CHAPTER IX

Despite my love for Sarawak, there were three great drawbacks to my comfort, namely, malaria, mosquitoes, and rats.

One knows that the tropics, especially where the moisture is excessive, are trying to European constitutions. When one remembers the abrupt transitions from wet to dry, the fierce rays of the sun that beat down on the vegetation, the exhalation of myriads and myriads of leaves drawn up by the heat of the day and cast forth again in poisonous perfumes or evil odours into the atmosphere, all these things must have a pernicious effect on the health of Europeans. But we now also know that these things obvious to our senses are not the sole or the whole cause of some of the worst tropical ailments, but that these are due to the invisible life teeming in earth, air, and water. For instance, it is now established that the disease capable of so many variations, called malaria, is due to the sting of my arch-enemy, the striped black-and-white mosquito. This discovery had not been made when I first visited the tropics, but now I do not wonder at my feelings of repulsion whenever I saw these horrible pests feeding on me.

A short time after my arrival in the country, I was seized with a somewhat unusual form of malaria. Now the ordinary malaria is known by almost all Europeans who live in the tropics. The Rajah, for instance, suffers from this ordinary but very trying and sometimes dangerous kind of fever, but the way the pest attacked me was of a kind not often experienced by Europeans. My kind was more prevalent amongst the natives. Its symptoms are disconcerting to your friends, for you feel very bad tempered. The palms of your hands get hot and dry, and a feeling of impending disaster takes hold of you. These preliminaries are painless. Then, all of a sudden, more often at sunset, you feel sick: nothing happens, but a band of iron, as it were, presses round your body, becoming tighter and tighter until you imagine that fingers of steel are twisting you up inside. You retire to bed, propped by pillows, for you can neither hold yourself up nor move in any way, and there you remain gasping for breath until the attack is over. It may last half an hour, or continue for half a day, when it returns the next afternoon at the same hour—​the attacks resembling those of angina pectoris. Your complexion turns a bright yellow and your face is covered with an ugly rash. These attacks have lasted off and on for two or three months, when life becomes unbearable. You can neither eat nor drink, and get reduced to a shadow. Our English doctor in Sarawak, who was clever and intelligent, never understood the disease. He prescribed leeches, cupping-glasses, poultices, and fed me up with champagne, brandy, and even port wine, with the result that all these would-be remedies made me very much worse. I became frightfully thin, so that after nearly four years’ residence in Sarawak the Rajah decided to take me home, in order to recover my health.

One morning, during the first years of my residence in Sarawak, my Malay maid, Ima, rushed into my room and told me that a friend of hers, living in a house near her own, was lying at the point of death owing to continuous attacks of this disease. I could well sympathize with the woman’s sufferings, and although powerless to cure myself in such emergencies, decided to try what I could do to help Ima’s friend. I took with me a box of pills, a bottle of meat juice, some milk and arrowroot, and, accompanied by Ima, sallied forth to the sick woman’s house. I climbed up the ladder that hencoop fashion led into her room, and pushing open the dried palm-leaf door saw a woman rolling about on the floor in paroxysms of agony. Here were the symptoms I knew so well—​the bright yellow complexion and rash all over the face. The woman was so weak she could hardly move. Ima went up to her, and lifting her up in her arms said: “Rajah Ranee, who knows of medicines that will make you well, has come to see you.” The woman looked at me, and shook her head. I told her I had brought some marvellous remedies, known only to Europeans, and made her take two pills and a spoonful of Liebig. When her husband came in, I told him to give her a little milk every hour, and forbade her to touch or eat anything besides what I had prescribed for her. She was carried inside her mosquito curtains, bent double as she was, and gasping for breath. The next morning, when I visited her, I found her better, for the attack had not lasted so long as that of the previous day. I was delighted with the result of my doctoring, and for about a fortnight went to see this woman nearly every day. She was very poor, the wife of a man who earned his living by selling fish which he netted in the river and also by doing odd jobs in neighbouring pine-apple gardens. The woman finally recovered and remained quite well whilst I stayed in Kuching.

As I was sitting writing inside my mosquito house in my morning-room, one day, I heard a fuss going on outside. Our sentry was evidently trying to keep back a visitor who wished to see me. I told Ima to let the visitor in, whoever he might be, when an old and wizened personage, without a jacket, and with garments dripping with mud and water, came in, carrying a net bag in which were a number of crawling things. He ran up to me, deposited the bag at my feet, and catching hold of both my knees, said: “Rajah Ranee pitied my wife, made her well with her medicines and incantations. These shrimps are for Rajah Ranee. I caught them in the river. I nothing else to give. Cook make them into curry.” I thought this touching on the part of the affectionate husband, and thanked him many times. The sight of the shrimps crawling about in the net, however, greatly disturbed me, for I cannot bear to see animals uncomfortable. I therefore got rid of my grateful friend as soon as I could, and, directly he had left, told Ima (I could not do it myself, for there was a blazing sun outside) to carry the shrimps back to the river whence they had come. I watched her go down the garden path, carrying the net bag, but I question whether she did as I told her. I rather think that she and her husband, Dul, enjoyed shrimp curry that evening. However, I asked no questions—“What the eye does not see the heart does not grieve over!”

This story of the sick woman has a sad ending, for during one of my absences from Sarawak she was again seized with the illness, and died. I was afterwards told that she often used to say: “If Rajah Ranee were here, with her medicines, her visits, and incantations, I should get over it, but I hope no more now, and I know I must die.” Until the day of her death, she never wearied extolling my medical skill, and this cure of mine led to some embarrassing situations, for whenever there were serious cases of illness, the people sent for me, begging that I would cure them as I did the fisherman’s wife. On one occasion, a poor woman in the Malay town gave birth to twins, both children being born with hare-lips. The morning of their arrival, Ima came to me with an urgent message from the father of the twins, requesting me to go directly to their house and put the babies’ mouths straight. I was sorry to have to refuse, but—​unlike a good many medical men and women—​I realized my limitations in certain cases!

Now for mosquitoes. Nothing one can say or write can give any idea of the tortures one undergoes by the actual biting of mosquitoes. A great many people imagine that these pests only begin to torment one at sunset. This is a mistaken idea. A certain kind of black mosquito, striped with white, is a most pernicious pest. By day and night it harassed me so much that if I wanted to do anything at all, I had to retire behind the shelter of a mosquito house. My Malay friends did not seem to care whether mosquitoes stung them or not; indeed, they seemed to enjoy the heavy slaps they administered on their faces, hands, or legs, in their attempts to kill the foe. Their methods, however, required a certain amount of skill. The results of their slaps were not pleasant to witness, and when imitating their methods of slaughter, I always had, close by, a basin containing a weak solution of carbolic acid, and a towel. After a bite, the spot was washed, the remains of the mosquito disposed of, and I was ready for another onslaught. Malay women were not so particular, for after killing a mosquito, they would rub off all traces with their coloured handkerchiefs. My paraphernalia of basin, sponge, and towel elicited from them various grunts. They made funny noises in their throats and appealed to Allah at my extraordinary patience in taking these precautions.

I now come to rats, which were a far more serious business. A Malay woman once told me she had watched a detachment of rats, four or five in number, trying to get at some fowls’ eggs she had laid by for cake-making. She was inside her house (Malay houses are often rather dark), and in the dim light she saw these swift-gliding creatures hovering near the place where the eggs were stored. She waited to see what would happen, and saw a large rat—​large as are Norwegian rats—​somehow or other get hold of an egg, roll over on its back, holding the egg firmly on its stomach with its four paws, when the other rats took hold of its tail, and by a series of backward jerks dragged their companion to a hole in the leafy walling of the store, where it disappeared from sight. I believe this particular story is told with variations all over the world.

A great many stories might be related of rats, but the most extraordinary thing I ever saw regarding these animals was a migration which took place one evening at dusk through my bedroom. I was just getting better from a severe attack of malaria, and was lying on the bed inside my mosquito house half awake and half asleep, with my Malay Ayah sitting against the wall in a corner of my room. Suddenly, I saw two or three long objects moving across the middle of the room, their black bodies standing out against the pale yellow matting. My room opened on to verandahs from all sides (as every one who is acquainted with the architecture of tropical houses will understand), and it was easy for any animal to climb over the outer verandah and pass through the screened doors leading to the opposite verandah. I watched these crawling creatures, and, being only half awake, wondered what they were. At first I thought it was the result of malaria, making me see things which did not exist, but when the rats were joined by others coming in at one door and going out of the other, in numbers of tens, of twenties, of sixties, then it must have been hundreds, for the floor was one mass of moving objects, I called to the Ayah, who sat motionless the other side of the room. “Don’t move,” she said; “they are the rats.” I was too frightened not to move, and I screamed out to the Rajah, who I knew was in the room next to mine. As he came in, the rats ran up one side of him, and I remember the dull thud they made as they jumped off his shoulder to the floor. Some fortmen, hearing my screams, also appeared. The Rajah told me to make as little noise as possible, so I had to remain still whilst thousands and thousands of rats passed through my room. This abnormal invasion lasted for about ten or fifteen minutes, when the rats began to diminish in number, until there were only a few stragglers left to follow the main body.

It appears that such migrations are well known all over Sarawak, and that people fear them because they are accompanied by a certain amount of danger. It is said by the natives that if any one should kill one of these rats, his companions would attack the person in such large numbers that his body would be almost torn to pieces. Looking deeper into the matter, one wonders why these creatures should so migrate, and where they go; but this no one seems to know. Their area of operations is a restricted one, for it appears that on this occasion my bedroom was the only human habitation through which they went.

By the time the last rat passed through my room, and I began to breathe freely again, darkness had come. My room was lit by the dim light of a wick floating in a tumbler of cocoa-nut oil, enclosed in a lantern of glass. The Ayah took up her position again and squatted by the wall without saying a word, nearly petrified with terror at what had happened. I pictured this mass of swiftly-moving, crafty-looking creatures, under the influence of some mysterious force unknown to ourselves, and remembered Cuvier, that great Frenchman, who wrote that when one thinks of the family life of even the most loathsome of creatures, one is inclined to forget any repulsion one may feel towards them.

Rats, however, were a great trouble to me. I have recognized individual rats visiting me on different occasions. I don’t know whether they wanted to make friends, one will never know, but they frightened me dreadfully. I often pitied the way the poor creatures were trapped, poisoned, and killed, when after all they were only trying to keep their place in the world, just as we do.

On another occasion, I was fast asleep when I woke up feeling a sort of nip. I opened my eyes and saw a large rat sitting on my arm. I shook it off, and it fell to the ground. Being in my mosquito house, I was curious to discover how the rat had got in, and lighting a candle, found that it had gnawed a hole through the muslin to get at some food placed on a table for me to eat during the night.

As luck would have it, these rat visitations invariably took place when I was ill, so perhaps it magnified the disgust I felt towards these creatures. But thinking on the matter many times since, I have largely got over my loathing for rats, and I do not think nowadays, I should mind their migrating through my room, because I have become more familiar with animals and their ways.