wild beast in a small travelling menagerie. The space before the floor and the ground, and the interval which separated the cells from the wooden walls set so close about them, was one seething, writhing mass of putrefaction. Here in the tropics, under a brazen sun, all unclean things turn to putrid. filthy life within the hour; and in a Malayan pěn-jâra, wither no breath of wind could penetrate, the atmosphere was heavy with the fumes bred of the rottenness of years, and the reeking pungency of offal that was new.
This, then, was the place of confinement to which Talib was condemned; nor did his agonies end here. for the gnawing pangs of hunger were added to his other sufferings. He was handed over to the gentle care of the pĕr-tanda, or executioner—an official who, in the independent Malay States, united the kindly office of life-taker and official torturer with the hardly more humnane post of gaoler. This man, like most of his fellows, had been chosen in the beginning on account of his great physical strength and an indifference to the sight of pain which was remarkable even among an insensible people; and the calling which he had pursued for years had endowed the natural brutality of his character with an abnormal ferocity. He was, moreover, an official of the ancient East—a class of worthies who require more supervision to restrain them from pilfering than do even the Chinese coolies in a gold mine, where the precious metal winks at you in the flickering candlelight. Needless to say, the higher state officials were not so
