HIS OWN SAUCE ! Sydney Bulletin.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Issue 16, 10 September 1898, Page 1

HIS OWN SAUCE ! Sydney Bulletin.

TMorton, the missionary, hated Chinamon lvke — a Cornstalk. The feeling was an actual part of the man — one of those ■de=spolic_mstmotb without which he ■would have been simply somebody else. " The -worst Christian, I !" he dolefully acknowledged. " God made the Chinaman, and Christ died for him '" (this was conventional) "lnii" (and this was the man himself) " I almost wish He hadn't I" So, when Knm Sang Lo, the chief trader of Tibak, in Borneo, laid a fat, ■familiar- paw upon the gospeller's shrinking shoulder, the white man responded with a most ungodly Jack. A Dyak -would for this have split his skull, a Malay would have stabbed him, and another man would have knocked him •down. Kuin Sang Lo did none of these tilings. He didn't jabber curses either, which was a bad sign ; and he smiled benignly, which was a worse one. "Why you that?" he said quietly. "Me Klistian ! Me b'long Singapore. Me Baba — Blitish subjick, all same you 1" ; . ; Then Morton knew that he had done a foolish thmg. The Baba, the Singapore'born Chinaman — with the patience of one •race, the intelligence of two, and the "rascality of a dozen-^-is about the most 'solid and effective enemy any man can make. And when Kum Sang Lo, still . plaintively asserting his British nationality, had shuffled away amongst the sugar canes, Morton, told himself that the climate of Tibak would hardly be a i healthy one for him in future. "I'll get ■out of it to-morrow I" said he. -But the latitude of Tibak is exactly 0, Jand'sxich intimate association with the equator is not conducive to promptitude. f The morrow came, and he didn't go, then another morrow, and he couldn't go, for it found hhn lashed — pending the com-

plefion of a commercial treaty — to a post of the head -house. The business didn't take long. Kum Sang Lo, " Christian mid British subject," of the one part, did engage and contract, upon the receipt of the body of one Moritum, a white man, to make over and convey unto Joga-Rut, Orang-Kaya, pagan, and subject only to himself, of the other part, ten Rusa jars in good order and condition, f The high contracting parties lighted each a cigar-r-pufted — exchanged — -puffed again — laid the cigars end to end on the ground between them — and Mor-" ton was the Chinaman's chattel I Not without protest. "Thy father, Matu, would not have done this thing," Morton said, as with rattan lashings he was being trussed neck-and-heel for transport. "Wot for a hundred Rusas would lie have sold his friend to- this yellow reptile 1" Matu had indeed been Morton's friend, and Joga was hardly his enemy. But Joga was greedy, and the price was big — about .6120 of British money. So he made answer — sucking the durian-pulp the while : "My father, Matu, having made a bargain, kept it. This bargain is made, and lam my father's son. There is no more to be said." Unbounded, but caged and alone, Morton wondered what was to come next. But not till evening did he know. The trader's pig-eyed satellites brought him food, and them he questioned. Malay he used ; then Dyak ; lastly English ; but the fellows were newly-imported Sinkehs — native-born Chinamen — and not a word did they understand ; so Morton, hungry, turned to the food they had brought. Stewed fowl and yams, maize-bread, and pratchan. Pratchan — prawn-paste —is good, but it is fiery salt, and Morton instinctively took the cover oft the big water-jar in the corner. It was full, fend, reassured, he set to work upon the solids.

13ut presently the pratchan told, and Morton dipped a brass cup and drank — •one mouthful only ! The water was sea- - water ! This -was to T)e it, then ! A heavy price for a lack ! — the thirst-death of China ; known also well in Borneo, and not .entirely unpractised by the paternal Hollander upon the xecalcitrant Javani. The -door ? — the floor ? — the walls ? No use I 'The bamboos — smooth as glass and flinty (hard — let in between them light and air, but would have held an elephant. What light there was by this time was moonlight, stod the prisoner, peeping through n < clink, saw, black and moveless on the glinting sea, a big Malay prahu. "When Morton, half-a-dozen years Tbefore, had saved, in Singapore, the life •of Kadeen Aslang, -he /had made, unwittingly, a first-class investment in gratitude. Beset by bhang-drunken Klings upon the Tanjong Passer road, the little Malay skipper — but for the sturdy man of « God, his fist, and foot — would have been ~,barnbooed toa jelly.,,and quietly dropped thereafter into the .mangrove swamp. And xnow the prahu Morton saw was .•Baaeen's, acrois from Singapore for cocoanuts xnd sago, and loaded up this night for sea. Eadeen, ashore at midday, had .'seen -the white man carried into Kum ; Sang Lo's house. The beard was long -and the hair grizzled, but the Malay eye is sharp ; Radeen knew his man. The trader, questioned, grinned and said nothing ; whereupon Eadeen, ruminating, went off to his vessel and -made his crew a Zlittle speech. At moonset they came ashore in a body — Madura men and Sundanese — and, -when the craft -got her anchor up at -dawn, she had Morton and Kum Sang Lo passengers — the Ohinanian against his will. All day the prahu slipped along -eight knots before a " soldier's wind " ;and at nigh^, while Morton slept, she left behind upon the moonlit water a little -raft of empty casks. There was & naked atnan upon it, Kum Sang Lo, a timbok of salt fish, a jar of pratchan, and, well, he liad the whole ocean to drink from. Jtffiit day " cooked " the castaway, but

not "in his own sauce," after all. A shaven crown, an equatorial sun, a mad plunge over, and a well-dined shark.

t Antique jars of peculiar make figuie largely as representatives of Bornean wealth. The Naga jar is worth aboutj £8, the llusa £12, and the Gusi, which is extremely rare, is valued for about £500 worth of property.