1835
Sri Hussein was the first to return to their base in Sumatra. Si Rahman had split the pirate fleet, taking the bulk in pursuit of a Portuguese merchantmen rumoured to be transporting a shipment of silver to Manila, while allowing Sri Hussein to leave with the remainder, so that he would return in time to keep his appointed meeting with the sultan and his council. Si Rahman hoped to join his brother in time, but it was more important that Sri Hussein appear before the sultan, since he had made the pledge on behalf of his woman.
When Sri Hussein returned to their base he was shocked to discover the damage that had been inflicted by the Singapore expedition, and greatly alarmed by the loss of bullion and treasure from the storehouses. With the spoils from their latest voyage, he had thought he would have more than enough to satisfy the sultan’s demand, but now he realized he would have a good deal less. If his brother returned in time, he might still be able to make up the difference, if the plunder from the Portuguese merchantman was as good as they anticipated. But would he return in time? Sri Hussein knew he could not postpone his meeting with the sultan and his council, and in any case postponement meant danger. The Singapore raiders might return at any time, and he might lose Ningsih for good.
The day of Sri Hussein’s appearance before the sultan and his council drew near, but still his brother did not come. Sri Hussein spent the last few days with Ningsih in their secret place in the jungle, and then went alone to the sultan’s audience chamber to plead his case. Sri Hussein told Sultan Tating and his council that he had accumulated the amount that had been pledged, but that most of it had been lost when the forces of the infidel had attacked their camp. He assured them that he had brought all that he had gained from his latest voyage, which he now had his men lay before them, and requested more time to accumulate the remainder of the promised sum. He told them that his brother Si Rahman would return soon, and would be able to contribute a substantial amount, perhaps enough to satisfy the sultan’s original demand.
Sultan Tating sat stone faced while Sri Hussein explained his failure. Then he and his council debated the matter for over an hour, while Sri Hussein remained kneeling in supplication before them. Finally, Chief Minister Abdul Haqq delivered the verdict:
‘Sri Hussein, you have failed to honour your pledge, and we demand that you surrender your kris to demonstrate your good faith toward his Highness Sultan Tating. Then we will inform you of our judgment.’
Sri Hussein was stunned. His kris was the most precious thing he owned. His uncle, who had been a famous pirate, had given it to him, and his uncle had received it from his own father. The blade had been crafted a long time ago by a pandai keris, a master craftsman and magician, who only began work on the blade after weeks of fasting and prayer, in order to drive away the evil spirits. Like those who had gone before him, Sri Hussein had made offerings to the marbled black blade, so that he might become one with the spirit of the kris. The handle was inlaid with gold and silver and precious jewels, and the long wavy blade had tasted the blood of many men, and not a few women and children. Yet he knew he must comply or lose Ningsih. His own small squadron was weakened by their recent action, and the sultan’s armed guards, who lined the walls of the audience chamber, heavily outnumbered his own men.
Yet still he hesitated. He could not bear to part with this marvelous weapon, which had sent so many unbelieving souls to hell. Then he thought of Ningsih, and his passion overcame his prudence. He slowly removed the weapon from his belt, and laid his sacred blade upon the pile of treasure that he had presented to the sultan. As he rose to his feet, tears formed in his eyes, and blinded him to Abdul Haqq’s signal. He was suddenly seized by the sultan’s men and forced down on his knees again. They raised his arms behind him, making escape impossible. Then one of the sultan’s men drew Sri Hussein’s kris from its jewelled scabbard, and drove the long black wavy blade down through his shoulder blade and into his heart. He died immediately, with a vision of Ningsih before his eyes.
When the sultan’s men descended on the pirate camp, they found that the captains had already learned of the execution of Sri Hussein, and had escaped with their boats and crews. The only person who remained in the camp was Ningsih, whom they had abandoned because of the ill fortune she had brought them. Ningsih was taken before the sultan and strangled at his feet.
* * *
Thomas McMicking went to his bed early. He thought he had a touch of fever, so he had a couple of stiff whiskies, closed the shutters to block out the moonlight, and climbed in under his mosquito net, hoping to sleep it off. His bungalow was at Duxton, on the western outskirts of town, on the verge of Dr Montgomerie’s nutmeg plantation; the far wall of his garden backed onto the jungle. Suddenly he heard the loud slapping of feet on the verandah, as a horde of Chinese men knocked down his door and rushed into his bedroom, armed with knives, axes and sticks. Others clambered through the window, and quickly surrounded his bed. McMicking was unarmed, and practically naked except for his underwear; his new flintlock revolver lay on the top drawer of his dressing table behind the crowd of men. All he could do was to try to make a break for it, but as he drew aside the mosquito net and made to rise from his bed, they flung him to the ground and kicked and beat him with their sticks until he was unconscious. Then they ransacked his home, smashing open chests and cupboards, and bundled their contents into canvas bags they had brought with them. They left before McMicking regained consciousness. He had two English friends visiting him, who to their shame had hidden in the garden when the gang of Chinese burglars had broken in, but who now attended to him as best they could. One brought him water to drink and to clean his wounds, while the other went off to inform the police.
About an hour later a police sergeant arrived, accompanied by five peons. The sergeant was Adil bin Mehmood. Sergeant Adil was the son of Mehmood bin Nadir, who had been a peon in the service of Francis Bernard, and who had been murdered at the hands of Syed Yassin.
After his father had died, Adil had worked on his uncle’s tongkang on the Singapore River for many years. He felt he it owed it to him; his uncle had married his widowed mother and looked after him as a child. But when he turned eighteen, Adil told his uncle that he had applied for and been accepted into the police force. His uncle was disappointed, although Adil knew there were plenty of eager young men willing to take his place in the tongkang; his uncle did a good business up and down the river. But his uncle could not understand why Adil wanted to join the police force; the pay of a peon was only half of what he paid him for lightering. Adil could not fully explain why, except for the promise he had made to the Prophet on his father’s death, and his own sense of justice. He wanted to play his part, however small, in maintaining the precarious order of the world. He had done well in the police force, and had been quickly promoted for his bravery and intelligence.
Adil questioned Mr McMicking, who had regained consciousness. He had been badly beaten, and was covered in cuts and bruises, but did not seem to be seriously injured. McMicking said he remembered the scene vividly––it would live in his dreams until the day he died––but he did not recognize any of the men, and did not think he would be able to identify any of them if they were captured. It had all happened so quickly, and he had only got a fleeting glimpse of them in the darkness before they had thrown him to the ground and beaten him. His two English friends rather sheepishly admitted that they had not seen anything either.
Sergeant Adil explained to Mr McMicking that there was a large Chinese gang who had a secret hiding place deep in the jungle, and who ventured out at night in groups of about thirty or forty to rob godowns or commit burglaries in private houses. There had been various incidents recently, including a double burglary of the house on Java Road belonging to Hajjah Fatima, which had been burned to the ground on the second occasion. Hajjah Fatima was the daughter of a wealthy Malay family from Malacca who had married a Bugis Prince who traded in Singapore. When he had died young, Hajjah Fatima took over his business and greatly expanded his trading fleet, and had made a considerable fortune. Fortunately she had been visiting relatives in Malacca when the house had been robbed and burned, and when she returned she was so glad to have survived the attack and arson that she designated the land as the site for a future mosque.[1]
Sergeant Adil told McMicking that the resident councillor was preparing a proclamation to warn citizens to protect themselves. He said the gang in the jungle had nothing to do with the Chinese societies, but were unemployed coolies and men who had broken their contracts of indenture.
‘Well, from now on I’m going to sleep with my revolver, and buy myself a bloody great elephant gun,’ snorted Mr McMicking, spitting out some bloody mucus into his handkerchief. ‘Bloody Chinese,’ he snorted again.
Sergeant Adil suggested that Mr McMicking should spend the next few days in hospital or with one of his friends, while his servants cleaned up the mess.
‘Well I suppose I could stay with Dr Montgomerie, a friend and a sawbones to boot,’ McMicking replied. ‘There’s no need to worry about leaving this place, since they’ve taken everything they could carry.’
When Sergeant Adil questioned the servants, he discovered that the Chinese gardener was missing, although he had no idea whether the man was involved with the burglary or whether he had simply run off and hidden in the jungle out of fear. But when the man did not return the following morning or the next few days, Adil suspected he had probably had played some role.
Two weeks later the gang struck again. This time they attacked the home of Sarawan Soundara Rajahn, who lived with his fellow Bengalis in a kampong at Kandang Kerbau, on the northern edge of town beyond Government Hill. But the Bengalis had heard about the recent burglaries, including the attack on Mr McMicking’s home. They kept loaded muskets in their houses, and fired at the robbers when the kampong dogs alerted them to intruders during the night. Sarawan discharged his musket into the chest of the first gang member to approach his home, and his neighbours fired their own muskets or threw spears at the surprised attackers, who fled back into the jungle leaving three men dead and one man wounded. When Adil arrived on the scene with his peons, he asked to see the wounded man, whom he intended to question. But the man had been beaten to a senseless pulp, and he died the next morning in the hospital.
After consulting with the Bengalis, Adil had a feeling that the gang might return the following evening. They might come back for whatever it was they believed the Bengalis had that was worth stealing, or out of revenge for their losses they had suffered. So he suggested to his supervisor that it might be a good idea to put a watch on the area at night. His supervisor agreed, and that night Sergeant Adil and a body of armed peons hid in the jungle surrounding the Bengali kampong at Kandang Kerbau. He also warned the Bengalis about the possibility of another attack, and they immediately set about arming themselves with muskets and pistols, either their own or those they bought or borrowed from friends. As the sun set behind the tall trees, Sergeant Adil and his men settled down for the night. He told them to keep as quiet as possible, for fear of waking the dogs and alerting the gang. They spent a couple of miserable hours waiting in the jungle darkness, while the mosquitoes bit them mercilessly, and reptiles slithered across the jungle floor. They were far enough back in the jungle to remain unseen from the kampong, but close enough to keep it in clear sight in the moonlight.
Just before midnight, Adil saw a man emerge from the shadows of the trees to his left, with a pistol in each hand, and a knife in the belt of his ragged trousers. Another man armed with an axe followed him, and then the whole gang crept out into the open area between the houses. Adil smiled to himself. He had them surrounded, and the Bengalis, whom he had instructed to wait his signal, would have a clear line of fire. One thing puzzled him, however. The men were in the clearing, but the dogs had not roused themselves. Then he realized they must have been poisoned. So he led his men out of the jungle, and as he they approached the kampong he called out and commanded the robbers to lay down their weapons. For a moment the robbers stood frozen in the moonlight, like actors on a stage waiting directions. Then their leader turned and fired one of his pistols at the closest peon, who tumbled forward with a lead ball in his brain, before pandemonium broke out.
Other gang members fired off their weapons, and another of the peons went down. But their fire was met with a fusillade of musketry from the Bengalis, and pistol fire from Adil and his men, who charged into the crowd of robbers in the clearing. They were soon joined by the Bengalis and their neighbours, who were armed with knives, axes, parangs, clubs and in some cases nothing more than sharply pointed stones. For a few minutes they fought hand to hand and were evenly matched, but gradually more and more of the gang members abandoned the fight and fled back into the jungle, pursued by the jubilant Bengalis and their neighbours, including a Javanese family who had already suffered at the hands of the robbers.
Adil made straight for the leader, who aimed his other pistol directly at him. But the pistol jammed, and Adil bore down on him, hoping he could cut the man down with his parang before the other could draw his knife from his belt. Adil raised his blade to strike, but then had to bring it down upon another gang member who tried to fell him with an axe. He buried his blade in the man’s shoulder, but left himself open to attack by the leader, who had now drawn his knife. Adil released his grip from the parang and grasped the leader’s right hand with both of his own, but the force of his attack knocked Adil off balance, and they fell together to the ground. Before he could recover, the gang leader was kneeling over him, driving the knife down towards his chest. Adil still held the man’s hand tightly in his grasp, but he was winded by the fall, and felt his strength ebbing away as the blade came closer and closer to his chest, and he saw the gleam of victory in the leader’s dark eyes.
Does it end now? Adil thought to himself. Do I die now, in the same manner as my father? He made a silent prayer, but prepared for death even as he struggled for his life––perhaps the same story was written in the Book of Life. But then the leader made a mistake. He tried to raise himself to put more pressure on his knife arm, and as he did so Adil kneed him in the groin and twisted his body to the side. As the gang leader tried to break his fall, he loosened his grasp on the knife, which Adil managed to knock from his hand.
The gang leader leapt up and made to retrieve his knife, but suddenly realized that most of his men were either dead or wounded or had fled back into the jungle, and decided instead to make a run for it himself. As the gang leader turned to escape, Adil snatched up his knife and slashed it across his leg tendons, and the man screamed and stumbled to the ground. He tried to crawl away into the jungle, but the peons quickly pinned him down and tied him up, along with a number of other gang members they had captured.
They questioned the men and demanded that they reveal the location of their jungle hideout on penalty of severe punishment, but they responded with stony silence.
Three months later the gang leader and his men were tried for murder and robbery. They were found guilty and expected to be sentenced to hang, but the judge commuted their sentence to transportation to Bombay. The gang leader, whose name was Ho Chock Meng, told the judge that he would rather be hung than transported. Most judges would have been happy to oblige him, but this one decided that justice was not best served by satisfying the prisoner’s preference. That night Ho Chock Meng hung himself in his jail cell.
Adil was promoted to captain for his action, and was proud of his modest achievement. But he never managed to discover the location of the gang’s hideout, either by questioning the prisoners or by sending out parties to explore the jungle. While the gang roamed free, the townspeople wondered whether it was really formed by unemployed coolies and indenture breakers, or by men who had come to Singapore with the express purpose of committing robberies. They never found out. The robberies continued for a few more months, until the young hothead who had taken over as leader made the mistake of attacking a rich Hokkien merchant in his mansion in the hills of Twa Tang Leng.[2]
One of the robbers was wounded in the attack and captured. Lee Yip Lee cut off his ears and his nose, and then cut out his eyes. He shaved the man’s skin from his body until he screamed out the location of the hideout. Then at dusk Lee Yip Lee led a troop of tiger soldiers into the jungle, where they massacred every last member of the gang, and left their bodies to the tigers and wild pigs.