cidentally pulled some feathers from the bird's tail. 'What did you do
that for? Devil!' cried the _Raja_.

'It was not done on purpose Ungku!' said the boy.

'Thou art marvellous clever at repartee!' quoth the Prince, and, so
saying, he lifted a billet of wood, which chanced to be lying near at
hand, and smote the boy on the head so that he died.

'That will teach my people to have a care how they use my
fighting-cocks!' said the _Raja_; and that was his servant's epitaph.

'It is a mere boyish prank,' said the father of the young _Raja_, when
the matter was reported to him, 'and moreover it is well that he should
slay one or two with his own hand, else how should men learn to fear
him?' And there the matter ended; but it should be borne in mind that
the fighting cock of a Malay Prince is not to be lightly trifled with.

I have said that all birds fight more or less, but birds are not alone
in this. The little wide-mouthed, goggled-eyed fishes, which Malay
ladies keep in bottles and old kerosine tins, fight like demons. Goats
sit up and strike with their cloven hoofs, and butt and stab with their
horns. The silly sheep canter gaily to the battle, deliver thundering
blows on one another's foreheads, and then retire and charge once more.
The impact of their horny foreheads is sufficient to reduce a man's hand
to a shapeless pulp, should it find its way between the combatants'
skulls. Tigers box like pugilists, and bite like French school-boys; and
buffaloes fight clumsily, violently, and vindictively, after the manner
of their kind.

The natives of India have an ingenious theory, whereby they account for
the existence of that ungainly fowl, the water-buffalo,--a fact in
natural history, which certainly seems to call for some explanation.
The High Gods, they say, when creating all things, made also the cow,
the highest of the beasts that perish. This the devil beheld, and, in
futile emulation, striving to outdo the work of the High Ones, he
imitated their creation, and produced the water-buffalo! Every one who
knows this brute, must admit that the Indian theory bears on its face
the imprint of truth; for a more detestable beast of the field does not
exist, and it would be difficult, for any one less skilled in evil than
His Satanic Majesty, to have conceived the idea of so diabolical an
animal. In the Malay Peninsula, its principal functions would appear to
be stamping bridle-paths into quagmires; dragging unwieldy l