Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/63

 his neighbours go unscathed; but the manifestations of electric force do not appeal to them as less or more unnatural than other inexplicable phenomena which fill human life with awe.

The white man and the white man's justice are placed by this in a position at once anomalous and embarrassing. Unshaken native testimony, we hold, provides evidence which justifies us in sentencing a fellow creature to death or to a long term of imprisonment; yet we hesitate to accept it or to regard it as equally conclusive when it points, no less unerringly, to the proved existence of, say, the Malayan loup garou. The Malays of Sâiyong, in the Pêrak Valley, for instance, know how Haji Abdullah, the native of the little state of Korinchi, in Sumatra was caught stark naked in a tiger-trap, and thereafter purchased his liberty at the price of the buffaloes he had slain while he marauded in the likeness of a beast. The Malays of other parts of the Peninsula know of numerous instances of Korinchi men who have vomited feathers, after feasting upon fowls, when for the nonce they had assumed the likeness of tigers; and of other men of the same race who have left their garments and their trading-packs in thickets, whence presently a tiger has emerged. The Malay, however, does not know that his strange belief finds its exact counterpart in almost every quarter of the globe where man has found himself in close association with beasts of prey, but such knowledge would neither strengthen nor weaken his faith in that which he regards as a