Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/343

 father dies, or his mistress proves unfaithful. Any one of these things causes him "sickness of liver." In the year 1888 I spent two nights awake by the side of Raja Haji Hamid, who was on the verge of such a nervous outbreak; and it was only by bringing to bear every atom of such moral influence as I lad over him, that I was able to restrain him from run- ning amok in the streets of Pekan, the capital of Pahang, because his father had died a natural death on the other side of the Peninsula, and because the then Sultan of Selangor had behaved with character- istic parsimony in the matter of his funeral. He had no quarrel with the people of Pahang, but his liver was sick, and the weariness of life which this condi- tion of mind engendered impelled him to kill all and sundry, until he himself should, in his turn, be killed.

I might multiply instances all pointing to the same conclusion—namely, that most ámok are caused by a mental condition which may be the result of serious. or of comparatively trivial troubles that makes a Malay, for the time being, unwilling to live. In similar circumstances, a white man sometimes commits suicide, which is much more convenient for his neighbours; but I know of no authenticated case of a male Malay resorting to self-murder, and the horror with which such an act is regarded by the people of this race supplies the real reason why ámok-running is practised in its stead. Ofter enough something quite trivial furnishes the original provocation, and in the heat of the moment a blow is struck by a man against one who is dear to him.