HANTU
BY
HENRY MILNER RIDEOUT
Reprinted from _The Atlantic Monthly_ of May, 1906 by permission
THE SCHOONER _Fulmar_ lay in a cove on the coast of Banda. Her sails,half hoisted, dripped still from an equatorial shower, but, aloft, werealready steaming in the afternoon glare. Dr. Forsythe, captain andowner, lay curled round his teacup on the cabin roof, watching thehorizon thoughtfully, with eyes like points of glass set in the puckeredbronze of his face. The "Seventh Officer," his only white companion,watched him respectfully. All the Malays were asleep, stretched prone orsupine under the forward awning. Only Wing Kat stirred in the smother ofhis galley below, rattling tin dishes, and repeating, in endlessfalsetto sing-song, the Hankow ditty which begins,--
"'Yaou-yaou!' remarked the grasshoppers."
Ashore, the coolies on the nutmeg plantations had already brought outtheir mace to dry, and the baskets lay in vermilion patches on thesun-smitten green, like gouts of arterial blood. White vapors round themountain peaks rose tortuously toward the blue; while seaward, rainstill filled the air as with black sand drifting down aslant, throughgaps in which we could descry far off a steel-bright strip of fairweather that joined sea and sky, cutting under a fairy island so that itseemed suspended in the air.
"That's a pretty bit of land," said the doctor lazily. "'_Jam medioapparet fluctu nemorosa Zacynthos_'. It might be, eh?--Humph!--Virgiland Shakespeare are the only ones who sometimes make poetry endurable.All the others are just little swollen Egos."
This was an unusual excursion, and he quickly returned to practicalmatters.
"There's a better anchorage over there," he drawled, waving the milk-tintoward Zacynthos. "And less danger of our being caught than here. But nouse; we've got to humor the crew, of course. When they say '_puloburrantu_,' that settles it. Haunted islands--ghosts--fatal todiscipline. I used to have cruises spoiled by that sort of thing. Wemust stay here and chance being found."
He shot a stream of Java sugar into the tea, and, staring at thesleepers, rubbed his shaven head thoughtfully.
"Oh, yes, 'superstition,' all very easy to say," he muttered, half tohimself. "But who _knows_, eh? Must be something in it, at times."
His mood this afternoon was new and surprising. Nor was it likely tooccur often in such a man. He had brought the _Fulmar_ round the southof Celebes, making for Ceram; but as the Dutch had forbidden him totravel in the interior, saying that the natives were too dangerous justthen; and as Sidin, the mate, had sighted the Dutch tricolor flyingabove drab hulls that came nosing southward from Amboina way, we haddodged behind the Bandas till nightfall. The crew laughed at the _babiblanda_--Dutch pigs; but every man of them would have fled ashore hadthey known that among the hampers and bundled spears in our hold lay thedried head of a little girl, a human sacrifice from Engano. If we gotinto Ceram (and got out again), the doctor would reduce the whole affairto a few tables of anthropological measurements, a few more hampers ofbirds, beasts, and native rubbish in the hold, and a score of paragraphscouched in the evaporated, millimetric terms of science. There would bea few duplicates for Raffles, some tin-lined cases, including theclotted head of the little girl, for the British Museum; the totalupshot would attract much less public notice than the invention of a new"part" for a motor car; and the august structure of science, like acoral tree, would increase by another atom. In the meantime, we layanchored, avoiding ironclads and ghosts.
Dinner we ate below, with seaward port-holes blinded, and sweat drippingfrom our chins. Then we lay on the cabin roof again, in breech-clouts,waiting for a breeze, and showing no light except the red coals of twoBurmah cheroots.
For long spaces we said nothing. Trilling of crickets ashore, sleepycooing of nutmeg-pigeons, chatter of monkeys, hiccough of tree lizards,were as nothing in the immense, starlit silence of the night, heavilysweet with cassia and mace. Forward, the Malays murmured now and then,in sentences of monotonous cadence.
"No, you can't blame them," said the captain abruptly, with decision."Considering the unholy strangeness of the world we live in----" Hepuffed twice, the palm of his hand glowing. "Things you can't explain,"he continued vaguely. "Now this--I thought of it today, speaking of_hantu_. Perhaps you can explain it, being a youngster without theories.The point is, of what follows, how much, if any, was a dream? Where werethe partition lines between sleep and waking,--between what we callCertainty, and--the other thing? Or else, by a freak of nature, might aman live so long--Nonsense!--Never mind; here are the facts."
* * * * *
Eleven years ago, I had the _Fulmar_ a ten months' cruise out ofSingapore, and was finally coming down along Celebes, intending to goover to Batavia. We anchored on just such a day as this has been, off alittle old river-mouth, so badly silted that she had to lie well out. Achief in a _campong_ half a day inland had promised to send somespecimens down that evening,--armor, harps, stone Priapuses, and birdsof paradise. The men were to come overland, and would have no boats. SoI went ashore with three or four Malays, and the Old Boy's time we hadpoking in and out over the silt to find fairway, even for the gig. Atlast we could make round toward a little clearing in the bamboos, with abig canary tree in the middle. All was going well, when suddenly themate grunted, pointing dead ahead. That man Sidin has the mostmagnificent eyes: we were steering straight into a dazzling glare. Icouldn't see anything, neither could the crew, for some time.
"_Tuggur_!" cried the mate. He was getting nervous. Then all of asudden--"_Brenti_!"
The crew stopped like a shot. Then they saw, too, and began to backwater and turn, all pulling different ways and yelling: "_Prau hantu!...sampar_! _...Sakit lepra! Kolera!... hantu!_"
As we swung, I saw what it was,--a little carved prau like a child's toyboat, perhaps four feet long, with red fiber sails and red and giltflags from stem to stern. It was rocking there in our swell, innocently,but the crew were pulling for the schooner like crazy men.
I was griffin enough at the time, but I knew what it meant, ofcourse,--it was an enchanted boat, that the priests in somevillage--perhaps clear over in New Guinea--had charmed the cholera orthe plague on board of. Same idea as the Hebrew scapegoat.
"_Brenti_!" I shouted. The Malays stopped rowing, but let her run.Nothing would have tempted them within oar's-length of that prau.
"See here, Sidin," I protested, "I go ashore to meet the _kapala's_men."
"We do not go," the fellow said. "If you go, Tuan, you die: the priesthas laid the cholera on board that prau. It has come to this shore. Donot go, Tuan."
"She hasn't touched the land yet," I said.
This seemed to have effect.
"Row me round to that point and land me," I ordered. "_Hantu_ does notcome to white men. You go out to the ship; when I have met thesoldier-messengers, row back, and take me on board with the gifts."
The mate persuaded them, and they landed me on the point, half a mileaway, with a box of cheroots, and a roll of matting to take my nap on.I walked round to the clearing, and spread my mat under the canary tree,close to the shore. All that blessed afternoon I waited, and smoked, andkilled a snake, and made notes in a pocket Virgil, and slept, and smokedagain; but no sign of the bearers from the _campong_. I made signals tothe schooner,--she was too far out to hail,--but the crew took nonotice. It was plain they meant to wait and see whether the _hantu_ prauwent out with the ebb or not; and as it was then flood, and dusk, theycouldn't see before morning. So I picked some bananas and chicos, andmade a dinner of them; then I lighted a fire under the tree, to smokeand read Virgil by,--in fact, spent the evening over my notes. Thateditor was a _pukkah_ ass! It must have been pretty late before Istretched out on my matting.
I was a long time going to sleep,--if I went to sleep at all. I lay andwatched the firelight and shadows in the _lianas_, the bats flutteringin and out across my patch of stars, and an ape that stole down fromtime to time and peered at me, sticking his blue face out from among thecreepers. At
one time a shower fell in the clearing, but only patteredon my ceiling of broad leaves.
After a period of drowsiness, something moved and glittered on thewater, close to the bank; and there bobbed the ghost prau, the gilt andvermilion flags shining in the firelight. She had come clear in on theflood,--a piece of luck. I got up, cut a withe of bamboo, and made herfast to a root. Then I fed the fire, lay down again, and watched herback and fill on her tether,--all clear and ruddy in the flame, eventhe carvings, and the little wooden figures of wizards on her deck. Andwhile I looked, I grew drowsier and drowsier; my eyes would close, thenhalf open, and there would be the _hantu_ sails and the fire forcompany, growing more and more indistinct.
So much for Certainty; now begins the Other. Did I fall asleep at all?If so, was my first waking a dream-waking, and the real one only whenthe thing was gone? I'm not an imaginative man; my mind, at home,usually worked with some precision; but this,--there seems to be, youmight say, a blur, a--film over my mental retina. You see, I'm not apsychologist, and therefore can't use the big, foggy terms of man'sconceit to explain what he never can explain,--himself, and Life.
* * * * *
The captain tossed his cheroot overboard, and was silent for a space.
"The psychologists forget AEsop's frog story," he said at last. "Littleswollen Egos, again."
Then his voice flowed on, slowly, in the dark.
* * * * *
I ask you just to believe this much: that I for my part feel sure(except sometimes by daylight) that I was not more than half asleep whena footfall seemed to come in the path, and waked me entirely. It didn'tsound,--only seemed to come. I believe, then, that I woke, roused up onmy elbow, and stared over at the opening among the bamboos where thepath came into the clearing. Some one moved down the bank, and drewslowly forward to the edge of the firelight. A strange, whispering,uncertain kind of voice said something,--something in Dutch.
I didn't catch the words, and it spoke again:--
"What night of the month is this night?"
If awake, I was just enough so to think this a natural question to beasked first off, out here in the wilds.
"It's the 6th," I answered in Dutch. "Come down to the fire, Mynheer."
You know how bleary and sightless your eyes are for a moment, waking,after the glare of these days. The figure seemed to come a littlenearer, but I could only see that it was a man dressed in black. Eventhat didn't seem odd.
"Of what month?" the stranger said. The voice was what the French call"veiled."
"June," I answered.
"And what year?" he asked.
I told him--or It.
"He is very late," said the voice, like a sigh. "He should have sentlong ago."
Only at this point did the whole thing begin to seem queer. As evidencethat I must have been awake, I recalled afterwards that my arm had beenmade numb by the pressure of my head upon it while lying down, and nowbegan to tingle.
"It is very late," the voice repeated. "Perhaps too late----"
The fire settled, flared up fresh, and lighted the man's face dimly,--along, pale face with gray mustache and pointed beard. He was all inblack, so that his outline was lost in darkness; but I saw that roundhis neck was a short white ruff, and that heavy leather boots hung infolds, cavalier-fashion, from his knees. He wavered there in the dark,against the flicker of the bamboo shadows, like a picture by that Dutchfellow--What's-his-name-again--a very dim, shaky, misty Rembrandt.
"And you, Mynheer," he went on, in the same toneless voice, "from wheredo you come to this shore?"
"From Singapore," I managed to reply.
"From Singapura," he murmured. "And so white men live there now?--_Ja,ja_, time has passed."
Up till now I may have only been startled, but this set me in a bluefunk. It struck me all at once that this shaky old whisper of a voicewas not speaking the Dutch of nowadays. I never before knew the depths,the essence, of that uncertainty which we call fear. In the silence, Ithought a drum was beating,--it was the pulse in my ears. The fire closeby was suddenly cold.
"And now you go whither?" it said.
"To Batavia," I must have answered, for it went on:--
"Then you may do a great service to me and to another. Go to Jacatra inBatavia, and ask for Pieter Erberveld. Hendrik van der Have tells him tocease--before it is too late, before the thing becomes accursed. Tellhim this. You will have done well, and I--shall sleep again. Give himthe message----"
The voice did not stop, so much as fade away unfinished. And the man,the appearance, the eyes, moved away further into the dark, dissolving,retreating. A shock like waking came over me--a rush of clearconsciousness----
Humph! Yes, been too long away from home; for I know (mind you, _know_)that I saw the white of that ruff, the shadowy sweep of a cloak, assomething turned its back and moved up the path under the pointed archof bamboos, and was gone slowly in the blackness. I'm as sure of this asI am that the fire gave no heat. But whether the time of it all had beenseconds or hours, I can't tell you.
What? Yes, naturally. I jumped and ran up the path after it. Nothingthere but starlight. I must have gone on for half a mile. Nothing: onlyahead of me, along the path, the monkeys would chatter and break into anuproar, and then stop short--every treetop silent, as they do when apython comes along. I went back to the clearing, sat down on the mat,stayed there by clinching my will power, so to speak,--and watchedmyself for other symptoms, till morning. None came. The fire, when Iheaped it, was as hot as any could be. By dawn I had persuaded myselfthat it was a dream. No footprints in the path, though I mentioned ashower before.
At sunrise, the _kapala's_ men came down the path, little chaps in blackmediaeval armor made of petroleum tins, and coolies carrying piculs ofstuff that I wanted. So I was busy,--but managed to dismast the _hantu_prau and wrap it up in matting, so that it went aboard with the plunder.
Yet this other thing bothered me so that I held the schooner over, andmade pretexts to stay ashore two more nights. Nothing happened. Then Icalled myself a grandmother, and sailed for Batavia.
Two nights later, a very singular thing happened. The mate--this onewith the sharp eyes--is a quiet chap; seldom speaks to me except onbusiness. He was standing aft that evening, and suddenly, without anypreliminaries, said:
"Tuan was not alone the other night."
"What's that, Sidin?" I spoke sharply, for it made me feel quite angryand upset, of a sudden. He laughed a little, softly.
"I saw that the fire was a cold fire," he said. That was all he wouldsay, and we've never referred to it again.
You may guess the rest, if you know your history of Java. I didn't then,and didn't even know Batavia,--had been ashore often, but only for a_toelatingskaart_ and some good Dutch chow. Well, one afternoon, I wasloafing down a street, and suddenly noticed that the sign-board said,"Jacatra-weg." The word made me jump, and brought the whole affair onCelebes back like a shot,--and not as a dream. It became a livequestion; I determined to treat it as one, and settle it.
I stopped a fat Dutchman who was paddling down the middle of the streetin his pyjamas, smoking a cigar.
"Pardon, Mynheer," I said. "Does a man live here in Jacatra-weg namedErberveld?"
"_Nej_," he shook his big shaved head. "_Nej_, Mynheer, I do not know."
"Pieter Erberveld," I suggested.
The man broke into a horse-laugh.
"_Ja, ja_," he said, and laughed still. "I did not think of him. _Ja_,on this way, opposite the timber yard, you will find his house." And hewent off, bowing and grinning hugely.
The nature of the joke appeared later, but I wasn't inclined to laugh.You've seen the place. No? Right opposite a timber yard in a cocoanutgrove: it was a heavy, whitewashed wall, as high as a man, and perhapstwo perches long. Where the gate should have been, a big tablet was setin, and over that, on a spike, a skull, grinning through a coat ofcement. The tablet ran in eighteenth-century Dutch, about like this
:--
BY REASON OF THE DETESTABLE MEMORY OF THE CONVICTED TRAITOR, PIETER ERBERVELD, NO ONE SHALL BE PERMITTED TO BUILD IN WOOD OR STONE OR TO PLANT ANYTHING UPON THIS GROUND, FROM NOW TILL JUDGMENT DAY. BATAVIA, APRIL 14, ANNO 1772.
You'll find the story in any book: the chap was a half-caste Guy Fawkeswho conspired to deliver Batavia to the King of Bantam, was caught,tried, and torn asunder by horses. I nosed about and went through a holein a side wall: nothing in the compound but green mould, dried stalks,dead leaves, and blighted banana trees. The inside of the gate wasblocked with five to eight feet of cement. The Dutch hate solidly.
But Hendrik van der Have? No, I never found the name in any of thebooks. So there you are. Well? Can a man dream of a thing before heknows that thing, or----
* * * * *
The captain's voice, which had flowed on in slow and dispassionatesoliloquy, became half audible, and ceased. As we gave ear to thesilence, we became aware that a cool stir in the darkness was growinginto a breeze. After a time, the thin crowing of game-cocks in distantvillages, the first twitter of birds among the highest branches, told usthat night had turned to morning. A soft patter of bare feet came alongthe deck, a shadow stood above us, and the low voice of the mate said:
"_Ada kapal api disitu, Tuan_--_saiah kirah_--_ada kapal prrang_."
"Gunboat, eh?" Captain Forsythe was on his feet, and speaking briskly."_Bai, tarek jangcar_. Breeze comes just in time."
We peered seaward from the rail; far out, two pale lights, between a redcoal and a green, shone against the long, glimmering strip of dawn.
"Heading this way, but there's plenty of time," the captain saidcheerfully. "Take the wheel a minute, youngster--that's it,--keep herin,--they can't see us against shore where it's still night."
As the schooner swung slowly under way, his voice rose, gay as aboy's:--
"Come on, you rice-fed admirals!" He made an improper gesture, hisprofile and outspread fingers showing in the glow-worm light of thebinnacle. "If they follow us through by the Verdronken Rozengain, we'llshow them one piece 'e navigation. Can do, eh? These old iron-clad junksare something a man knows how to deal with."