Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/237

 THE LONE-HAND RAID OF KÛLOP SÛMBING

E WAS an ill fellow to look at—so men who knew him tell me—large of limb and very powerfully built. To his broad and ugly face a peculiarly sinister expression was imparted by a harclip, which left most of the upper gums exposed. It was to this latter embellishment that he owed alike his vicious temper and the name by which he was known. That his disposition should not have been of the sweetest was natural enough, for women did not love to look upon the gash in his lip; and whereas, in the land of his birth, all first-born male children are called Kûlop, his nickname of Sûmbing—which means "the chipped one"—distinguished him unpleasantly from his fellows, and reminded him of his calamity whenever he heard it.

He was a native of Pêrak, and he made his way alone, through the untrodden Sâkai country, into Pahang. That is practically all that is known concerning his origin. The name of the district in which Kûlop Sûmbing had his home represented nothing to the natives of the Jĕlai Valley, into which he strayed on the other side of the Peninsula, and now no man knows from what part of Pêrak this adventurer came. The manner of his coming, however, excited the admiration and impressed itself