LEUNG AH KIM'S PUNISHMENT.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 241, 29 January 1898, Page 4

LEUNG AH KIM'S PUNISHMENT.

In Mr Irviug's Chinose study in Blackwood for November is this gruesome story : Pi Chu Fu, on the ens'; branch of the Canton River, is the headquarters of the Tao-tai, or Intendant of Circuit, which may account for its being' tho nest of a very pestilential swarm of rascals. One of these, a fellow named Leung Ah Kica (t»sl sco fr>ro my diary), happened about December 1893 to have made the town too hot to hold him ; and so he strayed away to tho country villages to the southward for what ho could beg or steal, arriving, as it happened, at a little town, Newmarket by name, on the samo day as I did, makinj my way north from Kow Loon. It was about mid-Jay when I saw him first. I came in by way of tho market place, which was crowdeel, it being market day. I had resigned myseif, hot aud tiivd as I was, to tho incvitiblo stir at the sight of a foreigner—tho laughter, the crowding and the endless questions. But to my surpriso no notice was takon of my entrance. The assembled people were standing with their backs to mo and their faces to the opposite wall—a low buzz of conversation running through them, differing in tone somehow from the busy cbattor of a fair day. Presently through a fissure iu the crowd we saw a man half naked, with his face to the wall, sprawling up against it with his hands and feet, as if he wore trying to climb it. I remember my Pcrak servant laughing, as a Chinaman does at a thing in pain, and saying to me in Malay, " Like a cockchafer in a finger glass." I wondered a little, but, glad to escape observation quickly, I made my way to an inn, whero I passed the afternoon in a secluded hay loft, and did not come down till tho winter day was drawing to a close. When I joined my servant I found him talking in tho kitchen with a couplo of decent middle-aged men, who, it sccmcJ, had heard of ray advent, and wished to sec me, thinking I must be my friend Herr , a German mhsionary doctor of the neighbourhood. I asked what was tho matter, and they replied, "A man with sore eyes!" So when they had finished thoir tea they went out and I with them. We pis-cd a'oag tho narrow alley into the open marktt place to whero I had seen the man scrambling along the wall six hours before. This sido of tho market place was then quite destrtcd and quito daik, and before I noticed that the man was still there 1 had almost stepped upon him. Ho was squatting on his haunches, native fashion silent, or it may be moaning a littlo. I took him by tho forearm (ho was naked but for a j air of bluo cotton drawers, and the evening was clear anc" cold, as I remember) anel raised him up and lod him across the market place into the moonlight. Then I saw what ailed him. From whero his eyebrows may onco have grown to his lips and his chin his face was nothing but one blister. It remains very vividly in my mind ; but it is a memory so ghastly that I prefer not to dwell upon it. A glance was sullicieut co show that his eyesight hail been utterly destroyed. The two wot thy fellows who accompanied me led him between them to their house, while I went back to my inn and got a clean handkerchief and some vaseline. They made him some skilly, and he drank it with eagerness. Then I heard the story. Leung Ah Kim himself corroborating it, and adding a detail here aud there. He had wandered south of Newmarket as I have said, arriving there about 10 in the forenoon. Ho had slunk about the market stalls lor a while, ami finally had stolen from a butcher's tabic a little pile of cash (seventy, I think they said—worth about 1 J-d), which he slipped up his sleeves. Unfortunately for him, he was caught in the act. Unfortunately, too, there hid been recently a recurrence of such thefts. One can hear the jiy " Thief, old thief !' raised ly the witness and caught up by the bystauders as they f II on him tooth and "nail while the elder men were devising a suitable punishment. Presently his undercoat is torn loose, and a sheath knife concealed bencith it lay exposed to view. Then his fate was Bealeel. They sent to the oil merchant and bought Lean oil for five or six cash, with which having boilded it, they deliberately burned the eyes out of his head. The man gave his share of the story with little display of emotion —he was probably too exhausted for that; an 1 after all nothing could be eloue. And observe, the (juestiou of an appeal to the mandarin, cither to punish the theft or to avenge the atrocious act that followed on it, never entered into the mind of any of the actors in this wayside tragedy.