Page 271 - Malay sketches

A PERSONAL INCIDENT

prided themselves on their independence ; their
neighbours called it impudence. A few months
before Mr. Birch had visited Kota Lama, but the
people turned out with firearms, and said that if he
landed they would shoot him. He had no means
of forcing a landing then, nor of compelling an
apology later, and, therefore, he had not since been
to the place.
I had been in Kota Lama a month before this
;
I went to see a man who had been shot through
the shoulder the night before by two men who had
a grudge against him, and had settled it in a
truly Irish fashion. They called at his house, and
while engaging him in conversation and eating his
had measured the distance of his mat
streh, sleeping
from the walls of the house. It was a wooden
building, and, like all Malay houses, the floor was
raised high above the ground. That night they
underneath calcu-
had got it, and, having carefully
lated their host's position, they fired simultaneously
and decamped. One bullet missed the victim's
head by an inch or two, and the other went through
the floor and the mat and penetrated his shoulder.
I now went to see this man and found him
again
and advised his relatives to send him
doing badly,
to Kuala Kangsar. Then we walked about the
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