e
fire; cocoa-nut scrapers lashed to sticks; and a few old pocket-knives
and fish-spears. What they lacked in equipment, however, they made up in
noise, one and all combining to raise an indescribable and deafening
babel.

As they halted before Tungku Indut's house, the shrill screams of
defiance from three hundred dainty throats pierced my ear-drums like a
steam siren, and they were all so marvellously noisy, brave, and
defiant, that, in spite of an occasional girlish giggle from one or
another of them, I began to fear there would be bad trouble before the
dawn. So wild was their excitement, and so maddening was the din they
made, that, though Tungku Aminah shrieked louder than any one of them,
she could not make herself heard above the tumult; and it was not until
she had scratched the faces of those nearest to her, and smitten others
with the flat of her sword, that she succeeded in reducing her followers
to even a partial silence. Then she beat upon the barred door of Tungku
Indut's house with her naked weapon, and cried shrilly to her brother:--

'Come forth, Indut! Come forth, if thou art in truth the son of the same
father as myself! Come forth!'

'Come forth!' echoed the army, and the deafening din of defiance broke
out once more, and was again with difficulty repressed by Tungku Aminah.

'Come forth!' she shrilled once more, 'come forth that I may rip thy
belly, and cause thy entrails to gush out upon the ground!'

'Come forth, thou accursed and ill-omened one!' echoed the army, with
the unanimity of Pickwick's thirty boarders.

Indut, however, did not show any signs of coming forth; but when the
women had screamed themselves hoarse and out of breath, his gruff voice
sounded from within the house, like the growl of a wild beast, after all
that shrill feminine yelping.

'Go hence, Iang!' he shouted, 'get thee to thy bed, thou foolish one;
disturb not one who desires to slumber, and waken not the fowls with
thy unmaidenly shouting.'

Now, when Tungku Aminah heard these words she dropped her sword, and
beat upon the door with her little bare hands, weeping and screaming in
a perfect ecstasy of rage, and showering curses and imprecations on her
brother. The army joined in the torrent of abuse, and a very pretty set
of phrases were sent spinning through the clean night air. At length,
Tungku Aminah, finding that she only bruised her hands, again took up
her sword, and, as soon as she could make herself hear