THE MURDER OF THE HAWKER
hawker's boat, and suggested that it would be a good thing to rob him. They said they were afraid, and some other men coming up asked one of those to whom the proposal had been made what they were talking about, and, being told, advised him to have nothing to do with the business and the party dispersed.
That evening, at 8 p.m, several people heard cries of "help, help, I am being killed," from the river, and five or six men ran out of their houses down to the bank, a distance of only fifty yards, whence they saw, in the brilliant moonlight. Ngah Prang and two other men in the hawker's boat, the hawker lying flat on his back while one man had both hands at his throat, another held his wrists, and the third his feet; but it is said that those on the bank heard a noise of rapping as though feet were kicking or hands beating quickly the deck of the boat. It only lasted for a moment and then there was silence.
As these who had been roused by the cries came down the bank they called to the men in the boat, barely twenty feet away, and lighted at their work by the brilliancy of an Eastern moon, to know what they were doing; they even addressed them by their names, but these gave no answer, and, getting
27
