Page 261 - Malay sketches

JAMES WHEELER WOODFORD BIRCH

The Maharaja Lela and his neighbour the Datoh
"
Sagor, having burnt their ships/' proceeded to
stockade their and those stockades were
villages,
subsequently taken, the rebels driven out, and their
villages destroyed.
Sooner or later punishment overtook every man
directly concerned in this crime, and also nearly
all those who were indirectly responsible. Some
fell during the subsequent fighting, one died an
outlaw in the
jungle.
The first man was He was
captured Siputum.
in to Bandar Bharu late one in the
brought evening
early part of 1876, and I went to see him in the
lock-up about midnight. A wilder looking creature
it would have been hard to find. He was a
Pdwang, a medicine man, a sorcerer. For many
weeks he had been a hunted outcast, and he seemed
to think that capture was almost preferable to the
life he had been leading. He sat on the floor and
described to me his share in Mr. Birch's
murder,
pausing between the sentences to kill mosquitoes
on the wall of his cell. He volunteered the state-
ment that Mr. Birch was a good man, who had
been kind to him, and that what he did was by
order of his Chief, whom he was bound to obey.
The responsibility of the individual for his own
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