rs, stand shoulder to shoulder in a great circle, perhaps ten-score
yards across, their spears pointing inward so as to form a steel fringe
to the human barricade. A cage containing a tiger, which has been
trapped in the jungle for the occasion, is hauled forward to the
circle's edge. At a signal from the Sultan the door of the cage is
opened and the great striped cat, its yellow eyes glaring malevolently,
its stiffened tail nervously sweeping the ground, slips forth on padded
feet to crouch defiantly in the center of the extemporized arena.
Occasionally, but very occasionally, the beast becomes intimidated at
sight of the waiting spearmen and the breathless throng beyond them,
but usually it is only a matter of seconds before things begin to
happen. The long tail abruptly becomes rigid, the muscles bunch
themselves like coiled springs beneath the tawny skin, the sullen
snarling changes to a deep-throated roar, and the great beast launches
itself against the levelled spears. Sometimes it tears its way through
the ring of flesh and steel, leaving behind it a trail of dead or
wounded spearmen, and creating consternation among the spectators, who
scatter, panic-stricken, in every direction. But more often the
spearmen drive it back, snarling and bleeding, whereupon, bewildered by
the multitude of its enemies and maddened by the pain of its wounds, it
hurls itself against another segment of the steel-fringed cordon. After
a time, baffled in its attempts to escape, the tiger retreats to the
center of the circle, where it crouches, snarling. Then, at another
signal from the Sultan, the spearmen begin to close in. Smaller and
smaller grows the circle, closer and closer come the remorseless
spear-points ... then a hoarse roar of fury, a spring too rapid for the
eye to follow, a wild riot of brown bodies glistening with sweat ...
spear-hafts rising and falling above a sea of turbaned heads as the
blades are driven home ... again ... again ... again ... yet again ...
into the great black-and-yellow carcass, which now lies inanimate upon
the sand in a rapidly widening pool of crimson.

* * * * *

Like the palaces of most Asiatic rulers, the kraton of the Sultan of
Djokjakarta is really a royal city in the heart of his capital. It
consists of a vast congeries of palaces, barracks, stables, pagodas,
temples, offices, courtyards, corridors, alleys and bazaars, containing
upward of fifteen thousand inha