30 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- 
wer 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 
