Amok!" was raised, and the passion of murder seized on
all present. Only about a year ago one of the sons of the Rajah Muda
Yusuf, a youth of twenty, was suddenly seized with this monomania, drew
his kris, and rushing at people killed six, wounded two, and then
escaped into the jungle. Major M'Nair says that a Malay, in speaking of
amok, says: "My eyes got dark, and I ran on."
In Malacca Captain Shaw told me that "running amuck" was formerly very
common, and that on an expedition he made, one of his own attendants
was suddenly seized with the "amok" frenzy. He mentioned that he had
known of as many as forty people being injured by a single "amok"
runner. When the cry "amok! amok!" is raised, people fly to the right
and left for shelter, for after the blinded madman's kris has once
"drank blood," his fury becomes ungovernable, his sole desire is to
kill; he strikes here and there; men fall along his course; he stabs
fugitives in the back, his kris drips blood, he rushes on yet more
wildly, blood and murder in his course; there are shrieks and groans,
his bloodshot eyes start from their sockets, his frenzy gives him
unnatural strength; then all of a sudden he drops, shot through the
heart, or from sudden exhaustion, clutching his bloody kris even in the
act of rendering up his life.
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