Page 157 - Malay sketches

THE PASSING OF PENGLIMA PRANG SEMAUN

Whilst the Penglima was running the gauntlet
of the guard-boats his late companions, the men of
Lambor, ,some twenty or thirty in number, were
having a worse experience on shore.
Being a large party and in their haste not over-
cautious, they were, of course, discovered as they
tried to break through the line of stockades. Some
others were and krised in hand-
were shot, speared
to-hand encounters, while a few got away to the
forest under cover of the darkness. But when
realised that it was a choice
these stragglers fully
between the enemy and painful wandering in a
swampy and well-nigh impenetrable jungle, with
the prospect of starvation and a lingering death, they
chose rather to return to the light and a speedier
reckoning.
None of this band returned to Lambor, and if
they sought their fate and made an unprovoked
attack upon Haji Musah it is not altogether sur-
prising that to this day there is no wasted affection
between the people of Lambor and the Lower Perak
Chiefs.
All through that sultry day, as one by one these
doomed men appeared from the jungle fastness and
went down before the weapons of their adversaries,
waiting tirelessly expectant in the certainty that no
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