

 have said, the lights flew upon the wings of the 

 wind. I cannot say what they were. If they were 

 composants the sailor's name for St Elmo's lights, 

 and his corrupted form of the words corpo santo 

 (holy body), there is a curious parallel between the 

 superstition of the British sailor and the Malay. 



I never saw the lights again ; and neither did B., 



