ard,
and his queer old junk burnt before his eyes. Many a Dutch and English
merchantman sailed from Batavia and Bombay in the days of the old East
India Company and has never more been heard of until some mutilated
survivor returned with a harrowing tale of Malay piracy and of the
lightning-like work of the dreaded kris.

I do not know whether my kris has ever taken life or not. Had it done
so, I do not think the Sultan would have given it to me, for a kris
becomes almost priceless after its baptism of blood. It is handed
down from generation to generation, and its sanguine history becomes
a part of the education of the young. Next to his Koran the kris
is the most sacred thing the Malay possesses. He regards it with an
almost superstitious reverence. My kris is dear to me, not from any
superstitious reasons, but because it was given me by his Highness,
the Sultan of Johore, the only independent sovereign on the peninsula,
and because the gold of its sheath came from the jungle-covered slopes
of Mount Ophir.

The maker of the kris is a person of importance among the Malays,
and ofttimes he is made by his grateful Rajah a Dato, or Lord, for
his skill. Like the blades of the sturdy armorers of the Crusades,
his blades are considered, as he fashions them from well-hammered and
well-tempered Celebes iron, works of art and models for futurity. He
is exceedingly punctilious in regard to their shape, size, and general
formation, and the process of giving them their beautiful water lines
is quite a ceremony. First the razor-like edges are covered with a
thin coating of wax to protect them from the action of the acids;
then a mixture of boiled rice, sulphur, and salt is put on the blade
and left for seven days until a film of rust rises to the surface. The
blade is then immersed in the water of a young cocoanut or the juice
of a pineapple and left seven days longer. It is next brushed with
the juice of a lemon until all the rust is cleared away, and then
rubbed with arsenic dissolved in lime-juice and washed with cold
spring water. Finally it is anointed with cocoanut oil, and as a
concluding test of its fineness and temper, it is said that in the
old days its owner would rush out into the kampong, or village,
and stab the first person he met.

The sheath of the kris is generally made of kamooning wood, but often
of ivory, gold, or silver. The handle, while more frequently of wood
or buffalo horn, is sometimes of gold studde