Peace Brooded Over The Quiet Shores, Heavy Aromatic
Odors Of Night-Blooming Plants Wrapped Us Round, The Sun Sank Suddenly,
The Air Became Cool, It Was A Dream Of Tropic Beauty.
"Chalakar! Bondo!" Those jarring sounds seemed to have something
linking them with the tragedy of which the peaceful-looking bungalow
was lately the scene, and of which you have doubtless read.
A Chinese
gang swooped down upon the house from behind, beating gongs and
shouting. Captain Lloyd got up to see what was the matter, and was
felled by a hatchet, calling out to his wife for his revolver. This had
been abstracted, and the locks had been taken off his fowling-pieces.
The ayah fled to the jungle in the confusion, taking with her the three
children, the youngest only four weeks old. The wretches then
fractured, Mrs. Lloyd's skull with the hatchet, and having stunned Mrs.
Innes, who was visiting her, they pushed the senseless bodies under the
bed, and were preparing to set fire to it when something made them
depart.
No more is likely to be known. The police must either have been
cowardly or treacherous. The Pyah Pekket called the next day and
brought the frightfully mangled corpse, Mrs. Lloyd, whose reason was
overturned, and Mrs. Innes, on here. It is supposed that the Chinese
secret societies have frustrated justice. A wretch is to be hanged here
for the crime this morning on his own confession, but it is believed
that he was doomed to sacrifice himself by one of these societies, in
order to screen the real murderers. The contrast was awful between the
island looking so lovely in the evening light, and this horrid deed
which has desolated it.
The mainland approaches close to the Dindings, but the mangrove swamps
of Selangor had given place to lofty ranges, forest covered, and a
white coral strand fringed with palms. It was a lovely night. The
north-east monsoon was fresh and steady, and the stars were glorious.
It was very hot below, but when I went up on deck it was cool, and in
the colored dawn we were just running up to the island-group of which
Pinang is the chief, and reached the channel which divides it from
Leper Island just at sunrise. All these islands are densely wooded, and
have rocky shores. The high mountains of the native State of Kedah
close the view to the north, and on the other side of a very narrow
channel are the palm groves and sugar plantations of Province
Wellesley. The Leper Island looked beautiful in the dewy morning with
its stilted houses under the cocoa-palms; and the island of Pinang,
with its lofty peak, dense woods, and shores fringed with palms
sheltering Malay kampongs, each with its prahus drawn up on the beach,
looked impressive enough.
The fierce glory of a tropic sunrise is ever a new delight. It is
always the sun of the Nineteenth Psalm, with the prevailing yellow
color of the eastern sky intensifying in one spot, a cool, lingering
freshness, a deepening of the yellow east into a brilliant rose color,
till suddenly, "like a glory, the broad sun" wheels above the horizon,
the dew-bathed earth rejoices, the air is flooded with vitality, all
things which rejoice in light and heat come forth, night birds and
night prowlers retire, and we pale people hastily put up our umbrellas
to avoid being shriveled in less than ten minutes from the first
appearance of the sun.
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