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The telegraph bell rang for slow as the launch was about to enter the river from the sea. The roar of the engine changed to a low hum, and the voice of a sailor throwing a lead-line from the bow of the boat could be heard chanting to the juragon on the bridge.

“Four feet above the mark.”

“Four feet.”

“Four feet below the mark.”

“Three feet!”

The water gathered together and formed into rows of racing waves which pushed the boat, rolling and creaking, over the bar. The keel hit the sand several times with a hard bump. The breakers sprayed over the deck, splashing the passengers and adding to the miseries of those suffering from seasickness.

“Three feet and a half.”

“Four feet above the mark.”

“Five feet.”

A triumphant “Six feet!” and the boat was over the bar. The telegraph bell clanged happily for full speed ahead in the calmer water. The seasickness disappeared as if by magic, and the launch glided into the brown river water leaving the pale green sea behind, far away.

A young man called Mahsen was one of the passengers and, being a Melanau, of a seafaring race, he was not affected by the sea throughout the voyage. He was going home after ten years at school; but home was still a further two hours upriver so he sat down on some boxes and looked at the scenery about him. Nothing had changed, he noted. Like the mouths of most of the rivers on that stretch of Sarawak coast, there was a belt of casuarina trees which extended on both shores, their needle-like leaves sighing in the salt winds. The river mouth was humming with activity, flashing a bright grin at the blue sky as the waves gambolled over the sandbar. Mahsen knew that the river mouth was not always peaceful like this; in rough weather it really showed its teeth, bellowing and snapping angrily at the lowering sky while rain pelted down onto the windswept sea and land.

The launch chased the lapping wavelets inland until the clear sand gave place to mud and mangrove trees lined both banks of the river. Fiddler crabs peeped shyly out of their mudholes at the passing launch whilst a solitary band of kera monkeys foraged among the twisted mangrove roots for shellfish. Occasionally on the branch of a tree a sea eagle stared at the water in deep concentration.

The salty tang of the air soon gave way to the sourish smell of rotting fronds as the graceful nipah palms began to appear in unending rows on the banks, their leaves rustling and clapping in the river breeze. Kingfishers in gay plumage darted in and out of the shadows. For several miles up the winding river these palms nodded and swayed, sometimes revealing a little hut or two, hidden behind their waving branches; at last their ranks began to thin out and the lush jungle behind managed to extend to the river’s edge. There, in the bend of the river, was an untidy huddle of houses. Mahsen had come home to his village.

The launch tied up at a floating jetty in front of the small but inevitable Chinese bazaar. Mahsen elbowed his way out of the crowd of people who were jostling against the passengers and shouting to the crew to find out the whereabouts of their goods. Mahsen’s mother was waiting for him with her two brothers. He took her hands in his and kissed them in greeting. He shook hands vigorously with his two uncles, forgetting that the custom of his people only requires a perfunctory handshake and the immediate covering of the heart with a hand. Allowing his uncles to carry his baggage he led his mother along the very short main street, at the end of which was the kampong road leading to his house which stood amongst a conglomeration of others on the river bank.

That night Mahsen was “at home” to his relations and friends. He sat in the middle of the bare living room, cross-legged on the floor, while his callers sat around him in a circle; a few talked, but most of them sat tongue-tied, in awe of the returned scholar. His sister, Boonsu, fussed around bringing out cups of coffee and platefuls of cakes for the visitors. The older women talked with his mother behind a portable screen. In the kitchen the young girls helped Boonsu to pour out the coffee and to bake sago cakes.

Mahsen’s attention was caught by the twitter of voices and laughter coming from the kitchen. From the doorway an array of bewitching faces scrutinized him. Amongst them he could see Louisa, a cousin many times removed and a constant companion in the days when they both still wore very little clothing and played at make-believe below the house. Now she had grown into a beautiful maiden with sleek black hair reaching down to her waist. Her lips were colored red by the juice of the sireh and her beauty was further enhanced by a short nose and two bright eyes. Her skin was fair and had the delicate texture of porcelain. Her body was rounded but trim as a result of hard work in the sago outhouse which is a part of all Melanau houses. From the giggles and delighted shrieks of the other girls, Mahsen suspected that Louisa was being teased about him.

His surmise proved to be correct; when the excitement of homecoming had died down, his mother called him one afternoon to her own particular corner of the house. Here for years she had sat cutting and trimming the canes that she would later weave into a variety of baskets and handbags, and sell to the shops for the money which had kept Mahsen at school.

Mahsen sat before her, full of respect as he looked at her deft fingers weaving the colored strips of cane into an intricate pattern for a sewing basket. She came to the point at once, “Louisa’s father wants you to marry her. He likes you and will only take a token dowry for her but you must become a Christian to marry her. I like Louisa and so does Boonsu.”

Mahsen sat silent for a while, thinking. Then he said, “I like Louisa too, but I think of her as a sister, not wife. I don’t want to marry yet. I want to improve the rubber garden and sago groves that Father left to us. There is no other reason; I am not thinking of any other girls in the town or here. I am not particular whether I become a Christian or a Mohammedan or remain a pagan as I am now. In this kampong we are a mixed community living happily together because we are all part of the Melanau race.”

“But Louisa’s father wants to give his daughter away to you. You know what that means. I have not much money in the house—only a few jars, and some porcelain that are our family heirlooms. I cannot afford a big dowry.”

“But what does Louisa think about this?” asked Mahsen.

“She said she will do as her parents wish,” chimed in Boonsu from the kitchen doorway.

“There you are,” exclaimed Mahsen in triumph, “she does not love me enough to say so. How can I marry her?”

“You silly man,” cried Boonsu, “she was saying yes in an old-fashioned way.”

“But that does not mean she loves me. Old-fashioned, huh? Tell her father I won’t marry her,” said Mahsen with an air of finality, putting on a shirt so that he could go out and escape from the discussion.

“Now you are Poonek,” said Boonsu gravely.

“What? Poonek? Rubbish! You people are full of false beliefs, like our neighbor next door calling in an exorcist to get the devils out of his body when he had only a cold from a night spent netting prawns in the river! The old crone who performed the ceremony was screeching nonsense and beating a drum the whole night long, disturbing everybody’s sleep. If our neighbor continues like that he will surely die of exhaustion from lack of sleep, not from his illness which a few pills bought in the bazaar could cure.”

“My son,” said Mahsen’s mother, “I do not believe in the babayoh ceremony like the man next door, but our ancestors taught us certain rules of behavior: if we are offered a good thing we must take it, or at least make a token acceptance, lest we offend the giver who wishes to share his property, food, or drinks with us. Thus we believe that refusal is bad behavior, and that it brings bad luck to the refuser.”

“And so,” Mahsen continued for his mother, “one becomes Poonek, liable to be stung by a scorpion, centipede, or perhaps a poisonous snake or, worse still, be struck dead by lightning. What a silly belief! I can’t see why anybody should be in the wrong because he says ‘No thank you’ to the kind invitation of a friend to share his dinner.”

“Saying thank you is not enough, son, there is still the act of refusal. You must touch the food or drink offered to you, first lightly with your finger, to be free from Poonek, especially if you are leaving in a hurry for the jungle, or to go on the river.”

“Pooh!” scoffed Mahsen, “what do I have to do now after refusing to accept Louisa? Go and kiss her to be free from my Poonek?” Mahsen laughed at the idea.

“You are very rude to Mother,” protested Boonsu.

Mahsen said he was only joking and walked out of the house to terminate the discussion. He was only a few yards from his house when he saw Louisa coming through the hibiscus hedge of a nearby house. She waited by the roadside when she saw Mahsen and plucked one of the red flowers to stick into her hair which she had tied into a bun at the back of her head. She was wearing a long blue baju over a black sarong. Another sarong of Javanese pattern was slung over one shoulder, always at hand to shield her from the curiosity of strangers or the hot sun.

“How proud you are these days,” she said when Mahsen reached her side; “you did not even call at our house when you came back. My mother was talking about you this morning saying that you have forgotten all of us.”

“Why, that’s what I am just going to do; I am going to your house now,” lied Mahsen gallantly. “This is one ant that is ever willing to die in the sweetness of your honey.”

“You are always joking, Mahsen,” she said, pleased by his flattery. “Come, let us walk side by side as we did many years ago.”

Mahsen was surprised to find himself as happy as ever with her. He sang the songs he used to tease her with, and she laughed and joked back as if they were still in their fig-leaf days.

Thus they walked on completely absorbed in one another, but stopping now and then to acknowledge the greetings of friends from the windows and doors of houses. In a number of the sago outhouses by the riverside, the village maidens, their wet clothes clinging to them, stopped their work of washing sago to shout and wave at the pair. The smell of sago waste permeated the atmosphere; the wind which was strong enough to flap the lofty coconut trees could not blow it away. Fowls and ducks scratched in the mud below the outhouses.

When Louisa’s house came into sight Mahsen suddenly realized that he was empty-handed, and it would be bad mannered to visit such old friends without a small gift; he looked around the kampong for signs of a shop. There was no shop but he noticed a long roofed-in boat lying in the mud, with the river lapping at its exposed propeller. It was a floating shop with a tin number-plate nailed to its side, Mahsen led Louisa to the little clearing which served as a public landing place; he told her to wait, and stepped over several small boats, going up to his ankles in mud at the water’s edge.

On the bank Louisa was attracted by two ripe guavas on a nearby tree. The tree was not difficult to climb; the trunk was short and the branches gave easy footing. She climbed up until she reached the highest branch, stretched for the fruit, and leaned back then to rest, enjoying the slight swaying motion of the tree in the light breeze which heralded the returning tide, and watching Mahsen as he reached the floating shop.

The boat hawker was squatting on his haunches in the mud, armed with some tools and caulking his boat with oakum. He was looking for the small but troublesome cracks which let water in near the bottom of his boat.

“Ah Pek Ah Pong,” called Mahsen, “have you got some chocolates?”

The man peered at him. He was old and had plied his trade up and down the river for more years than Mahsen could remember.

“Aiya!” exclaimed the old man, “Mahsen big fellow now, huh! Come, help Ah Pek find the little holes.”

Mahsen squatted down, feeling for slight cracks with his fingers in the well-painted side of the boat. He wiped some of the mud away.

“Watch out, Mahsen, watch out!” Mahsen turned to look at Louisa. She was still sitting on the branch of the tree, but now she was pointing towards the water.

“Buaya!” she screamed. “A crocodile!” Mahsen looked at the river. The water was still. There was scarcely a ripple. The tide was about to turn. The boat’s propeller glistened in the sunshine.

Ah Pek Ah Pong started to move towards the front of the boat. This is a poor joke on the part of Louisa, Mahsen thought. How could she know that his family considered him Poonek?

“No, no,” shouted Louisa, “don’t move that way. The crocodile is on the other side of the boat. It is coming up the mud bank!”

Mahsen took in the situation in a flash. This particularly wily crocodile was coming round the fore part of the boat to charge them into the river! A bit of the snout appeared round the corner. Louisa screamed again.

“Aiya! Aiya! Mati-lah, mati! Tua Pek Kong, tolong, tolong!” howled Ah Pek Ah Pong, looking at the now much longer black snout.

Mahsen grabbed the old man and pushed him towards the stern, then he lifted him and heaved and pushed until Ah Pek Ah Pong disappeared over the side, into the boat, accompanied by a crash of broken crockery as he landed in the kitchen of his floating shop.

Mahsen looked up again. The beast was already facing him with its mouth wide enough to swallow him whole!

The animal was ready for a charge. In an instant it came, as fast as an arrow, as big as a log, plunging along, ploughing a sheet of black mud into the air.

But Mahsen was also fast. He whipped round the stern of the boat and ran up the mud bank feeling as though his heart would burst. He could hear the crocodile slap into the water like a cannon shot. He reached the top of the bank exhausted.

Louisa was waiting for him, white-faced. He felt he would like to fall down before her and kiss her foot! Hundreds of faces now appeared, the afternoon’s indolence broken by the noise. Men came out with spears and guns. Ah Pek Ah Pong let off crackers and waved joss-sticks to the heavens in thanksgiving to Tua Pek Kong.

Three months later Mahsen and Louisa were on their way to Kuching for a belated honeymoon. A kindly sailor had cleared a space in the fore-part of the launch for them to spread their bedding. The river mouth was before them, grinning as amiably as ever in a long white line of breakers. Louisa was going to cross the bar for the first time. Her eyes were wide and sparkling as she listened to the chanting voice.

“Three feet above the mark.”

“Three feet and a half below the mark.”

“Three feet.”

“Four feet above the mark.”

“Five feet.”

Then the triumphant “Six feet!”

They were over the sand bar. The ship lurched and rolled and a thousand banging noises joined the discordant coughing of the engine. Louisa moaned; she was experiencing the first twinges of seasickness! She looked pale, but she was still beautiful. Mahsen kissed her.

“Stop it,” she said, “people may be looking.”

“I don’t want to be Poonek on the high seas,” whispered Mahsen happily.