PART ONE THE DYAK CHIEF

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Erwin Clarkson Garrett

THE DYAK CHIEF

Hear ye a tale from the deepest depths of the heart of Borneo,
 Where the Moeroeng leaps in wild cascades,
 And the endless green of the jungle fades,
 And night shuts down on the fern-choked glades
 Where the kampong hearth-fires glow.
Listen, Oh White Man, that ye hear
 The words of a Dyak chief,
 Till ye learn the weight of the Dyak hate
 And the depth of the Dyak grief.
Once in the days of my strength and pride
 I loved a kampong maid,
 And very old was the tale I told
 ’Neath the lace of the jungle shade.
And very old was the tale I told,
 Though born year by year;
 Till I thought of the headless waist I bore—
 And I drew the maiden near:
And I pledged her there by the tree-banked stream
 Where the rippling shadows flee,
 “None but the skull of a kampong chief
 Shall hang at my belt for thee.”

II

When over the palm-topped endless hills
 First broke the golden day,
 The taintless breeze in the highest trees
 Laughed as I swung away.
Laughed as I climbed the mountain path
 Or skirted the river’s bank,
 And the great lianes sung to me
 As on my knees I drank.
And the great lianes softly swayed
 And twisted in snake-like guise,
 Till I lost their sight in the leafy height
 Where peeped the purple skies.
And down through the dank morasses
 I leapt from clod to clod,
 O’er fallen trunk and lifted root
 And the ooze of the sunken sod—
Where the tiny trees stand tall and straight,
 A mass of mossy green,
 And lighting all like a fairy hall
 The sunlight sifts between.
Day by day through stress and strain
 I pressed my marches through;
 Day by day through strain and stress
 The weary hours flew.
And silent, from the dank brown leaves
 As swept my hurrying tread,
 The little waiting leeches rose
 And caught me as I sped.
Till my feet and ankles bled in streams—
 But I let them clinging stay,
 And they swelled to seven times their size
 And glutted and fell away.
For never time had I to stop,
 And so they sucked their fill,
 As I splashed through the knee-deep rivers
 And clambered the jungle hill.
And only night could halt me,
 And the stars in their proud parade,
 They bade me look to the fray before,
 And back to the kampong maid.

III

Weary at last I reached a height
 That showed a fertile glade,
 Where the bending trees of the river brink
 Leaned out o’er a wild cascade.
And white above the waving banks
 The towering giants rose high,
 And tossed their heads in hauteur,
 Full-plumed across the sky.
And waved their long lianes
 A hundred feet in air,
 And shook their clinging vine-leaves
 As a Dyak maid her hair.
And down by the Moeroeng’s turning
 The river rock rose sheer,
 And out of the cracks the tasseled palms
 Like mighty plumes hung clear.
While still, behind a boulder,
 Where the little ripples gleam,
 A fisher sat in his sunken proa
 In the midst of the gliding stream.
Only the crash of the underbrush
 Told where a hunter sped,
 And I caught the glint of the morning sun
 On the blow-spear’s glittering head.
Only the crack of a mandauw
 Felling the little trees,
 And the murmuring call of a water-fall
 That echoed the jungle breeze.
But more to me than the hunter—
 The fisher and stream and hill—
 Was the kampong deep in the hollow,
 Nestling dark and still.
Dark and still in the valley,
 A single house and strong;
 Perched on piles two warriors high
 And a hundred paces long.
And straight before the tall-stepped door
 The mighty chief poles rose,
 And seemed to shake their tasseled tops
 In warning to their foes—
As they who slept beneath them
 Once did, when in their might—
 With shining steel and sinews—
 Full-armed they sprang to fight.
Long from the hill-side trees I watched
 The water women go
 Back and forth to the river bank,
 Chattering to and fro.
Long from the hill-side trees I watched
 Till—straight as the windless flame—
 With spear and shield and mandauw,
 The kampong chieftain came.
Full well I knew the waist-cloth blue
 Where hung each shriveled head.
 Full well I saw the eyes of awe
 That followed in his tread.
Full well I heard the spoken word—
 The quick obedience fanned—
 And I felt the trance of the royal glance
 Of the Lord of the Jungle-land.
Lightly he scorned the proffered guard
 As he strode the upland grade,
 And softly I drew my mandauw
 And fingered the sharpened blade.
Was it for game or a head he came
 To the hills in the golden morn?
 But little I cared as the heavens stared
 On the day that my hope was born.
For over and over I muttered—
 As I slunk from tree to tree—
 “None but the head of a kampong chief
 Shall hang at my belt for thee.”
(None but the head of a kampong chief
 For you my belt shall grace,
 Taken by right in fairest fight—
 Full-fronted—face to face.)
And I found a leafy clearing
 That lay across his path,
 And I stood to wait his coming—
 The chieftain in his wrath.
As the moan before the wind-storm
 That breaks across the night,
 Were the rhythmic, muffled foot falls
 Of the war-lord come to fight.
The crack of little branches—
 The branches pushed away—
 And the Scourge of the Moeroeng Valley
 Sprang straight to the waiting fray.
’Twas then I knew the stories true
 They told of his fearful fame,
 As through my shield a hand’s-length
 His hurtling spearhead came.
Stunned I reeled and a moment kneeled
 To the shock of the blinding blow,
 But I rose again at the stinging pain
 And the wet of the warm blood’s flow.
And I staggered straight and I scorned to wait
 And I swept my mandauw high—
 But ere my stroke descended
 He smote me athwart the thigh.
As the lean rattan at the workman’s knife—
 As the stricken game in the dell—
 As a bird on the wing at the blow-spear’s sting,
 To the reddened earth I fell.
And merrily with fiendish glee
 He knelt and held me fast;
 And I looked on high at the fleecy sky—
 And I thought the look was the last.
But by the will that knows no law
 I wrenched my right hand free,
 And I drove my mandauw’s gleaming point
 A hand’s-breadth in his knee.
Stung by the pain he loosened,
 And a moment bared his breast,
 And like the dash of the lightning flash
 My weapon sought its rest.
As a log in the Moeroeng rapids
 The mighty chieftain rolled,
 And I pinned him fast for the head-stroke,
 In the reek of the blood-stained mold.
And I pinned him fast for the head-stroke—
 But the glare of the dying eyes
 Gleamed forth to show the worthy foe
 And the heart that never dies.
 . . . . . . . . . .
A moment toward a kampong,
 And toward a kampong maid,
 I looked ... and a head rolled helpless
 To the crash of a falling blade.

IV

With strips from my torn jacket
 I bound my arm and thigh,
 And I headed back o’er the leafy track
 With hope and spirits high.
And as I sped with leaping heart
 All Nature seemed to sing;
 And my legs ran red where trickling bled
 The head of the Jungle King.
The purring tree-tops called me—
 The fleecy clouds rolled by—
 And the forest green was a sun-shot sheen,
 And the sky was a laughing sky.
And only night could halt me,
 And the stars in their proud parade,
 They bade me look to the path before
 That led to the kampong maid.
Bleeding and torn, spent and worn,
 At last I reached the hill,
 Whence each hearth-light in the falling night
 Was a welcome bright and still.
For each hearth-light in the falling night
 Cut clear through the growing gloam—
 Of all brave things the best that brings
 The weary Wanderer home.
But the waiting watchers spied me,
 And met me as I ran;
 And they saw the head of the chieftain,
 And they hailed me man and man.
But through the heart-whole greetings
 I felt the anxious gaze,
 And over my brain like a pall was lain
 The weight of the Doubter’s craze.
And I begged them to tell me quickly—
 For I quailed at the story stayed—
 And I asked them if aught had happened
 To the head of the kampong maid.
And there in the leafy gloaming—
 Where the stars lit one by one,
 They told me the tale at my homing—
 And I felt the passions run—
Hate as the white-hot flame jet—
 Shame as the burning bar—
 Grief as the poisoned arrow—
 Revenge as the salted scar:
Rankling—roaring—blinding—
 Rising and ebbing low;
 Till overhead the skies burst red,
 And I tottered beneath the blow.
For they told of a White Man’s coming,
 And the weapon that carries far;
 And his love for the Maid—but over it laid
 The hush of the falling star.
Faithlessness—treachery—cunning—
 Weakness and love and fear—
 Oh very old was the tale they told,
 Though born year by year.
And I drew my blade and I leapt away—
 But they sprang and held me fast:
 And they promised me there by the dead chief’s hair,
 My hate should be filled to the last.
And they showed me him bound and knotted
 To the base of a splintered tree,
 Stripped to the sun and spat upon
 And taunted—awaiting me.
And I saw her in the shadows—
 But ... I might not know her, then—
 A sneer for the kampong women—
 And a jest for the kampong men.
 . . . . . . . . . .
And thus in the days of my strength and pride,
 From over the distant sea,
 The White Man came in his open shame
 And stole my love from me.

V

The next morn at the rising sun
 The tom-toms roared their fill,
 And echoed like rolling thunder
 From hill to farthest hill.
And the birds of the jungle fluttered
 And lifted and soared away,
 And we dragged the fettered prisoner forth
 To blink at the blinding day.
Full length and naked on the ground
 We staked him foot and hand,
 And we laughed in glee as we watched to see
 The pest of the jungle-land.
Oh we laughed in glee as we watched to see
 The little leeches swing,
 End on end till they reached the flesh
 Of the prostrate, struggling Thing.
Like river flies in the summer rains
 They covered the White Man o’er—
 Body and legs and arms and face,
 Till the whole was a bleeding sore.
And the red streams ran from the crusted pools
 And crimsoned the leafy ground,
 And the scent of gore but brought the more
 As the smell of game to the hound.
Hour by hour I watched him die,
 Slowly day by day,
 Hour by hour I watched the flesh
 Sinking and turning gray:
Hour by hour I heard him shriek
 To the skies and the White Man’s God—
 But only the gluttons came again
 And reddened the reeking sod.
Weeping, writhing, groaning—
 Paled to an ashen dun—
 And the clotted blood turned black as mud
 And stunk in the midday sun.
(Bones where stretched the tautening flesh—
 A shining, yellow sheen—
 And the flies that helped the leeches work
 In the stagnant pools between.)
 . . . . . . . . . .
Till the fourth day broke in a blaze of gold—
 And I knew the end was nigh—
 And I called the tribes from near and far,
 To watch the White Man die.
From every kampong of the south
 Where the broad Barito winds—
 From every kampong of the east
 The murmuring hill-wind finds—
From every kampong of the west
 Where the Djoeloi falls and leaps—
 From every kampong of the north
 Where the great Mohakkam sweeps—
From east and west and south and north
 The mighty warriors came,
 To prove the weight of the Dyak hate
 And the shame of the naked shame.
In noiseless scorn and wonder
 They scanned the victim there,
 Except that when an Elder spake
 To mock at his despair.
Or when from out the long-house—
 Where loosened footboards creaked—
 A woman leaned in frenzy
 And tore her hair and shrieked.
And from the wooded hill-tops
 The answering echoes came,
 Till all our far-flung wilderness
 Stooped down to curse his name.
In sullen, savage silence
 They watched the streamlets flow:
 In savage, sullen silence—
 The war-lords—row on row—
Ranged around by rank and years,
 Oh goodly was the sight,
 Square shouldered—spare—with muscles bare
 Coiled in their knotted might—
And little serpent eyes that gleamed
 In glittering, primal hate,
 Like adders, that beneath the leaves
 The coming foot falls wait.
The shrunken heads about their belts
 Stared with senseless grin,
 As though in voiceless mummery
 They mocked him in his sin.
As though in sightless greeting—
 To make his entry good
 To th’ lost and leering legion
 Of the martyred brotherhood.
 . . . . . . . . . .
We rubbed his lips with costly salt—
 (You know how far it comes)—
 And when he called for drink—we laughed—
 And rolled the Sick-man’s Drums.
 . . . . . . . . . .
They beckoned me unto his side—
 The blood-stench filled the dell—
 They asked me—“Ye are satisfied?”
 And I answered—“It is well.”
The final glaze was settling fast—
 The weary struggles ceased—
 And on his breath was the moan of death
 That prayed for life released.
So we propped his mouth wide open
 With a knob of rotten vine,
 And the leeches entered greedily
 As white men to their wine.
Palate and roof and tongue and gums,
 They gushed in rivers gay—
 And gasping—his own blood choked him—
 And his Spirit passed away.
This is the tale the old chief tells
 When the western gold-belt dies,
 And the jungle trees in the evening breeze
 Tower against the skies,
 And the good-wife bakes the greasy cakes
 Where the kampong hearth-fires rise.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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