Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/363

 A MALAYAN ACTOR-MANAGER

T KÔTA BHARU, the capital of Kĕlantan, some thirty years ago, the Powers of Wickedness in the High Places were at considerable pains to preserve a kind of cock-eyed, limping, knock-kneed, shambling morality which kept more or less even step with their conception of the eternal fitness of things. To this end, Yam Tûan Mûlut Mêrah, the "Red Mouthed King," so called on account of his insatiable thirst for blood, did his best to discourage theft; and in pursuance of this landable desire killed during his reign sufficient men and women to have repeopled a new country half the size of his own kingdom. Old Nek 'Soh, the Dâto' Sri Padûka, who stood by and witnessed most of the killing, used openly to lament in my time that all the thieves and robbers were not made over to him instead of being wasted in the shambles. It was his opinion that, with so considerable a following, he might have set up a new dynasty in the Peninsula and still have had enough men and women at his disposal to make it possible for him to sell a batch of them now and then if ready money were needed. Nek 'Soh was a wise old man, and he was probably sure of his facts; but though his influence with his master, the Red Mouthed King, was great in most