to depend upon the nature of their
answer. This was done, lest a rising of the Chieftains' relations
should give needless trouble to the King's people; for the clan was not
a small one, and any unprovoked attack upon the villages, in which the
Chieftains lived, would be calculated to give offence.

Imam Bakar and his friends were punted up the long reaches of the Pahang
river, past the middle country, where the banks are lined with villages
nestling in the palm and fruit trees; past Gunong Senuyum--the Smiling
Mountain--that great limestone rock, which raises its crest high above
the forest that clothes the plain in which it stands in solitary beauty;
past Lubok Plang, where in a nameless grave lies the Princess of ancient
story, the legend of whose loveliness alone survives; past Glanggi's
Fort, those gigantic caves which seem to lend some probability to the
tradition that, before they changed to stone, they were once the palace
of a King; and on and on, until, at last, the yellow sandbanks of Pasir
Tambang came in sight. And close at their heels, though they knew it
not, followed To' Gajah and those of the King's Youths who had been
deputed to cover their Master's shame.

At Kuala Tembeling, where the waters of the river of that name make
common cause with those of the Jelai, and where the united streams first
take the name of Pahang, there lies a broad stretch of sand glistening
in the fierce sunlight. It has been heaped up, during countless
generations, by little tributes from the streams which meet at its feet,
and it is never still. Every flood increases or diminishes its size, and
weaves its restless sands into some new fantastic curve or billow. The
sun which beats upon it bakes the sand almost to boiling point, and the
heat-haze dances above it, like some restless phantom above a grave. And
who shall say that ghosts of the dead and gone do not haunt this
sandbank far away in the heart of the Peninsula? If native report speaks
true, the spot is haunted, for the sand, they say, is 'hard ground' such
as the devils love to dwell upon. Full well may it be so, for Pasir
Tambang has been the scene of many a cruel tragedy, and could its sands
but speak, what tales would they have to tell us of woe and murder, of
valour and treachery, of shrieking souls torn before their time from
their sheaths of flesh and blood, and of all the savage deeds of this

race of venomous worms
That sting each othe