ttack their Chief. Wan Lingga, finding himself
deserted, fled down stream, there to suffer all that he had foreseen and
dreaded during that march through the silent forests. His mind gave way
under the strain put upon it by the misery of his position at Pekan. The
man who had failed was discredited and alone. His former friends stood
aloof, his enemies multiplied exceedingly. So when the madness, which
was in his blood, fell upon him at Pekan, he was thrust into a wooden
cage, where he languished for years, tended as befits the madman whom
the Malay ranks with the beasts.

When he regained his reason, the politics of the country had undergone a
change, and his old ambitious dreams had faded away for ever. His old
enemy To' Raja, whom he had sought to displace, was now ruling the
Jelai, and enjoying every mark of the King's favour. Domestic troubles
in the royal household had led the King to regard the friendship of this
Chief as a matter of some importance, and Wan Lingga's chances of
preferment were dead and buried.

He returned to his house at Atok, where he lived, discredited and
unhonoured, the object of constant slights. He spent his days in futile
intrigues and plots, which were too impotent to be regarded seriously,
or as anything but subjects for mirth, and, from time to time, his
madness fell upon him, and drove him forth to wallow with the kine, and
to herd with the beasts in the forest.

At last, in 1891, he resolved to put away the things of this world, and
set out on the pilgrimage to Mecca. All was ready for his departure on
the morrow, and his brethren crowded the little house at Atok to wish
him god-speed. But in the night the madness fell upon him once more, and
rising up he ran _amok_ through his dwelling, slaying his wife and
child, and wounding one of his brothers. Then he fled into the forest,
and after many days was found hanging dead in the fork of a fruit-tree.
He had climbed into the branches to sleep, and in his slumbers had
slipped down into the fork where he had become tightly wedged. With his
impotent arms hanging on one side of the tree, and his legs dangling
limply on the other, he had died of exhaustion, alone and untended,
without even a rag to cover his nakedness.

It was a miserable, and withal a tragic death, but not ill fitted to one
who had staked everything to gain a prize he had not the strength to
seize; one whom Fate had doomed to perpetual and inglorious failure.

UN