capable of thwarting her project, was ill with fever, and had retired
early to her bed and her opium pipe. Tungku Aminah was thus left at
liberty to do whatsoever she wished; and accordingly, at about eleven
o'clock that night, she sallied forth, from within the stone wall which
surrounded her mother's palace, at the head of her army.

It was at this moment that word was brought to me that strange things
were toward, and I, and the Malays who were with me, ran out to our
compound fence, and witnessed all that ensued with our eyes glued to the
chinks in the plaited bamboos.

Presently the army came pouring down the street in the pale moonlight,
and halted in front of my compound, which chanced to face the house at
that time occupied by Tungku Indut, the door of which abutted on the
main thoroughfare. Tungku Aminah led the van, strutting along with an
arrogant and truculent swagger most laughable to see. She was dressed
for the occasion after the fashion of the Malay warrior. Her body was
encased in a short-sleeved, tight-fitting fighting jacket, which only
served to emphasise the femininity of her bust. She wore striped silk
breeches reaching to the middle of her shins; a silk _sarong_ was
folded short about her waist; and her thick hair was tucked away
beneath a head handkerchief twisted into a peak in the manner called
_tanjak_. At her belt she carried a _kris_, and also, a smaller dagger,
called a 'pepper-crusher' in the vernacular, and in her hand she held a
drawn sword, which she brandished as she walked. At her back came some
three hundred women, moving down the street with that queer
half-tripping, half-running gait, which Malay women always affect when
they go abroad in a crowd at the heel of their Princess. The way in
which they run into and press against one another, on such occasions,
together with the little quick short steps they take, always reminds me
of young chickens trying to seek shelter under their mother's wing. The
army was wonderfully and fearfully armed. Some of the more fortunate had
spears and daggers; one or two carried old swords; but the majority were
armed with weapons borrowed from the cook-house. The axes and choppers,
used for breaking up firewood, were the best of these arms, but the
number of these was limited, most of Tungku Aminah's gallant three
hundred being provided with no better weapons than the _kandar_ sticks,
on which water pails are carried; spits made of wood hardened in th