e of a gaming lamp, and
it, being saturated with the white man's perfume, blazed up bravely even
to my elbow, doing me no hurt, as I waved my arm above my head. Verily,
the white men are very clever, who so cunningly devise the medicine of
these perfumes.

'Now, when all the people in the gambling house saw that my arm and hand
burned with fire, but were not consumed, a great fear fell upon them,
and they fled shrieking, and no man stayed to gather up his silver. This
I presently put into sacks, and my men removed it to my house, and my
fame waxed very great in Klang. Men said that henceforth Si-Hamid should
be named the Fiery Rhinoceros,[7] and not the Unbound Tiger, as they had
hitherto called me. It was long ere the trick became known, and even
then no man, among those who were within the gaming house that night,
dared ask me for the money which I had borrowed from him and his
fellows. Ya Allah, Tuan, but those days were exceeding good days! I
cannot think upon them, for it makes me sad. It is true what is said in
the _pantun_ of the men of Kedah:

'Pulau Pinang has a new town,
And Captain Light is its King;
Do not recall the days that are gone,
Or you will bow down your head,
And the tears will gush forth!

'Ya Allah! Ya Tuhan-ku! Verily, I cannot think upon it!'

[Footnote 7: Fiery Rhinoceros = Badak api, a fabulous monster of
Malay tradition.]

He tossed about uneasily on his mat for some time, and I let him be, for
the memory of the old, free days to a Malay _raja_, whose claws have
been cut by the Europeans, is like new wine when it comes back suddenly
upon him, and it is best, I think, to let a man fight out such troubles
alone and in silence. 'Can words make foul things fair?'--and, however
much I might sympathise with my friend, there was no blinking the fact,
that he and I were then engaged in trying to do for another set of Malay
_rajas_, all that Raja Haji Hamid so bitterly regretted that the white
men had done for him, and for Selangor.

After a space he became calmer, for though the thought of his troubles
is often present to the mind of a Malay _raja_, the paroxysms, which the
memory occasions, are not usually of long duration. Presently he began
chuckling to himself, and then spoke again:

'I remember once, when I was for the moment rich with the spoils of war,
I gambled all the evening in that same house at Klang, and lost four
thousand dollars. It mattered not at