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Title: The Isle of Vanishing Men - A Narrative of Adventure in Cannibal-land
Author: Alder, W. F.
Language: English
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THE ISLE OF
VANISHING MEN
[Illustration: “_Uhumen!_” From their manner it is evident that we are
_de trop_]
THE ISLE OF VANISHING MEN
A NARRATIVE OF ADVENTURE IN CANNIBAL-LAND
BY
W. F. ALDER
ILLUSTRATED WITH PHOTOGRAPHS
BY THE AUTHOR
[Illustration]
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1922
Copyright, 1922, by
THE CENTURY CO.
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
TO
MY WIFE
------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I WE LEAVE AMBON 3
II THE PARADISE-HUNTER 13
III THE KAMPONG 32
IV THE ASSISTANT AND THE NAUTILUS 45
V WE’RE OFF! 53
VI SHIPWRECKED AMONG CANNIBALS 67
VII WE ESTABLISH DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS 85
VIII WE TAKE UP QUARTERS IN THE KAMPONG 97
IX THE STORY OF THE SWISS SCIENTIST 116
X OUR CONSOLATION PRIZE 129
XI THE FEAST 140
XII THE HEAD DANCE 148
XIII A KANGAROO HUNT 160
XIV THE BIRD OF PARADISE 167
XV THE COMING OF THE BURONG MAS 173
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
“_Uhumen._” From their manner it is evident that we are
_de trop_ _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
Malays bringing on board their varied possessions 16
As the last of the _praus_ was cleared of baggage they
clustered on the gangway, shouting adieus 16
The prison-yard in Merauke, New Guinea 24
Each of the men has perforated the septum of his nose to
permit inserting a pair of boar-tusks 33
A pair of alligator-teeth make a wonderful nose-ornament 33
Enormous nose-tubes of bamboo which entirely close the
nostrils, making breathing possible only through the
mouth 36
The women wear in many cases a tiny breech-clout but no
other covering 36
A long platform which entirely encircles the kampong 45
During the day the men occupy the sleeping-benches,
while the women sit upon the sandy floor of the shacks 45
Seated at a discreet distance, watching our camp-making
intently 80
There had been a disagreement in the village 80
Those who failed to get a package come to the dead-line
and asked for one 85
They may be friendly at one moment and turn upon one the
very next 85
We made presents of tin jewelry to the natives, but what
they wanted was tobacco 92
Feathered head-dresses moving through the tall grass
told us of the natives watching our progress toward
the kampong 92
Twice we encounter stalwart warriors standing like
sentinels, as though disdainful of concealment 97
The body is placed in a sitting position after being
gaily decorated for the funeral 97
The native climbs a cocoanut-palm in a series of humps
and stretches, like a giant inch-worm 100
Making fire. A piece of hard wood is rotated by hand
while in contact with a softer piece 100
One little fellow takes great delight in hearing his
mother describe the battles in which his father
collected his trophies 109
After the heat of midday the men gather in the shade to
discuss the latest scandal or politics 109
Eating mud! That’s it, just plain dried mud 112
“Little Playmate” readjusts his nose-tubes 112
The hairdresser plaits long strands of raffia into the
kinky wool of the Kia Kias 116
The shiny inner surface of a Malay tobacco-box serves
them as a mirror 116
The deserted Jesuit mission which formerly was the pride
and hope of its unfortunate builder 125
In the early evening the women sit around on the
copra-drying-platforms and watch the sunset 125
They are very proud of the scar-patterns 129
The weals caused by the infection of the cuts sometimes
stand out nearly an inch from the surrounding flesh 129
The men occupy their time with revision of their
toilets, rather than in doing the chores 133
Sarah 133
The _kapala kampong_ presents us with human skulls, the
highest token of their esteem 136
A young and very fearsome Kia Kia spends a great deal of
his time with her 136
The circle breaks up and a dance takes place for our
entertainment 140
They sang for us at the top of their leather lungs 140
Long into the night the mad festival continues. To exert
themselves in any productive occupation to a like
extent would kill them 144
The drums are tuned in a peculiar manner. Having no
strings fastened to the heads with which to tighten
them, they place small lumps of resin mixed with clay
on the heads to produce the desired sound 144
The Head Dance. Two girls begin it by slowly walking up
and down in the center of the circle of onlookers 148
The Dutch officials punish them severely for indulging
in these practices 148
Under the influence of the wady, exhilarated by the wild
dance, the men finally take part 157
They again threaten the men with total exclusion from
all intercourse with their families 157
This man confessed to having eaten many human beings. To
accurately estimate the number was beyond his power of
reckoning 161
The sharp-edged stone war-club in the hands of such men
as these makes quick work of a victim 161
The skipper is a jolly fellow with a countenance that
beams good nature, mixed with a shrewdness that speaks
of business ability 176
He beats a gong briskly and chants a prayer in Malay,
while the rest of the crew add their prayers to his
petitions 176
THE ISLE OF VANISHING MEN
CHAPTER I
WE LEAVE AMBON
Two bells tinkles within the master’s cabin, and the quartermaster on
the bridge repeats the announcement of nine o’clock with two strokes
upon the bronze bell near his station at the wheel. It is sailing-time.
The townspeople have turned out en masse to bid us farewell, and the
open spaces on the new concrete wharf are ablaze with color. The chatter
of a thousand voices comes to us as we stand upon the deck looking down
on the scene. Every one seems happy. The great whistle on the ship’s
funnel, after a preliminary gargling of its throat, shatters the
tranquil air with a peremptory warning. The screw churns up a maëlstrom
beneath the overhanging stern, and we swing out into the channel amid a
storm of adieus spoken in a dozen tongues. We are off for the land of
the cannibal Kia Kias,—the Isle of Vanishing Men.
As the ship gathers way, Amboina, spice-scented “Ambon,” drops into the
mists of the morning and we look around the deck for company. We are
alone. Then we remember the information given us by the First Officer
yesterday. We are the only first-cabin passengers on board, this trip.
Few people find their way to the Isle of Vanishing Men. It offers little
to the business man. The commercial traveler never goes there. Merauke,
our destination, has but five white inhabitants, and their wants are
few. One steamer a month carries to them the things they need and the
mail from home.
We shall spend our time for the next few days in lazy languor, playing
an occasional game of chess with the chief engineer, chatting now and
then with the very amiable captain, or, as one learns to do in the
Indies, just draping ourselves over most comfortable steamer chairs and
daydreaming for hours on end. The air is like silk. The piping falsetto
of the deck-hands as they sing at their work lulls one into reverie, and
life glides by with a smoothness that takes no count of time.
There comes the day when the captain greets us at breakfast with the
news that we shall arrive this evening. As he selects from the heaped
platter of sliced sausage his favorite variety he tells us that we shall
sight land at one this afternoon. We are agog with excitement. The
cannibals are not far away now. We ply him with questions and as he
spreads his bread with marmalade he tells us of the Kia Kias and what
their name means. To be _kikied_, he avers, is to be eaten; the natives
are eaters of men; hence the name.
He regales us with reminiscences of his former visits to the island and
roars with merriment as he relates how on one voyage a few months ago he
was accompanied by his wife. The natives thronged the little wharf, clad
in their birthday suits, to witness the arrival of the ship. Some of
them were allowed on board, where they were awed by the marvels of the
white man’s great proa. The captain’s wife was the first white woman
they had ever seen, and one of the natives—a son of a chief, by the
way,—became enamored of her. He immediately offered the captain two fine
pigs for her. The captain refused the offer, saying it was not enough.
The man withdrew, his brow wrinkled with deep thought. He left the ship
and was lost in the throng that strained the underpinning of the little
wharf. Two hours later he returned, accompanied by several of his
friends. Each of these carried a pig trussed up with rattan hobbles. He
had sold his wife and three daughters for five pigs and was raising his
ante, so the captain’s story ran, and was much put out when he learned
that the price offered was still inadequate.
The lady in question was the object of so much attention from the
well-meaning if somewhat amorous natives that she found it expedient to
retire to the privacy of her husband’s cabin, whence she was able unseen
to observe the visitors.
The little saloon in which we breakfast overlooks the main deck and the
men there are making ready the winches and rigging preparatory to the
unloading of cargo manifested for Merauke. Their work interrupts the
captain in his narrative, for the rumbling remonstrances of the rusty
machines make the morning hideous. We hasten to the upper deck, where
after doing our customary half-mile constitutional we busy ourselves
with the packing of our dunnage.
This will take us an hour and we look forward to a comfortable snooze
before tiffin. By that time, or shortly after, the coast-line of New
Guinea will have risen to view out of a murky horizon in the northeast.
There is nothing to do until then. Our letters to those at home will not
be written until the very last moment before the steamer sails, for we
shall want to describe Merauke in them. It will be two months before the
steamer calls again. In those two months we shall have visited the
tribes living far from the little trading-station of Merauke and its
very friendly population of five whites, many Chinese, a few Malays, and
a hundred or so Kia Kias. The missionaries have brought these last from
the interior and they live outside the town in kampongs or villages, the
nearest of which is an hour’s walk from the dock.
The chief engineer—who, by the way, is a real character and something of
a philosopher—disarranges our plans for forty winks. He has spent about
forty-three years on the ships that ply the waters of the Indies, and
has many tales to tell; for he loves to relive his earlier days, when
the native girls were more beautiful to him than now. With the on-march
of years the enervating climate and the demoralizing life of the
kampongs have exacted a toll, and the overdrafts he made in those
never-to-be-forgotten times have been collected in full by the Bank of
Nature.
The old roué boasts of his conquests among the golden-skinned _vahines_
of the Southern Islands and tells us now with shocking candor of the
doubtful virtues of Nasia, an old flame of his who lived in Ambon. He
sees her now and then in Saparoea, where she is the reputable wife of a
half-caste government employee. To the native, marriage means that
respectable status which permits of clandestine meetings with the wife,
censured only by the husband. All others aid and abet the liaison, for
does it not furnish delightful gossip in an otherwise somnolent
community? He tells of a night when he and his chief (he was second
engineer then) went in company with some others to a kampong back of
Dobo in the Arus and proceeded to kiss all the girls in sight. The girls
must have taken kindly to the demonstration, for they unearthed
“square-face” gin in plenty and with dances and what not regaled the
white _Tuans_ (masters) until the east turned from violet to rose.
We cannot find it in our hearts to censure the chief, for the “custom of
the country” has made its insidious way deep into his soul and has
warped his point of view. One has to spend much time in the Indies fully
to appreciate how this can be. Here life is stripped of many
superfluities and conventions and love of life and of love become
paramount factors. He shakes his head at what he calls our “Long Hair”
ideas and tells us we should have brought with us two girls from Ambon,
to keep house for us while we are in New Guinea. The Ambonese girls, he
tells us, are much more comely than the Kia Kia girls.
“Wait till you see Reache’s girl in Merauke,” he says; “or the
Controlleur’s up the coast,—Nona is her name. She came from Ambon. She
is nineteen and as saucy a little trinket as you’d ever want to see.”
Thereupon the chief laughs immoderately.
Seeking further information on the subject, we question him regarding
certain eventualities had we made “temporary” matrimonial arrangements
such as he recommends, and he waves a deprecating hand at us.
“Don’t worry about that,” he says. “When you get ready to leave ’em give
’em a new sarong, a little money, a ticket home, and they’ll bless you
forever and maybe cry a little into the bargain because they hate to
lose a good thing. In a week or two, though, they will be deep in a new
affair and they’ll forget. Don’t let them fall in love, though, or they
might get nasty. Best way is to tell ’em you’re going about ten minutes
before you leave. It saves a lot of powwow an’ palaver. Otherwise it’ll
cost you twice as much to save your face.”
The chiming of eight bells closes the engineer’s dissertation, as he
stands watch until four in the afternoon. He leaves us reluctantly, for
he regards us as babes in the woods who need much assistance and advice
in this very interesting but usually taboo subject. Mayhap he is right,
but, as the Englishman says, “We’ll muddle through somehow.” Somehow we
can’t quite divest ourselves of our “old-fashioned” ideas.
While we talk over the chief’s code of morals, we wonder about many
things. The sort of life he has led has been led by many white men, for
four hundred years, in the Indies and every one seems happy and
contented. True, there are many brown-skinned people with blue eyes and
just as many fair-skinned ones with warm, dancing eyes of sloe black,
but on the lips of each and every one of these there is a smile. They
seem to know no trouble. The warm air makes us drowsy. Tiffin isn’t till
one-thirty: why not take that snooze we planned for?
CHAPTER II
THE PARADISE-HUNTER
It is four o’clock in the afternoon. The ship’s launch is wallowing
toward the wharf, carrying with it ourselves and two of the ship’s
officers. Moh—our Javanese boy, cook, majordomo, and general nuisance—is
busily engaged in gathering our _barang_ together, preparatory to
getting it ashore. No one ever thinks of calling baggage anything but
“barang” after a few months in Malay waters. We just must show our
command of the vernacular and thereby escape classification as common
tourists.
As we near the wharf a motley crowd greets us with a variety of
expressions. The throng is composed for the most part of Malay-speaking
Javanese or Ambonese, but here and there one sees pajama-clad Chinese
and over there near the godown, or warehouse, is the white-clad figure
of a white man. He is approaching us rapidly. We scramble up the
rickety, slippery stairway to the dock and find ourselves in a
chattering gang who clamor to be allowed to carry our barang to the
_passangrahan_ or resthouse, which in these Dutch possessions is the
only shelter available to the stranger. It is maintained by the
Government for this purpose and in it one finds every convenience, but
one must supply one’s own servants and food.
We arrange with a Chinaman, who seems to be a sort of “straw boss” of
the coolies, for the transfer of our luggage, and dismiss the matter
from our minds. He will care for it and will not worry us, for the whole
bill will not be over two guilders, or about sixty cents. There are
twenty-two pieces to be moved. If we cared to argue the matter out we
might get the job done for one guilder, but it’s too warm for an
argument.
The white-clad figure is close to us now. He evidently is worried about
the arrival of something or other that he expects the boat to bring him.
He does not notice us, but goes directly to the ship’s officer who is
giving orders to the men lightering the cargo ashore. They engage in an
animated but good-natured conversation. Farther down the dock a scuffle
is taking place. The crowd thins out rapidly, and we can glimpse the
combatants now and then between the intervening onlookers. They are
slashing at each other with knives and whole-souled abandon. They are
Malay stevedores. From the lower end of the mole a grotesque native
policeman espies the affray and shouts to the battlers to desist,—this
with wild waving of his arms and dire threats of punishment. His shrill
admonitions do not seem to have the desired effect, and he suddenly
projects himself (that is the only word for it) in the general direction
of the mêlée. His old navy cutlass flashes in the waning sunlight as he
draws it with a great flourish and comes bouncing down the wharf. The
scabbard disconcertingly inserts itself between his legs and he performs
an absurd contortion to regain his footing. By miraculous intervention
of Providence he maintains his footing and arrives. _Smack! smack!_ and
the belligerents depart in opposite directions. The policeman’s cutlass
has accomplished its purpose. The fighters have been spanked into peace
with the flat of the blade.
As the pair separate a gentle voice beside us is raised in soft-toned
remonstrance. It is directed toward the misguided policeman. “Gad, man!”
it says, “don’t stop ’em; let ’em fight.” Then turning to us, the
speaker continues, “I just love to see the blood fly.” Our jaws drop. We
turn to scan the ferocious one and look him over in amazement. Before us
is a little man of somewhat uncertain age, clad largely in a huge
Vandyke that rambles in a casual fashion over his face. His voice is
soft, soft as a girl’s, and his eyes as we look into them lose their
bloodthirsty, anticipatory glint, and sparkle with kindliness and
good-fellowship.
[Illustration: Malays bringing on board their varied possessions]
[Illustration: As the last of the _praus_ was cleared of baggage they
clustered on the gangway, shouting adieus]
He extends his hand, a hand wrinkled and seamed like a last-year’s apple
and brown as a _claro_ from Sumatra. “My moniker’s Reache,” he tells us,
and we tell him our names. He continues: “You are Americans, eh? Well,
put ’er there! I like the way you fellows handled the railroad situation
in France. Here for long? Wait: stay here a moment while I see the mate
there, and I’ll take you over to the club for a drink. We’ll spin a yarn
and get acquainted. Can’t spin a yarn or get chummy sudden, ’less
there’s some square-face in sight; that’s solid. Back in a minute.”
As we watch him go we smile. So there is a club in Merauke! Five white
men,—and a club! It is proper. Where there is a club there must be a
bar. The barkeeper draws a salary, after a fashion. He must be kept
awake to lend an air of liveliness to the institution, so the members
foregather of an evening and sing raucously in the wee sma’ hours
expressly for that purpose. True, the club is but a palm-thatched
edifice with a slightly corrugated floor and reputation; nevertheless it
is a club. Nondescript furniture ungraces its airy spaciousness and
mud-wasps’ nests now and then fall upon one’s head as some fly-hungry
chick chack lizard carelessly dislodges them, but it is still “The
Club.” It being “The Club,” one must always remember to wear his coat
therein, for the etiquette of fleshpots is brought to this land of the
stewpots and observed with due reverence. No matter how deep in his cups
the superior white man may be, he must never appear at “The Club” in
negligée. It isn’t done.
The native may wander in the simmering heat of midday clad in what
approximates nothing, but the Tuan, being superior even when most
satisfyingly inebriated, to maintain his proper dignity must wear at all
times a coat over his regulation soft-collared shirt. Of course we
Americans are not really bound to do this, for our many eccentricities
are passed over without undue comment. When one of those who really
“belong” does make some allusion to one of our—what shall I
say?—indecorums, one of his fellows offers the all-sufficient excuse or
explanation, “Oh, he’s American.” This always suffices; and, too, it is
said as though the speaker expected as much and would have been
disappointed otherwise. And despite all this they like us. They really
like our devil-may-care expediency, and I think secretly envy us. In
this they “have nothing on us,” though, for it seems to be a human
tendency to envy something in the other fellow.
Reache joins us in a few moments, and we are soon ensconced in rather
rickety chairs on the veranda of the club. Between tumblerfuls of
square-face gin and long draws at an excellent Dutch cigar, he
entertains us with tales of bird-of-paradise hunting, which avocation he
follows somewhat successfully. He now and then makes our flesh creep
with a particularly hair-raising recital delivered somewhat in this
fashion:
“You fellows know, I guess, what I’m here for. It’s paradise. Not the
country, no! The country is hell and no mistake, but the birds,—that is
what I go after, and get, too. I outfitted in Moresby and when I got my
hunters together and plenty of petrol for the launch I headed for the
upper Diegul. It’s way up in the interior where we get the best birds.
It’s bad country up there, and no mistake, for the natives have a little
habit of lunching off one another when pig becomes scarce. The governor
warned me that I was taking my life in my hands, but I don’t know any
one else’s hands I’d rather have it in, so I went inside. My crew of
hunters was as ripe a gang of cutthroats as one would wish to see and
they tried cutting a few didoes among themselves, but after I’d knocked
a couple of them cold they took to behaving and I let things go at that.
“You want a gang like that for hard going. They’re necessary. The only
way to keep them happy is to give them plenty of work or, what they like
best, plenty of scrapping. Then they haven’t time to brood over
differences of opinion amongst themselves. I loaded a couple of bushels
of shells like that nigger out there has on. They wear them for pants.
One shell and Mr. Cannibal is all dressed up. Well, I use those shells
for currency. One first-class shell which costs me about ten cents Dutch
money buys a bird-of-paradise skin that is worth twelve hundred guilders
a cody,—that is, twenty skins,—or, as it figures out in real money,
forty dollars a skin. It’s a fair margin of profit.” Here Reache grins
and absorbs another tumblerful of square-face.
“Well,” he continues, “we went inside,—I, seven shooters, and some other
Moresby boys for packers. Soon we had all the shooting and trading we
wanted. Everything went all right for a time and there was no trouble
with the natives. I gave them one nice shiny shell for one prime skin
and they were as pleased as possible. The trouble started over some fool
thing that one of my boys said or did to one of the native women and
soon matters began to tense up a little. There was a Chinese outfit
inside, too, that were doing some trading and they tried to take
advantage of the natives. They gummed the game that season. The natives
stood for the Chinamen for a time, but pretty soon the old women of the
tribe called all the younger women and girls aside and told them that
the men were taboo till the Chinamen were put out of the way, and as
usual the younger ones agreed to what the old women said. (They always
have their way.) One fine evening the Kia Kias had a little dinner-party
to celebrate the resumption of domestic felicity attendant upon the
demise of the Chinese.
“The Chinamen were the guests of honor. They had been roasted to a turn.
Next day I visited the place and when I saw the kampong clearing I knew
what had happened. This piece of jade was the only thing left of the
Chinamen that I could see. The rest was eaten. I took this from one of
the children, who was playing with it. My gang were pretty sore about
it. I don’t think it was on account of the Chinese, particularly, but
because they had missed a good scrap, and they began to grouch. The next
day one of the natives came to the launch with a couple of skins. Ula
was working on the engine. The rest of my gang were all away in the
jungle, shooting. The skins were a little ruffled up, but I think what
made Ula angry was the fact that the native had on a pair of Chinese
trousers.
He never collected for the skins, for Ula picked up a spanner that he’d
been working on the engine with and tapped him with it. Then he tossed
him into the _kalee_ alongside to drift down the stream for the
crocodiles to dine on.
“The other natives all cleared out and that night we heard them singing
and beating drums in the jungle near their kampong. There was trouble in
the air. My boys began to rifle the barang for some heavier shells and a
couple of them built a big fire in the center of our clearing. About ten
in the evening one of them had walked out across the circle of the
firelight to throw on some more wood, when he stopped, straightened up,
and then collapsed in a heap.
“I jumped for my gun. A Kia Kia ten-foot spear had finished him. A
minute later hell broke loose. The natives did a queer thing for them.
They rushed us. Man, it was a beautiful fight! There was a sick sort of
a moon trying to see what was going on and the fire gave us a little
light, so we just lined up along the bank of the kalee and let them
come. Ula was a bird of a fighter. I’ve never seen more methodical
slaughter. He and I were lying a little apart from the rest and as each
bunch of howling painted devils came for us across the clearing we would
let them have it.
“They shot clouds of arrows at us, but as we were lying down in the tall
grass they all went high, though some of them whizzed by uncomfortably
close. When they ran out of arrows they came at us with stone-headed
clubs and we’d let them have what was in our twelve-gauges at thirty
feet. It was _bang! bang! bang!_ along the bank of that kalee, like a
clay-pigeon trap match.
[Illustration: The prison-yard in Merauke, New Guinea]
“Before long I noticed that things were pretty quiet over to my left
where the rest of my boys were, and I rose up to look. As I did so I
heard Ula grunt, “Look out!” and I swung around just in time to stop a
burly Kia Kia who was planning to do me with a stone club that would
have killed an elephant. Then Ula went down. They were coming at me from
both sides, for I could see the grass moving slowly where they were
sneaking up on me. I reached into my pocket to get some more shells and
got the shock of my life. I had shot my last one. My gun was empty.
There was nothing to do but get away, and I turned toward the spot on
the bank where the launch was tied. I had taken maybe a dozen steps
toward it when I heard a couple of plumps from the engine and then she
caught on and got to hitting regular.
“I rose up from the shelter of the tapa grass and made time toward the
sound. Ammed, the only one of the boys left, had started the kicker and
was pulling out. He saved my bacon that night. We didn’t waste any time
in getting down the river,—just kept going.”
Reache turns and shakes his head. While his hand gropes for the bottle
of square-face he sighs and concludes, “I lost some fine guns that
night.” We look at each other in speculation. The story sounds all
right, but— “Ah, here he comes!” exclaims Reache. “Here comes the
Controlleur.” Reache rises and goes to the railing of the veranda and
calls to a brown-skinned, black mustached, military-looking fellow.
After a moment’s conversation the Controlleur comes in with Reache,
greets us cordially, and tells us that he has the passangrahan ready for
us.
The Resident in Ambon has sent a letter by our steamer, telling of our
coming, and has ordered things done for us. It is the way these kindly
Dutch officials always treat the visitor. The Controlleur informs
us—much to his embarrassment, however—that there is a government charge
of what equals thirty-four cents a day for our accommodation. Much as he
regrets it, he says, there are no exceptions to this rule. We drown his
embarrassment with a liberal libation of Reache’s square-face and,
escorted by both of our new friends, go to inspect our quarters. We
shall be here in Merauke several days before proceeding up the coast, so
we must be very comfortable, they say.
As we near the passangrahan we take note of a group of sheet-iron
buildings surrounded by a high wire fence. It is the jail and watching
us intently are a score of prisoners. As we look in their direction they
break into smiles and call to us in Malay. They are asking us to secure
them for additional servants during our stay and, noting our surprise at
this, the Controlleur assures us that he will loan us all the help we
want. Later he makes good his word, for he sends several of the
prisoners over to the resthouse where we have taken up our abode. They
are accompanied by a native sergeant, who sits in the shade all day,
smoking. He never bothers about what the prisoners are doing and they
dutifully report to him at meal-times. In the evening, when their
house-cleaning and grass-cutting are over, they line up and return to
the jail. We even send them on errands, which they do conscientiously
but not at all hastily.
The Controlleur and Reache leave us—to get our things straightened out,
they say—and promise to call again to-morrow. They also say that we must
meet the other Europeans who are connected with the little
trading-company. We shall not be able to see the Assistant Resident on
business until the steamer sails, we are informed, for he has many
reports to forward to his chief in Ambon. These are always made up at
the last moment and the rush is terrible. The assistant is even now
writing the first of the two. One of them is to tell the chief that
Merauke is still in New Guinea, and the other that we have arrived and
are being well cared for. He must rest from this labor for a day; then
he will receive us with the formality due the distinguished guest. He
will inquire with solicitous concern as to our health, and what we most
desire to do, and will grant our every wish, after due deliberation.
Things of such weighty nature as our coming on a little friendly visit
must be treated with painstaking consideration. It is too warm to decide
too much in one day, for then judgment might be erroneous, and—oh, well!
why talk business when there is so much else to talk about? There hasn’t
been a stranger in Merauke for months, and we can’t blame them, can we?
No! We shall let the purpose of our coming go hang, and just sit down
and be entertained for the best part of a week. They will enjoy it
almost as much as we, so why not?
At the passangrahan we find that Moh has dinner ready. He shows us where
the bath-house is and we go there and revel in the cool splashing of the
water upon our perspiring bodies. The mode of bathing, here, is new to
us, but we feel we shall come to like it. The bath-house is exactly like
all others found throughout the Dutch East Indies. It is placed right
alongside the cook-house, which is detached from the main bungalow, that
the heat and smell of cooking may not invade the domain of the Tuan.
Within the palm-thatched room are several great jars of rain-water, a
wooden grid to stand upon, and a tin dipper of gallon size. One drenches
himself from head to foot, lathers thoroughly, then sluices down with
more gallons and the bath is complete. It is quick, easy, and
exhilarating. We are told not to try it much after nightfall, however,
unless we wish to be eaten alive. There are cannibalistic mosquitos here
that will charge en masse, drive in their lances, and bear you away in
chunks. They are nocturnal in their habits and we are profoundly
thankful that this is so, for at night one sleeps behind a protecting
_klambu_ or mosquito curtain which completely enshrouds the bed. There
one falls into slumber secure from their attacks and lulled by their
incessant droning. Now and then some persistent fellow manages to find
entrance and one becomes aware of a more shrill note in the general hum
that increases in pitch until it is punctuated with a hesitant quaver
followed by a red-hot stab,—upon almost any spot, but generally on the
temple, where it accomplishes most. This is the occasion of two things.
The first, a hunting-expedition with a lighted wax taper, which ends in
the incineration of the intruder, and an angry determination to murder
Moh the very next morning for leaving an opening in the folds of the
net. Justly or unjustly, Moh always serves as scapegoat. He thrives on
it.
Dinner over, we hunt up a tin cigar box to serve as an ash-tray and take
it to bed with us. It is too early to go to sleep and too mosquito-y, if
I may use the term, to be up and around. In New Guinea one hides from
these pests as soon as darkness falls. Moh, though he has a leather
skin, builds a great smudge of cocoanut husks. The smoke of it makes him
weep and gasp, but he persists in his friendly gossip with a man from
Java lately come to Merauke, telling him the latest news and of his
latest wife. The other listens with sparkling eyes and rapt attention to
Moh’s description.
CHAPTER III
THE KAMPONG
To-day the assistant is resting. The steamer is gone. We shall go
hunting adventure on our own. Four miles inland there is a kampong where
live about fifty Kia Kias. As the day is warm we will put on the
lightest clothing we have and go there. We cannot miss the way, for the
only road of which the country boasts passes the place. It leads to a
deceased missionary’s little plantation about three miles farther on.
[Illustration: Each of the men has perforated the septum of his nose to
permit inserting a pair of boar-tusks]
[Illustration: A pair of alligator-teeth make a wonderful nose-ornament]
The last building we pass on our way through the outer fringes of the
little town is a rambling whitewashed structure. It is the government
hospital. We must see this place, for in it they are striving to save
the Vanishing Men. We are met at the little office door by a nurse in
modest white. She is the only one on duty now, for nurses are hard to
obtain in this out-of-the-way corner of our old footstool. She is half
white and half Chinese. She speaks five languages fluently, we find, for
as we converse with her she lapses into French now and then, with
sprinklings of Malay and Dutch. It is a habit linguists have, for they
find finer shades of meaning in varied tongues. Her English is perfect
and we take for granted the purity of her Pekinese, for she tells us she
was born in the Celestial Empire.
In the wards she shows us the patients in her care. Here we find the
curse of civilization stalking like a grim specter. Statistics, she
informs us, give the Kia Kias fourteen years more to live. Once the race
numbered a hundred thousand, but now with the coming of the strangers
the venereal scourge is upon them and their ill-nurtured bodies cannot
withstand the heroic treatment necessary for successfully combating the
disease. The mere confinement in the hospital kills some of them.
Before the coming of the strangers they were a healthy race that thrived
and prospered. True, they ate one another, but their diet seemed to
agree with them. It was the greatest pleasure they got out of life.
These dinner-parties are taboo now and the poor devils within reach of
the punishing whites have nothing for which to live. They are a race
without ambition, lacking zest of life, and seek excitement in excesses
that take toll of hundreds where the roasting-pit claimed but a
comparative few. In early days there was tribal organization, which was
necessary for survival. Now they live in less dread and great sloth,
their idleness breeding indulgence in the only thing left to them,
unrestricted sensuality. True, the tribes that live in the remote
fastnesses of the jungle still maintain the old customs and they are
contaminated only slightly with the scourge; still, it has found them.
With mixed emotions we leave the hospital. The advice of the engineer
comes to us with new significance. Every ship or schooner that plies the
islands has been freighted with the scourge, gathered from the four
winds and brought here. Then come the missionaries further to darken the
sky, for do they not lift hands, eyes raised askance, at the naked
savage and force him to don clothes? The childlike and untutored natives
do not know that in rain-soaked clothing there lurks a menace. Their
naked skins shed the water and they never become chilled, but those whom
the missionaries have clothed are one and all subject to pulmonary
troubles that are making further inroads on the race.
The road winds into the jungle where the silence is absolute. A mile
from town it has dwindled to a mere foot-path. As we brush the
close-growing shrubs that border it, we dislodge clouds of midges and
mosquitos which, with the moist heat and the perspiration that soaks us,
become intolerable. However, we have set out for the kampong, and shall
go there.
After an interminable hour, we come to a clearing where we find a
palm-thatched shack. Three naked children are sprawling on the ground,
chattering baby talk. They do not notice our approach until we are close
to them, but as we say “hello” they bounce to their feet and disappear
in the bush with wild cries of alarm. They are just like any of the wild
things that live in the jungle. We laugh at their sudden fear and call
to them to return, while their mother inside the shack peeps furtively
at us through a crevice in the wall. Evidently she is not much
frightened, for she comes to the door and greets us with, “_Tabe,
Tuans_,” the stock greeting of the Malay-speaking native. She is clad in
her birthday clothing, as naked as on her natal day save for a heavy
necklace of shells wound twice around her neck. She approaches us with
easy grace, wholly unconscious of her nudity. Though she wears no
covering whatever, she is clothed, for the dignity with which she moves
and her utter lack of self-consciousness form a garment that drapes her
pleasingly.
[Illustration: Enormous nose-tubes of bamboo which entirely close the
nostrils, making breathing possible only through the mouth]
[Illustration: The women wear in many cases a tiny breech-clout, but no
other covering]
Going to a pile of cocoanuts beside the shack, she selects two which she
opens with a deft stroke of a heavy broad-bladed knife. These she gives
us, with a smile and a sinuous, almost coquettish lifting of the hip as
she stretches her arm to hand them to us. Bidding us wait, she
disappears inside the shack, emerging in a moment with two Chinese
enameled cups which she offers us. We thank her, but prefer to drink the
cool water of the nuts from the shell.
The brown-skinned urchins, upon seeing their mother in friendly
conversation with the strangers, return to the clearing and eye us with
wonder and some distrust. They are on their little toes, so to speak,
watching for the slightest suspicious movement, ready to fly to the
protective jungle. Their big sloe eyes grow wistful as we offer them
some pennies and their mother reassures them, finally overcoming their
fears and bringing them to the place where we are crouched upon our
haunches with hands outstretched. They reach out, snatch the pennies,
and are gone, whereupon the mother shrieks with merriment. While we are
laughing over the little comedy a boy of possibly eighteen years, naked
as his mother, comes from the thicket with some more cocoanuts, which he
tosses on the pile by the shack. He looks inquiringly at us and his
mother directs him to guide us to the kampong, which is set back off the
path a few rods.
The sound of laughter and some one singing in full-voiced baritone
greets us as we near the kampong. A man is singing a Kia Kia melody that
sounds as though he were ill. He finishes the song as we enter the
narrow opening in the kampong wall and all the natives in sight gaze at
us for a fraction of a second, paralyzed with surprise and fright.
The spell is broken the moment we step inside and they leap en masse for
the exit in the rear of the kampong and wedge there in a ludicrous
struggle of arms and legs. Somehow they force their way through the
opening and the enclosure is deserted except for a few old women too old
to get away.
Our presence in the kampong is resented by the canine population, which
gathers before us in a semicircle and howls in great anguish of spirit.
Soon a dusky form slithers in through the exit, to be followed by
several more, and all stand grouped at a respectful distance, eyeing us
closely. They are women, startlingly nude. As they come to no harm at
our hands, the men take heart and return singly till all the inmates of
the kampong are again at home. After a silent study of us the men
evidently realize that we are harmless, for they break into loud
laughter, which is taken up by the women, and come toward us to make us
welcome. The women gather around and, though laughing uproariously, seem
friendly enough.
We are in a real cannibal village, and, as it is our first, we are
somewhat curious about it. We start in by examining the natives and note
the curious decorations with which they adorn themselves. Each of the
men has perforated the septum of his nose to permit of inserting a pair
of boar tusks or pig knuckles. This of course interferes with his
breathing, so he has cut two vertical openings through the sides of the
nose through which the air whistles at each inhalation. The faces of all
the men are besmeared with paint, which they make from colored earths
they gather and grind into a fine powder.
The ears of both men and women are perforated in the lower part of the
lobes, which, by reason of the many heavy brass rings with which they
are weighted, hang down well upon the neck, some of them even touching
the shoulders. All wear necklaces of shell, with sometimes a variation
in the shape of varicolored seeds sewn upon pieces of trade cloth. The
men wear no loin-cloth, but those of family wear a grotesquely
inadequate substitute comprised of a shell and a string of bark fiber.
The women in many cases wear a tiny breech-clout of twisted fiber
scarcely bigger than the palm of one hand, a triangular patch that
because of its color and texture does not seem to exist. Many of them
seem to be sufficiently happy without even this pretense at clothing and
in no way conscious of their nakedness. Among those under the age of
twenty of both sexes there is no attempt at covering.
We are as much objects of curiosity to them as they to us and while we
have been studying them they have been picking us to pieces. The women
pluck at our silk shirts and try to peep inside, doing it gently,
however, for fear of arousing our anger. They are like a throng of
curious, happy children and now and then one of the younger women will
burst into shrieks of laughter at some sally of her mates and run a few
steps away, where she leaps up and down in exuberance of spirits.
They move like graceful animals, each muscle rippling under its
sheathing of dark bronze with a freedom and smoothness that makes us
envy them their unrestrained ease. Here are no bloated abdomens, no
pinched-in waists. They have never seen corsets. Their bodies and limbs
are clean-lined and well rounded and they walk haughtily erect.
In response to our inquiries as to their shelters they extend us a
laughing invitation to visit them and lead us to the low thatched
shelves that run around the enclosure, which forms their back wall.
Supported upon low legs of bamboo is a long platform which completely
encircles the kampong. There are no partitions of any kind to screen
from view the various intimacies of family life. One may sit upon the
platform and see whatever transpires in the homes of the entire kampong.
In fact, these people live entirely on a community basis, and there are
no secrets.
Johnny woos Milly, or whatever their names may be, with little regard
for the others and may live with her for some time without censure
before he finally decides that marriage is the proper thing. If he finds
her to his liking he may inform the rest that he will keep her, and that
is all there is to it. There is no scandal, for all know everything.
Gossip there is in plenty, but that is when some member plays hookey and
visits another kampong with too much regularity. Conduct of this sort is
frowned upon, but not punished except by the hookee’s—what shall I call
her?—sparring partner, who if she learns of the situation may take the
offender to task. But such is life even in our own land of Wednesday
evenings and cabarets.
Our hosts bring cocoanuts, which they open for us to drink from, and
offer us food. We drink, but, strange to say, are not hungry. Our
cigarettes are received with marked approval,—so marked, in fact, that
they are snatched from us by the package the moment we pass out the
first one. They take it for granted that we want them to have them and
do not wish to put us to the trouble of distributing them. They do this
themselves, after the fashion of ten dogs after one bone, but with
surprising good nature. They love tobacco, which they get from the
ubiquitous Chinese or Malay traders. Having no paper with which to make
cigarettes, they generally eat the tobacco, but some roll the coarse
shag in pandanus leaves, making cigars which would put to sleep even
confirmed smokers like us.
The hours pass swiftly and we hear a pattering on the dry palm-leaves
above us. The sky is overcast and we have four miles of humid going
ahead of us. After an afternoon spent in lolling around with our new
friends we hear the call of the bath-house, and we bid them adieu,—for
the present without reluctance.
If these are the good Kia Kias,—in contact with whites more or less, for
they live beneath the shadow of the assistant’s authority,—we wonder
what the tribes in the interior are like. “Well,” we tell ourselves, “we
shall see them soon now. Next week at this time we shall be among them,
alone and far from the arm of the white man’s law.”
[Illustration: A long platform which entirely encircles the kampong]
[Illustration: During the day the men occupy the sleeping-benches, while
the women sit upon the sandy floor of the shacks]
CHAPTER IV
THE ASSISTANT AND THE NAUTILUS
The whitewashed buildings of the government headquarters reflect the
sunlight with an intolerable glare as we swing up the path from the
road. At the door of the assistant’s office we are greeted by an
obsequious Ambonese in regulation white. His trousers are very short,
though whether by design or because of repeated shrinkings, I am not
prepared to say. On his head he wears a batik turban one corner of which
seems to flirt with us in feminine coquettishness as he bows and
scrapes. The “Residentee” is awaiting our pleasure, he informs us. From
the cool semi-darkness of the office comes a voice in soft Malay telling
the man to show the Tuans in, and forthwith we enter. After the terrific
glare of out-of-doors we grope momentarily, but our eyes soon
accommodate themselves to the grateful dimness and we see before us a
little brown-skinned man of some forty years, with bristling mustachios,
extending a friendly hand.
He is filled with the importance of the occasion. Are we well? Do we
like Merauke? Are we sufficiently comfortable in the passangrahan? Have
we recovered from the ennui of our long voyage? He showers us with
solicitation as to our welfare and immediately we feel that we are among
friends. It is a habit that these foreign officials have, to make one at
home upon the instant.
Greetings over and assurance given that all is as it should be, we,
running true to American form, get down to business. This is distinctly
painful to the “Residentee,” for as yet we are not really acquainted. He
lifts his hands in remonstrance and exclaims, “Ah, these Americans!” and
shakes his head as though nonplussed at our bustling impetuosity.
“Hurry, hurry, hurry!” he remarks audibly, but really to himself; then
to us: “You must slow down over here or you will not last; the heat, it
is too much.” He tells us this with a sage-like shake of his head.
His desire to please, however, outweighs his scruples against talking
business in the first ten minutes of an acquaintance and he asks us what
he can do for us, in the manner of one who will give anything yet
secretly fears that he may be asked the impossible. These Americans, you
know, think that just anything can be done. A wave of the hand and
presto, it is!
What we want is really a good deal, so, taking a fresh grip on our nerve
and with a deep breath to go on, we request in a low, dulcet voice: “The
loan of the government schooner and crew for a few weeks. We are very
much interested in the Kia Kias and should like to study them in their
homes, far away from outside influences. Will you be so kind as to let
us have the schooner for a trip around the western end of the island,
where the really wild tribes live?”
The Assistant heaves a sigh of relief. “What could be easier!” he
exclaims. His slim brown hand taps a bell on the desk before him and a
“boy” of fifty slides into adamantine immobility beside the doorway of
the sanctum. In a few terse words the captain of the _Nautilus_ is
summoned. It seems that our little Assistant is something of a martinet
with his men. When within range of his eye they straighten up with
ramrod stiffness. In his domain his word is law; rather, he _is_ the
law.
Ula, skipper of the _Nautilus_, has been lounging in the shade of the
Chinese _toko_, or general store, near the dock. The toko is but a few
rods from the Assistant’s office, and the man sent for the skipper
readily finds him. The two enter together and stand at attention while
the Assistant delivers himself of a long harangue in Malay that flows in
so rapid a stream that our unaccustomed ears catch only a small part of
it.
Ula does not seem inordinately happy over the prospect. From the mention
of prampoen and the assistant’s angry tone as Ula utters the word, we
gather that he has a new sweetheart who is occupying his time at
present. The conversation dies away in a moment, and the Assistant later
tells us that Ula wanted to know whether he might take the girl with him
to finish his courting.
Ula departs disconsolately for the schooner. The Assistant has ordered
it made ready for us to-morrow morning. He waves a deprecating hand at
our effusive thanks and says that he is only sorry that he cannot do
more for us. He asks us about America, meaning the United States, and we
chat for an hour. As the time for his siesta draws near we rise to go,
for in the islands one must never interfere with another’s midday sleep;
it isn’t done.
Before we take leave of the obliging little man he asks us to be
permitted as an especial favor to ship a party of five Kia Kias up the
coast a little distance on “our” schooner. They are some natives that
have just finished a one-month term in the local _hoosgow_ or jail. The
offense was trivial. There had been a disagreement in their village with
a visitor and when the argument ended the visitor was deceased.
“We have to check them a little,” remarks the Assistant. “We could not
fix the blame exactly, so we gathered up three men who were implicated
and two of them brought their wives.”
After further assurances on the part of the Assistant that the natives
shall in no way interfere with our convenience on the schooner, and from
us many expressions of our gratitude, we depart. As we walk down the
sweltering roadway along the riverfront we congratulate ourselves on the
success of the interview. The _Nautilus_ will save us many heartbreaking
miles of grueling jungle travel.
In the passangrahan Moh has a “rice-taffle” ready for us. Rice-taffle!
No wonder these Dutch gentlemen indulge in an all-afternoon siesta!
Every noon—rice-taffle! A tremendous bowl of rice, chicken cooked in
four or five different ways,—boiled, fried, roasted, and I don’t know
how to describe the others,—two or three varieties of fish; a peppery
soup-like sauce with which to drench the heaped-up contents of the
platter, and a dozen different sweetmeats, condiments, and garnitures.
It is so good that one invariably overeats and repletion, together with
the sultry heat of midday, brings a drowsiness that makes bed welcome.
Even the ever-businesslike Chinese closes his toko and sleeps until four
o’clock. At that hour, or shortly after, every one wakes up and the
splashing in the bath-house is prodigious. The evening coolness brings
the hour of the promenade and the streets and byways are gay with the
varicolored sarongs that the Malay women affect. The men come forth in
suits of white drill fresh from the dhobie and saunter along with
cigarettes aglow, leading by the hands naked kiddies for whom they have
a very genuine fondness.
Many of the little girls of, say, three to six years wear, suspended
from a single cord around their plump little loins, a pendant that
serves both as covering and ornament. This usually takes the form of a
gold or silver heart of possibly three-inch length and proportionate
width. It is amusing to watch a group of these innocents at play.
Sometimes a small girl’s heart becomes displaced, and hangs unnoticed
for a time upon her hip. This is not at all disconcerting to her or to
her infant male companions. When she discovers the disarrangement of
this sole article of her apparel she will stop play and readjust it with
the utmost unconcern and charming naïveté. Play is then resumed. Her
manner is precisely that of one of our high-school girls who pauses
between sets in tennis to powder her nose.
As we pass the people in the promenade, all from elders down to the
little naked tots, greet us with “_Tabe, Tuan_,” and the elders smile in
fond amusement at their offsprings’ baby lisping of the greeting. We
like the Malays very much; and the Chinese, too, for they are always
pleasant to us.
CHAPTER V
WE’RE OFF!
High tide at nine to-day! On the _Nautilus_ the crew are shortening up
on the anchor chain, for the rusty old hook has been buried in the river
mud for two months. We sail at full tide, which enables us to skirt the
shore of the western flats and save much time in getting out to sea.
Moh has superintended the moving of all our effects to the little
schooner while we have been in the trading-company’s store making some
eleventh-hour purchases of tobacco and tin mirrors for the natives and
cigars for ourselves. The three white men in charge bid us Godspeed,
after many admonitions to take care of ourselves and warnings not to
trust the Kia Kias too far. Grouped in a little knot upon the veranda of
the store, silent, they sadly watch us depart. We, too, hate to say
good-by; we have had some pleasant chats with them.
We go directly to the schooner, anxious to take up the trail to
adventure. Ula is waiting for us beside the wharf in the tiny dinghy. As
we drop into it it sinks with our weight so that the gunwale is scarcely
three inches above water and we have visions of making the short trip to
the _Nautilus_ each for himself, swimming. Nothing more serious than the
shipping of a few gallons of the muddy river water happens, however, and
we arrive alongside the _Nautilus_, in high spirits, though with feet
and legs soaked. We probably shall be much wetter than this before the
trip is over, is the cheering thought that comes to us.
As we clamber up over the schooner’s low rail we scan the deck. Up
forward are our five ex-convicts. Their brief sojourn in the hoosgow has
quieted them down a bit and they are not particularly effusive in their
greetings. In fact, they don’t even notice us, but sit huddled together
just back of the anchor winch with dirty bark-cloth blankets thrown over
their heads. We go forward to look them over and they return our gaze
with a half-conciliatory, half-annoyed expression that makes us grin.
Our grin seems to be taken as an assurance of good-will, for they in
turn smile slightly and one of the women bursts out in a hearty laugh.
From that moment we “belong.” Ula seems anxious to get under way and
comes stumbling forward with two of the crew. Most of our barang is
still on deck, awaiting our orders concerning its disposal, and over
this the trio have some difficulty in making their way. The dinghy
further complicates matters, for it has been hoisted and deposited edge
up beside the rail. One of the crew jumps upon it, as the easiest way,
and runs over it, balancing like a tight-rope walker on the narrow
rolling edge of the thing as though it were a solid sidewalk. His pride
takes a fall, however, for as he jumps from it he finds insecure footing
where the water from the dinghy has made the deck slippery and falls
flat, to the huge delight of our friends the criminals.
The boys hoist the sail on the foremast and the _Nautilus_ swings around
to break out the anchor. This done, Ula snaps a sharp command in Malay
to the boys in the bow, who seize the rusty handles of the winch and
slowly bring the old mud-hook to the surface. How they accomplish this
is a mystery, for at every turn one of the handles of the winch slips on
the shaft, while Ula tries to tighten it with wedges of wood driven into
the handle socket.
Our Kia Kia friends are very much interested in the proceedings and
gather closely around. This gets on Ula’s nerves to such an extent that
he unceremoniously kicks the men out of the way, which they do not seem
to resent particularly; they sit down again out of harm’s way, but keep
up a lively flow of comment. Ula is much disgusted with them and the
glances he gives them make us wonder if they are going to enjoy their
trip home.
The town is fast dropping into the hazy distance, and save for the
chatter of the crew and the natives, and now and then the thumping
splash of a husky comber against the bow, all is silent. Moh places our
dunnage below in the tiny saloon. He carries the groceries down last,
for he will have to cook all of our meals there. The crew cook theirs
over a sort of fireplace built right on deck, just aft of the foremast.
After inspecting the saloon, which contains two sleeping-bunks, we
decide to sleep on deck. The atmosphere of the saloon is hard to
describe. It is hot and stuffy and a strong smell of bilge-water comes
from beneath the floor. No, it isn’t possible to sleep there. Moh grins
when we tell him to place our cots on deck.
We clear the mouth of the river and swing outward on a long tack, for
the wind is coming dead against us. This will make the up-coast trip
slow, but what care we? We have plenty of time and then we may always
console ourselves with the thought, “Well, maybe something will happen.”
As we swerve into the trough of the sea the _Nautilus_ begins to roll
and a groan comes from the Kia Kias on the forward deck. They are
experiencing their first case of seasickness and seem very wretched
indeed. I have been told that seasickness is wholly mental and that
babies are never sick at sea because they have no fear of being so, nor
any knowledge of how others are affected. The poor savages by the
foremast seem to refute this theory, for though they are grown-ups, they
can have had no previous experience of the sea, having come from far
inland, and it is not likely that they have ever discussed seasickness.
They succumb one by one until all are down.
Moh walks by with a stony glare in his eye, as though all were not right
with him, and later becomes a delicate robin’s-egg green around the
gills, but he continues at work with a never-say-die expression that
wins our admiration. Moh is all right, we whisper to ourselves; he’s
game, anyway.
The day wears on, the only diversion being when Ula calls to the men to
tack. He is sitting beside us in the stern with the tiller ropes in
hand. Now and then we attempt to break the monotony by taking a turn at
steering, and silently flatter ourselves that we are doing it as
skilfully as he. But Ula now and then casts a critical glance aloft and
finally takes the ropes from us. A slight tug at one or the other of
them and the sails fill, catching all the wind which we have been
missing. There is an amused grin on Ula’s face. Moh is asleep on the
deck in the shade of the low saloon bulkhead. The sea is very calm and
the sky cloudless except for a few low-hanging clouds which fringe the
horizon in the west. The easy swells lull us into slumber, from which we
are roused—after what seems only ten minutes but is really two hours—by
Moh, who is calling us to _makanan_. This is the Malay word for dinner
and is, I believe, the first word of the language learned by the
traveler.
He has unpacked our camp table and set it on the deck. Our meal consists
of canned goods brought from the good old U. S. A. We purchased a
two-months’ supply of them in Java and Moh is delighted, for all he has
to do to cook them is to put a great bucket of water on the fire, dump
the cans into it, and, when it has boiled a sufficient length of time,
fish them out and open them. He is thrifty, too, for he saves the hot
water in the bucket to wash the dishes with.
We have made only one mistake in picking out our dishes: we purchased
aluminum cups. Every time we essay a mouthful of hot coffee—and Moh
serves it piping hot—there is a sputter and the air becomes lurid with
imprecations. It is astonishing how hot those metal cups can get. Every
time we burn our lips on them Moh looks up with a terrified, wondering
expression, as though in doubt as to whether we are berating him as a
cook or what. The Malay does not understand the soul-satisfaction the
white man gets from swearing. He must have some specific object upon
which to vent his feelings and his invectives invariably take the form
of some terrible expression such as “_Babi kow_,” meaning “You pig,” or
some similarly outrageous figure of speech. Compared with our most
conservative epithets the vocabulary of the Malay is singularly
amateurish.
While Moh clears away the debris of the evening meal we stoke up the old
briers and watch the sunset. In the Indies this is usually one of the
events of the day. Shortly after nightfall, which comes in these
latitudes with surprising rapidity, we peel off our clothes and stretch
out on our cots with no other covering than our pajamas. The sky is a
diamond-studded canopy above us,—blue velvet, unfathomable in depth. We
shall be sound asleep when the moon rises and shall probably miss that,
though it is almost worth waiting for. Above us, but a little to the
south of the zenith, hangs the Southern Cross, which resembles somewhat
a broken kite,—one of those two-sticked kites of boyhood that was
diamond-shaped and had one bowed stick. We fall asleep trying to count
the stars in one of the constellations. As I drop off I wonder drowsily
if it will rain before morning. If it does! Oh, well, what matter? We
can change to dry pajamas.
Ula is still on duty at the tiller when we drift into slumber. He has a
bottle of cognac beside him for company, and for solace, too, we
imagine. He must have hated to leave his lady-love with the courting
just begun. He knows full well that there are many other Ulas in her
vicinity who will do their best to keep her from pining while he is
away. In all probability, though, should he find that in his absence
another has taken his place, he will be just as content with her next
older sister. It really doesn’t matter much.
* * * * *
Six bells. The air is stifling. There is a loud drumming sound over and
around us. As we come wide awake we realize what the matter is. The
_Nautilus_ was headed for a heavy squall and Ula called Moh, who, rather
than waken us, simply spread a heavy tarpaulin over us to protect us
from the rain. It was the smothering and not the storm that roused us.
How he got the covering spread without disturbing us we shall never
know. We rise up on our elbows and peer out from under it. The rain is
coming down in torrents. Ula is still at the tiller. His clothes stick
to him and the water is running in a steady stream from the turned-down
brim of his brown straw hat. He has tied it upon his head with a string
passed underneath his jaw. His water-soaked figure is ludicrous and we
burst into laughter. Ula apparently enjoys the situation, himself, and
does not seem to mind the wetting. The bottle of cognac is still beside
him, so he won’t get cold. His capacity for liquor is a matter of great
pride to him; it is the envy of his fellows and the subject of much
discussion among them.
Like all tropical storms, the squall passes soon and we are able to toss
off the heavy “tarp.” Under it the heat is terrific. We wonder how the
Kia Kias up forward are faring, but are not sufficiently interested to
go there and find out. If Ula and the crew can stand it, they should be
able to. A thorough soaking will do them good, for it is only with rain
that their bodies are ever moistened. They have a constitutional dislike
for water, even as a beverage. For drink they are quite content with the
milk of the cocoanut, the meat of which forms a large part of their
diet.
After the squall the air is cool and deliciously sweet. The breeze comes
again and fills the dripping sails which have been hanging limp and
motionless. Some of the crew are clustered around the fireplace, cooking
fish. They spit them upon slivers broken from one of our packing-cases
and toast them over the open fire. Moh is squatted among them and seems
to be quite at home. Occasional words drift to us, indicating that the
topic of discussion is the usual one,—the virtues of their respective
women. This is a subject that the Malay never seems to tire of. In the
kampongs the women talk likewise of the men. Having nothing else to
occupy their thoughts, no business or serious occupation, naturally they
are interested chiefly in one another and they discuss with the utmost
candor subjects of which the European never speaks.
We listen, and are properly shocked at some of the things said which
bring forth bursts of delighted laughter from the listeners;
nevertheless we cock our ears so as not to miss any of them. One of the
boys is telling how well his sweetheart dances and he gives a
demonstration which to us is lewd in the extreme and occasions
uproarious laughter. His companions slap him on the back and urge him to
continue, but he shakes his head in refusal when Ula calls to him to
come and show the _Tuans_, meaning us. This breaks up the party, for
they believed us to be asleep. They are very reserved in the presence of
the stranger, for they sense that their ways are not ours.
It is only upon ripe acquaintance that the male native will speak of his
family affairs to the white man, though the women seem to be always
ready to gossip.
When the whispering begins again Ula looks at us and grins. He wags his
head as though to say, “It’s too bad, for he is very funny, but I can’t
make him do it.” We are just as well satisfied, and we turn over to our
sleep. Ula has just tossed the empty cognac bottle over the side, where
it bobs away into the darkness in a wabbly dance. The idle thought
drifts through my mind that I should like to cork up some wild message
in that bottle on the chance of its being picked up. But white men who
could read it seldom visit this lonely coast.
We are the first to come in years, except the few “paradise-hunters.”
Some of these have taken the paradise away with them, while others,
seeking the one kind of paradise, have found another and have remained
after having served as the pièce de résistance of some gastronomic
function.
CHAPTER VI
SHIPWRECKED AMONG CANNIBALS
The days have flown almost uncounted. Our native passengers left us
several days ago, after we had passed a large river which it was
impossible for them to cross on account of its width and depth. They had
refused to go home on foot, for this would have necessitated their
traversing unfriendly territory they knew to be dangerous in the
extreme.
Landing on the other side of the river, they were among tribes more or
less friendly to their own and stood an excellent chance of reaching
home in safety.
Their absence was welcome, for they had reduced the tiny forward deck to
the condition of a pigsty. Once dining their stay on board two of them
tried to get friendly with us and came aft like children encroaching on
forbidden ground, but Ula made their stay one of exceedingly short
duration. In fact, they didn’t stay at all. They didn’t even pause, for
as they stepped around the saloon-deck combing Ula spied them and with a
well-directed heave of a large wooden thole-pin snatched from its socket
on the rail sent them scurrying back to their end of the ship.
Five minutes after we had landed them they disappeared in the mystic
silence of the jungle, anxious to gain the safety of their familiar
haunts.
We remained on shore for an hour to stretch our legs, for the close
quarters on the _Nautilus_ make some sort of exercise necessary. We
wandered up-river for a little distance and saw, floating in the
shallows near the shore, seven or eight basking crocodiles which slowly
sank from view as we approached. Many funny little fish, with heads like
frogs and fins in front like short fore legs, flopped and jumped about
on the muddy flats the receding tide had left. We watched them for some
minutes and laughed hugely at the antics of the fiddler-crabs fighting
and trying to drag one another into their respective holes, where the
victor could eat his unfortunate neighbor in peace, secure from
interruption.
Upon our return to the schooner we found Ula holding aloft an almost
empty cognac bottle. Upon his face there was a look of sorrow, for this,
it seemed, was the very last of his once plentiful stock. After
carefully measuring the contents with a speculative eye, he came to the
conclusion that the remaining fluid was sufficient for only one more
drink and raised the bottle to his lips. The cognac disappeared in one
long swallow, and Ula dropped the empty bottle over the rail as though
he were parting from his last friend. This was as it should be, for of
late he had begun to show the effects of quarts previously imbibed. He
seemed able to stand one or two, but many bottles drunk in rather quick
succession were making themselves felt.
Though he was fairly steady on his feet, his eyes told the tale and his
tongue had become noticeably thick. That evening he came to us and
requested that we let him start on the stock we carry in our medicine
kit. Of course we refused, and he sulkily returned to the stern sheets
in disconsolate dejection. Later Ula was seized with a brilliant idea.
His system craved alcohol. He must have it, he told himself. The compass
of the _Nautilus_ held nearly a pint of grain alcohol. His face lighted
with anticipation and before we realized the meaning of his fumbling
with the instrument he had unscrewed the top and had drained the raw
spirits to the last drop. It was a draft to kill a mule and probably
would have ended him, but his tortured stomach refused to retain it.
Enough of it stayed down, however, to reduce Ula to the most satisfying
state of inebriation he had ever experienced. He became very friendly
and most anxious to please, while we just looked at each other. There
was nothing to be done. We thanked Providence that there was no more of
the stuff within his reach and turned away from him in disgust.
That was just an hour or so ago, and we have been sitting reading while
the _Nautilus_ slipped through the water smoothly, as though she were
commanded by a skipper who was the soul of sobriety. There is land to
starboard, a mile or two away, one would judge, and over there a little
distance ahead we see smoke coming from the jungle. It is the first sign
of native life we have seen since leaving Merauke. After a hurried
discussion we ask Ula what the place is, but he is foolishly drunk and
we cannot make out what he says, so we decide for ourselves and tell him
to head for the shore as we wish to visit the place. Ula swings over the
tiller obligingly, and we move at a lively clip across the wind toward
the place.
We shall go ashore and investigate the kampong and, if it interests us,
move our camping-outfit there and settle down for a few days. Moh brings
up our cameras and guns while the crew unfasten the dinghy from its
place beside the rail. We go below, to load some fresh rolls into the
kodaks, where the light is not so strong. Five minutes pass while we are
engaged in this undertaking and speculation as to what kind of kampong
we shall find, when suddenly there is a terrific shock, a rending,
crunching sound, and we pick ourselves up from the saloon floor and gaze
blankly at each other, for the fraction of a moment speechless with
consternation. The cause of the crash is self-evident. We are on a reef.
From beneath the floor comes the gurgle of a torrent of water which is
pouring into the _Nautilus_ through a gaping hole in her bottom. We are
high upon a submerged reef of rocky coral, shipwrecked among cannibals!
What the tribe is that lives on shore and how friendly it is remain to
be seen. The moment is one of those deadly potential eternities that
either make one lose all self-control or become cold sober. Luckily, we
are not of the hysterical type and our first thought is to get our guns,
food, and cameras to a place of safety on shore. The schooner may slide
off the reef into deep water at any moment, and then we shall be in a
pickle.
Working like mad, we begin heaving our possessions up on deck, and I go
up to see that it is properly stowed in the dinghy. The crew are working
like demons, and Ula, sobered by the catastrophe, has ordered the men to
get the anchor hooked into the reef and the chain drawn taut to hold us
there.
I take command and order some of the men to get the dinghy overside, and
into it we pack all that it will hold. It is sent ashore, and five trips
are necessary to transport the whole of our outfit. We go ashore with
the third load to see that it is properly cared for. There is a high
surf running, and in order to get the dinghy through it without soaking
the baggage we have to jump overboard into waist-deep water and help
steer it through the breakers. The barang is piled up just above the
reach of the incoming surges, but the tide seems to be rising.
It is necessary to get the stuff higher up, out of reach of the water,
and we bend our energies in that direction. The beach seems to be
deserted, and we wonder whether or not the natives have discovered our
presence. We are soon to be informed as to this, for suddenly we hear a
guttural grunt and an explosive, “_Uhumen!_ [Go away!]” coming from the
fringe of tall _tapa_ grass that fringes the beach. We gaze in startled
surprise in the direction of the sound and even as we look there spring,
like mushrooms, from the thick grass a long row of black heads which
seem to number hundreds.
We stop work for the moment and stand in indecision, facing the watching
line of feather-crowned heads. Three of the natives rise from their
crouching position and advance toward us, waving their arms and
shouting, “_Uhumen!_” From their menacing manner it is evident that we
are de trop, that they wish us to depart. This is out of the question,
for our only means of conveyance is at least temporarily on the rocks. A
rapid calculation tells us that we are about three hundred miles from
the town of Merauke. To walk to it is out of the question, also, for we
could not carry sufficient provender, together with our expensive
equipment, to sustain us during the journey. We are between the hammer
and the anvil. The only solution of the difficulty is to make friends
with the natives.
The best way to do this is to assert ourselves immediately, to show
ourselves masters of the situation. If we allow the natives to take the
initiative, things will go hard with us. They have all seen white men
before, or, if not, have heard much about them and fear them.
We must seem to justify that fear. As the three Kia Kias draw near to us
we beckon to them and, pointing to the barang, tell them sternly in
Malay, to carry it up out of reach of the tide. The middle one draws
himself up proudly at this and again points to the wreck of the
_Nautilus_, saying, “_Uhumen!_” Again we indicate the barang and order
it carried up the beach. The others in the grass have risen now and are
watching intently but in silence the action of their chiefs.
The first rule in dealing with the native is never to allow him to
disobey the orders of a white man, and we have given an order. It must
be carried out. Once more we command them to move the barang, stepping
close to the middle chief, who seems to be in authority. He refuses for
them all. The time for action has come. He receives a forceful blow on
the point of his jaw; without a sound he goes down. His six-foot body
stretches out full-length on the sand, lies quiet for the moment; then,
his senses slowly returning, he rises painfully and, cowering before us,
goes to the pile of barang, selects the lightest of the pieces, carries
it to a spot we designate, and deposits it there. Then he turns to the
others and calls to them to come and assist him with the work.
We do not understand the meaning of his words and as a precautionary
measure draw our Colt “forty-fives,” ready for an emergency. The
automatics can speak a rapid language. Spears and war-clubs are not much
of a match for them. We know the natives will not stand against
firearms. At the first bark of the heavy pistols they would disappear
into the jungle, never to return.
Moh seems to have vanished and we turn to look for him. There he is,
standing so close behind us that he is like our shadow. His face is
positively green. Poor devil! he is scared speechless! With the safe
stowage of our equipment we stop to consider for a moment. The spot we
are now on is well above the reach of the tide and will make an
admirable camp site. It is far enough from the thick-growing cocoanuts
to render us safe from surprise attack. We decide to pitch the tents
here.
Since our first show of authority the natives have withdrawn to a
discreet distance and are seated cross-legged in the sand, intently
watching our preparations for camp-making. They are chattering volubly
among themselves, though whether in anger or not, we cannot tell. Among
our boxes we come to a carton of coarse shag tobacco which has been
broken open and the idea comes that it might not be amiss to make them a
little present as a sort of friendship offering.
We gather up an armful of the little blue packages and walk toward the
savages slowly. They all rise to their feet as we approach; they are not
quite sure of our intentions, and are ready to fly at the first sign of
trouble. That unceremonious chastening of their chief in the face of
terrific odds has instilled in them a wholesome awe of us.
Conversation is difficult, for we do not speak their language. After a
time, however, we seem to make our intentions understood, and a smile
appears on the faces of some of them, here and there, as the light of
comprehension bursts upon them. These in turn tell their fellows, and
soon broad smiles wreathe the faces of all, even including the sober
face of the chastened one. Their manner becomes almost affable and we
walk slowly around the semicircle, passing to each a package of the
shag. None of them thank us, except with their eyes, but all of them
immediately devote their attention to the packets, tearing them open and
stuffing whole mouthfuls of tobacco into cavernous cheeks that distend
in funny pouch-like roundness, reminding us of the monkeys we saw six
months ago on the sacred island in the Queen River in Borneo.
With the gift of the tobacco we seem to have acquired membership in
their clan and they cluster around us in apparent friendliness, much to
our discomfort. One and all are besmeared with rancid cocoanut-oil mixed
with various earth pigments, and the odor is terrific. This will never
do, we tell ourselves, and we motion them to withdraw a little. They are
obedient and return to the place where they were sitting before. They
are about twenty yards from the spot where the boys are erecting the
tents. This is a sufficient distance for comfort, so we take up pieces
of driftwood and, beginning at the grass-line of the beach, draw a
circle in the sand around the tents. This, we inform them by means of
signs, is the dead-line and none may pass it without permission. They
all nod in comprehension.
Moh regards us with reverential awe. They cannot be kept too far away to
suit him. He knows better than we that the Kia Kias are not to be
trusted too far. They may be friendly one moment and the very next turn
upon one unaware. He tells us so, and with the warning comes the
adjurations of our friends in Merauke. A little precaution will not be
amiss, we decide, and our rifles are placed within reach, ready for
instant use. Our automatics are our constant companions. Somehow,
though, it all seems unnecessary. We have done, and intend them, no
wrong.
The incoming tide is playing havoc with the _Nautilus_. Great combers
are breaking over her rail on the weather side and she is careening
drunkenly, her masts canted over at a sharp angle. Ula and the men
depart for her, to salvage what they can before she slides off the reef
into deep water.
When they return they bring two bags of water-soaked rice which they
have rescued from the schooner’s hold. They report that she is a total
loss and can never be saved. The coral has torn a gaping hole in her
bottom and the planking, including the keelson, is crushed beyond
repair. The outlook is not pleasant. When we ask Ula how soon some Malay
trading-schooner is likely to happen along, he cheerfully informs us
that this is the storm season and that one may not make this part of the
coast for months.
[Illustration: Seated at a discreet distance, watching our camp-making
intently]
[Illustration: There had been a disagreement in the village]
We look at each other blankly for a moment and then laugh. We were
looking for adventure, weren’t we? Well, we have it. We shall have ample
time to study the cannibals at home. Our opportunity could not be
better, but we wonder—Oh, well, when in doubt—dine!
Moh is nonplussed at our decision. To dine we must have water. Where to
get it worries him. He has visions of himself going to some lonely
water-hole back in the jungle, with stealthy Kia Kias creeping up on
him, mouths watering in anticipation, to jerk him hence. His face is
positively pitiful as he looks at us and says:
“Tuan, ini tida ayer minum. [Master, there is no drinking-water.]”
We allay his fears, for we tell him that we will go with him to find it,
and, taking one of the natives for a guide, we set out to find it. It is
always plentiful in the jungle, for there are numberless little brooks
threading the deep silences of the thickets not far from the shore-line.
A hundred yards from the camp we come upon a small stream from which we
fill the buckets, and Moh soon has dinner under way. As night falls we
mount guard in turns of four hours on and four off. We are under
constant attack while on duty, for the mosquitos swarm upon us in
clouds. With the help of veils, gloves, and choking smudge we worry
through our respective watches.
Moh does not sleep at all the first night, but sits in the drifting
smoke of the burning cocoa husks in downcast self-commiseration. We
cannot quite make out why he left happy Java to come on a fool trip like
this. He thinks all Americans are crazy, for they do not seem to know
fear. He keeps the coffee-pot working for us and fills the lamp once
when the gasolene runs low. The mantle-lamp, hanging between the tents
and the forest, throws a white glare over the camp site. We are burning
it for two reasons: it lights up the jungle approach to the camp and
draws the myriad insects to its killing heat in swarms. Thus we shall be
warned of the approach of danger and at the same time, to some extent,
rid of the pests. When on guard we keep in the shadow of a board from a
packing-case placed between us and the lamp, so that the light may not
blind us with its glare.
The murmur of the surf seems to whisper to us of lurking dangers and the
night is eery with unaccustomed sounds that come from the jungle. As the
breeze stirs the fronds of the cocoas they rasp together. Now and then a
falling nut thumps to the ground with startling abruptness. Each sound
is magnified by our nervous expectancy, until the night becomes hideous
with sounds and the grotesque shadows the ferns cast in the lamplight
move weirdly to and fro like creeping savages. More than once we sit
bolt upright with rifles tightly clutched as some shadow takes on a
human shape or moves slowly toward us. The rising moon casts a wan
half-light over the scene, for it is in its last quarter. The scene is
one of indescribable beauty and never-to-be-forgotten tensity. Even the
crew of the _Nautilus_ are crouched around a tiny smudge of their own,
wide awake and silent. The air is surcharged with an electric
expectancy; the darkness a malign mantle of doubt. How the hours drag,
and how we wish for dawn?
[Illustration: Those who failed to get a package came to the dead-line
and asked for one]
[Illustration: They may be friendly at one moment and turn upon one the
very next]
CHAPTER VII
WE ESTABLISH DIPLOMATIC RELATIONS
Shall we ever forget that sunrise and how the glow in the east chased
the pregnant shadows? Never! We are not afraid, that is, afraid in the
usual sense of the term. If the natives had attacked us we should have
joyously risen to the occasion and put Mr. Colt to the fore to argue for
us. It was the suspense we minded. Those things which we can see and
gage with our full consciousness never bother us. It is the unseen and
mysterious that we dread. When one does not know what to expect, nor
from which direction the danger may come, it is the nerve tension, the
high-keyed alertness, that saps the system of its reserve stamina and
makes the goose-flesh crawl along the spine at the slightest
unidentified sound. It is the intangible, the unseen, the insidious
stealthy danger that creeps upon one unawares, that strikes in the dark
where one is unable to strike in return, that make the night vigil
nerve-racking. Genial old Imagination creates dangers that do not exist.
Dawn is welcome to the watcher, always, but doubly so when one is
literally between covetous devils and the deep sea.
To control, one must gather things into the grip of one’s own hands. One
must take the initiative; therefore, we shall go early this morning to
the kampong. We are just making ready the things we shall need while
away from camp when there drifts to us on the fresh breeze a wild
cadence which quickens the pulse. Whether it is war-cry or song of
welcome we do not know, but it sounds ominous to our unaccustomed ears,
at any rate. Our heads pop out from the tents _concerto_, much like
those of the impossible policemen of the movies, and our eyes pop also
at what we see. In the distance comes the gang. They are making their
way toward our camp with considerable esprit de corps, weapons wildly
waving and throats roaring. This will bear looking into, we feel, and
the Colts are loosened tentatively in their holsters. As the savages
draw near we heave a sigh or two of relief, for we realize that this at
least is not The Moment.
Those who are not yelling at the top of their leather lungs are laughing
and they come to a walk as they approach our sacred demesne. Obedient to
our instructions of yesterday, they halt at the furrow in the sand that
marks the limits of our arm’s-length hospitality and stand there like a
throng of spoiling-for-something children. We advance to meet them and
they chatter volubly at us and hold out their hands as though demanding
something. One of them, who evidently has heard the Malay traders name
the weed in his own tongue, asks—or, rather, shouts,—“_Rocco!_” which is
Malay for “tobacco.” It is the old familiar “rush act” that they are
giving us and we are too much relieved at their unwarlike attitude to
refuse them.
The open carton is dragged out with despatch and each of the natives is
presented with one blue package. The black men cavort around like a lot
of exuberant school-boys while awaiting their turn to receive the little
present. Finally they begin to cluster too close and as the task of
distributing the tobacco becomes difficult and contact with greasy,
smelly arms and clutching hands inevitable, we toss the remaining
packets over the heads of the nearer ones and there ensues a wild
scramble.
Many of them lose out in the mêlée and must do without, while many have
received two portions. Those who fail to get any come to the dead-line
and with hands outstretched ask for some, but this we refuse. They must
be taught decorum. They hang around for a time and finally drift away in
the direction of the kampong, where their more successful brothers have
gone. Some of them seem to be much put out, and we turn over in our
minds the advisability of calling them back and giving each a package of
tobacco. A moment’s consideration, however, convinces us that this would
be an admission of weakness and would be taken advantage of later. When
the white man has concluded a matter he must let the native know that it
is settled for all time.
When the last of the cannibals has departed and we reenter our tent to
conclude our preparations for the visit to the kampong we encounter Moh.
With the coming of the howling crew of savages he dived into the tent to
hide, and he now crawls from beneath a cot as nearly white as his olive
skin will permit.
Moh believed this to be his last hour on earth and he tried to prolong
the agony by hiding. He is speechless with fright, for he could hear the
racket outside the tent, but could not see what was transpiring. Never,
never again will he leave his fair home in Java to go adventuring with
Americans! His cup is brimming over and his voice, when it returns,
quavers in a falsetto ecstasy of trepidation. As a fighting-man, Moh is
a good cook. That suffices.
Our march to the kampong is one of many thrills. The natives whom we
believed to have returned to the village have simply withdrawn to the
screening jungle and from its cover watch us with none too friendly
interest. They do not like the idea of our visit, for their women are in
the village and they are not sure that we may not take a liking to some
of them and carry them off. This has been done in times past by other
white men in other kampongs and for all we know may have been done right
here. Our purpose in coming to their country is, of course, inexplicable
to the savages and necessarily we are objects of great distrust.
Now and then we see shadows flitting noiselessly from tree trunk to
thick-growing shrubbery as they follow our course and twice we encounter
stalwart warriors standing like sentinels near the pathway as though
disdainful of concealment. These, as we smilingly address them, merely
grunt a non-committal reply and glower at us through narrowed lids. As
we pass them they withdraw into the undergrowth, to travel silently
abreast of us but well out of sight.
When we finally step out of the dimness of the jungle into the clearing
of the kampong we find an apparently deserted village. News of our
coming has preceded us, and all the inhabitants are hiding indoors. One
glance down the little street shows us that the kampong is different
from the one we visited at Merauke. This one consists of five low shacks
each of which is tenanted by several families, and it has no enclosing
wall. Each house is similar to its neighbor and measures roughly, one
would say, fifty feet in length by twenty in width. The side walls must
be seven or eight feet in height and the roof rises to a ridge about
fifteen feet above the ground. Centrally located in the street end of
the house is the only door of which it boasts, and perched above and
around this dark opening are grisly reminders of deceased foemen who
have passed beyond via the roasting-pit. Over each of the doorways hang
the skulls of several human beings, interspersed with those of
crocodiles that the braves of the household have killed in their
hunting-excursions.
Before the first of the shacks a short, forked sapling is planted and
from each of the lopped-off branches of the fork there grins at us in
loose-jawed mockery a sun-bleached reminder that the Kia Kias are a
people of perverted taste. As we near the entrance of this dwelling we
are greeted by a savage whom we do not remember having seen before. He
is clad in the conventional nothingness, but is adorned with the gayest
of feathered headgear. He carries two throwing-spears and a dainty stone
mace that would cause complete anæsthesia in an elephant. That stone
war-club in the hands of a boy of sixteen would spoil a whole day for
us, if he could wield it, but in the hands of the six-foot savage who
fashioned it for real use it is positively ruinous.
The black man greets us with a grunt. That grunt may mean anything, we
tell ourselves, and proceed to translate it as one of friendliness and
welcome. By means of the sign language we endeavor to convey the fact
that we are come as friends and are paying our duty call in return for
the kindly interest shown us only this morning. During our Delsarte
exercises others of the clan approach to gaze at us with suspicious
eyes, and Moh, who carries the cameras and a box of tin trinkets
intended for the women, draws closer to our heels.
[Illustration: We made presents of tin jewelry to the natives, but what
they wanted was tobacco]
[Illustration: Feathered head-dresses moving through the tall grass told
us of the natives watching our progress toward the kampong]
Evidently our meaning becomes clear to them, for they unbend a little
and a smile flits over some of the paint-besmeared visages that now
surround us. We have come to make some presents to the women, for they
rule the kampongs, but just now they are nowhere in sight. We ask for
them, and loud chatter ensues. At first the men seem a little dubious as
to our intentions, but by showing them a package of tobacco and
indicating that they have already tasted of our generosity we make them
understand that we merely wish to present the women with a token of our
good-will.
One of the crowd is despatched by the chief to round up the timorous
females and after some delay they appear, huddled in a hand-holding
group, at the other end of the village, which end they firmly refuse to
leave. It is beneath the dignity of a white man to go to the native, so
we simply stand and wait, though with apparent annoyance. The chief—or,
as they call him, _kapala kampong_—senses that we are somewhat miffed at
the reluctance of the women and takes things into his own hands. Turning
toward the women, he bellows to them to come immediately. The commands
of the chief in matters of this kind seem to carry some weight, for the
women saunter in our direction, trying to appear coyly indifferent, but
probably scared. Finally, when they have entered the circle of men which
opens to receive them, we break the silence and turn to Moh with a
request for the box of trinkets. In it are gold-washed bracelets and
chains that glitter enticingly in the sunlight, and we expect the women
to break into cries of extreme delight when we open it. We are not a
little surprised, as we display the contents, at the utter lack of
enthusiasm; even when we go so far as to place the necklaces upon them,
the women merely regard the trinkets with mild curiosity.
Our little _coup de maître_ has fallen flat, so to speak. One of the
dusky damsels relieves the situation for us. She is inclined to be
forward, but this we do not think of censuring, for it saves the day.
She says in very good Malay, “_Ada rocco?_” It is tobacco they want.
Luckily, we have a little with us and when it is distributed among the
ladies, who immediately fill their mouths with it, diplomatic relations
are opened. They seem ready to entertain almost any proposal, within
reason, that we may make. We seize the opportunity to impress upon them
that as long as we are their guests and are treated as such, each member
of the tribe will receive his or her daily ration of tobacco. All this
palaver, carried on as it is in the sign language, takes time, but the
savages seem to catch our meaning with increasing facility. Yes, we are
getting along famously. We even essay the making of a photograph or two,
but the cameras are regarded with suspicion, so we desist and let the
matter rest until we shall have become better acquainted. There will, no
doubt, be plenty of time for picture-taking.
With a sweeping gesture, we indicate the rest of the kampong, and the
chief, not to be outdone in generosity, gives us the key to the city by
means of an all-embracing wave of his arm. This is as it should be, and
we thank him, with a “we-expected-as-much” air, and proceed to inspect
the entire place. In fact, the only one of us who does not seem to be
quite at ease is Moh. He is having a bad day.
[Illustration: Twice we encounter stalwart warriors standing like
sentinels, as though disdainful of concealment]
[Illustration: The body is placed in a sitting position after being
gaily decorated for the funeral]
CHAPTER VIII
WE TAKE UP QUARTERS IN THE KAMPONG
Our first visit has turned out so well and the natives seem so friendly
that there seems to be no reason why we should not move camp so as to be
near them and thus save a long hike through the jungle every time we
wish to see them. A walk through the jungle is the occasion of a fight
with mosquitos, particularly at this time of year, February, which is
the beginning of the rainy season. With the assistance of several of the
younger men we transfer our belongings from the beach to the kampong and
settle down for a long visit. This kampong is as good as any to study
the natives in and the inhabitants seem fairly trustworthy.
Our tent is placed, this time, between two of the large family shacks,
and after a day or two we begin to feel quite at home. The natives do
not interfere with us, and as we are careful not to impose upon them,
all is well. The first night of our stay in the kampong is one of
sadness for the natives, we find, for one of their very old men has
passed away in its course. He has been ailing a long time, they tell us,
and it has surprised them all that he should last so long. They are very
much like civilized people in the affection they appear to feel for any
sick or ailing member of their immediate family.
We stumble upon a Kia Kia mourning party quite unexpectedly. When one of
these people dies the body is placed in a sitting posture in the spot
where death overtook him, if that is in the house, and his nearest
relatives decorate him with fresh paint and feathers. There is no
wailing while the body is kept in the house. One or two members of his
family hold a vigil beside him and fan the flies away, while others go
to the burial ground to prepare the grave. This is usually about six
feet deep, but as the body must be placed within it seated there is a
shelf built two feet from the bottom on which the deceased rests. When
the grave is ready—and its preparation may consume three or four
days—the body is transferred to it with much solemnity. The grave is not
filled with earth, but a framework covered with a heavy thatch of
palm-leaves is placed over the dead and the earth is piled to a depth of
two feet on that. As the body is lowered into the grave the relatives
begin a quavering chant and all present seem to feel deeply the loss of
their kinsman.
They surround their burial places with strong fences, for if any one
were to walk across a grave he must inevitably break through its thin,
ill-supported top, which would be disconcerting, to say the least. One
of our neighbor’s pigs, an exceptionally large and heavy one, one day
wanders into the cemetery and, judging from the howl of wrath that
ensues, raises havoc in the graveyard. At any rate, when the noise has
quieted down, the pig is dead, and for some reason it is buried in the
grave it has just despoiled.
The death of the old man casts a gloom over the entire kampong and for a
few days we leave the inhabitants to their own devices. The few kodak
pictures we have snapped aroused their resentment to such an extent that
we have decided discretion to be the better part of destitution. We fill
diaries, these days, with notes of happenings observed from a discreet
distance.
One of the things that comes to our notice is the way the women gather
cocoanuts. When the family larder is low, one of the men will call the
attention of one of the women to the fact and she dutifully prepares to
replenish the stock. Her preparations are interesting. It is a
considerable distance straight up in the air to the crown of a
full-bearing cocoanut-palm, and the nuts cluster well up in the lower
fronds about forty feet from the ground. The tapering trunk offers a
good grip for the legs and one could climb it easily by simply clasping
the legs about it after the fashion of our own boyhood, but the Kia Kia
has a method all his own.
[Illustration: The native climbs a cocoanut-palm in a series of humps
and stretches, like a giant inch-worm]
[Illustration: Making fire. A piece of hard wood is rotated by hand
while in contact with a softer piece]
When about to ascend the trunk, the woman first gathers a bunch of long
grass which she twists into a rope and ties snugly about her ankles.
This done, the feet are placed against the trunk of the palm, with the
soles gripping it, while the grass binding on the ankles serves as the
fulcrum of a lever of which the lower leg forms the long end. The legs
are bowed outward so that with set muscles a surprising grip is
obtained. With the feet in this position, the arms grasp the trunk and
lift the body upward six or eight inches and the legs are drawn up to a
higher position. In this manner the native proceeds upward like a great
inch-worm, in a series of humps and stretches. When the top is reached
one hand only is clasped around the trunk, while the other twists the
nuts off their stems. This is done by merely grasping the lower surface
of the nut and rotating it until the fibers of the stem are broken. The
nut is then allowed to drop to the ground, where it lands with a thud
and a bounce that make one shudder at the thought of what it might do
were it to land squarely upon one’s head. When a sufficient number of
ripe nuts are gathered, the woman descends the trunk much as she climbed
upward, though this seems to be a more arduous undertaking. Apparently,
however, this is due to fatigue rather than to the actual difficulty of
climbing down, for these people have no stamina and seem to tire
quickly.
The cocoanut supplies both food and drink to the Kia Kia. True, he eats
many other things, but the flesh of this fruit is the great staple, the
others being sago cake, surf-fish, wild pig, bush kangaroo, and “long
pig” (human flesh), the use of each being in ratio to the order named.
When a Kia Kia is thirsty he goes to the pile of nuts beside the house
and selects one that appeals to him, walks to a shady place, and
leisurely sits down. He places the nut between his feet, which are drawn
well against the body, and with a deft blow of his stone war-club breaks
the thick husk at the small end of the nut. This he grips in his teeth
and peels off, holding the nut between his palms, with his elbows
raised. After the husk is removed one blow of the club opens the end of
the nut and the cool water is attainable.
The Kia Kias do not drink. That is, they do not drink in the sense that
we use the term. When a Kia Kia desires water, he wants it in sufficient
volume to wet his throat and stomach at one and the same instant, so he
simply throws back his head, opens his gullet, and without swallowing
lets the fluid run in and down. It goes down in one continuous stream.
Nowhere in the world can one see a similar operation. It is absolutely
unique and all Kia Kias have the same drinking—let us call it technique.
Their sago is prepared in a simple manner. The palm from which the
starch is derived is indigenous to their jungles, and we are told that
one large trunk of, say, two-foot thickness and twenty-foot length will
supply food for four persons for a year. When sago is to be prepared a
palm is felled and the pithy center is scraped from it, macerated with
pestles, and soaked in water. The water dissolves the starch content
and, when evaporated, leaves the starch ready for immediate consumption.
The moist starch is molded into cakes which are dried bone-dry, and in
this form it seems to keep indefinitely. In preparation for eating, the
cake is simply softened with water and toasted over a fire until cooked
sufficiently to suit the individual taste. With the exception of the
surf-fish, the other articles of Kia Kia diet are seldom eaten except on
some special occasion, as at a feast. The surf-fish are gathered with
each full tide, but of course only the natives on the sea-coast get
these. They are always cooked, never eaten raw. In fact, the Kia Kias
eat everything but cocoanut cooked, and even cook that sometimes.
The heads of enemies, both animal and human, are kept as trophies
denoting the prowess of the hunter or warrior. Boar tusks are made into
armlets, and the greatness of a hunter is easily determined by the
number of these that adorn his arms. In the case of a human enemy the
head is severed from the body and smoked after the brains have been
removed. It is kept carefully, within the house of the man who collected
it, until the ravages of time and multitudinous insects have removed the
last remaining traces of dried flesh from it, and it then becomes a
mural decoration for the house or graces the doorway of the shack. In
the case of the human enemy the body is always eaten; that is, when the
feast can be compassed with no great danger of news of the orgy coming
to the ears of the punishing white men who rule the country. These
feasts are becoming increasingly infrequent, but cannibalism still
exists and perhaps a dozen cases yearly are brought to the attention of
the authorities. For each of the cases that come to the notice of the
Assistant in Merauke there are many that never come to light, for the
natives have held them in great secrecy of late.
The skulls of deceased foemen sometimes litter up the place to such an
extent that the children play with them as with toys, and one little
black rascal—the son of the chief, by the way—seems to take a particular
delight in hearing his mother describe the affrays in which his father
collected them. We are so fortunate as to get a snap-shot of her
entertaining the youngster in this way, and later secure one of the
little shaver trying to pile them one upon the other, like one of our
kiddies at play with building-blocks. He is so engrossed in his attempt
to balance them that he fails to notice that we are taking his picture.
* * * * *
As the savages have no matches, they obtain fire in a crude but very
practical way. It takes several of them to do it, for they do not care
to exert themselves much. In a piece of soft, very dry wood they make a
small indentation into which they insert the point of a thin, round
stick of ironwood or similar hard, close-grained wood three or four feet
in length. Holding the stick between the palms of their hands, they
rotate it rapidly, meanwhile pressing it into the softer wood, the
pulverized fiber of which finally ignites from the friction. When the
wood dust is smoldering, small bits of dried tinder are piled around it
and the whole is blown gently into flame. The operation consumes about
twenty minutes and on account of this and the labor involved their
household fires are seldom allowed to go out; but a supply of the soft
wood is kept on hand for use in an emergency.
The Kia Kias are extremely lazy, we find; in many little ways they show
that they will not exert themselves in the slightest if they can avoid
doing so. If one of them is walking along and happens to see something
lying on the ground that he desires, will he stoop to pick it up? Never!
He simply grasps the object between his great and second toe and raises
the foot to his hand, and he does it gracefully, never losing his poise
or missing his stride.
On an afternoon, shortly after the heat of midday, the men gather in the
shade of the cocoas back of the kampong to discuss the latest scandal or
politics. Inasmuch as the kapala kampong, or chief, holds his position
solely by the sufferance of the others, or possibly because of some
trait of natural leadership inherent in him, changes in administration
frequently occur. These are in the main caused by the chief’s forming a
liaison with the wife or daughter of another influential member of the
tribe without giving sufficient remuneration. Then the fight is on. It
takes the form of lengthy diatribes by the injured party and much
muckraking. The daily papers (the ladies) drop in to listen at first and
then monopolize the conversation, as is the general custom elsewhere.
They settle the argument, for they get in the last word. Here in Kia Kia
Land the women literally “run the ranch.” It behooves the aspirant for
leadership to stand well with them, for in the end it is their will that
is done. The only thing that the women have not been successful in is to
make the men work. They often make them fight, but it is much easier for
them to do the chores themselves than to try to force the men to do
them. Hence, all Kia Kia men are gentlemen of leisure.
[Illustration: One little fellow takes great delight in hearing his
mother describe the battles in which his father collected his trophies]
[Illustration: After the heat of midday the men gather in the shade to
discuss the latest scandal or politics]
As the heat is almost intolerable under our tent, we, too, withdraw to
the grateful shade of the fringe of the jungle, and they clear a space
for us most genially. There is a little group of them sitting on our
left. What they are doing is very interesting. They are eating dried
mud. That’s it,—just plain dried mud. We hardly believe it when first it
comes to our notice, but upon close examination—and invitation, too, to
join them—we find it to be true. The dirt is a sort of heavy yellow
clay, of which they have several large chunks. From time to time one or
another of them breaks off a portion and crumbles off pieces the size of
a thimble which he munches with apparent relish. The dogs, of which
there are many, sit within the circle of the group and with hungry eyes
watch the proceedings. They refuse the clay if it is offered them, but
continue to gaze at their masters just as though they thought the men
were fooling them and were in reality eating something palatable to the
canine taste.
The clay is washed down with copious drafts of cocoanut water taken a
pint at a—well, “irrigation” is the only word that seems to suit the
process. In response to our stumbling inquiries as to why they eat dirt,
they indicate that it is _bagoose_, or good for them. We come to the
conclusion that it must supply some mineral substance otherwise lacking
in then diet.
Some of the men are busy with their toilets. They are all fops when it
comes to personal appearance. Several of them are sitting upon their
haunches or with outstretched legs, with the inner lid of a Malay
tobacco-box held upright for a mirror, busy with a lip-stick of bamboo
upon which is smeared a mixture of lime and water. This they spread on
in layers of varying thickness; or, if the whim strikes them, they will
besoot their already dusky skin with black and outline thereon circles
composed of white dots and red lines. One dandy, who has been leisurely
fashioning a rattan handle for a stone war-club head, pauses in his
labor and from the wicker basket or gauntlet on his arm—which, by the
way, is his only pocket—takes a small pouch of kangaroo hide containing
his war-paint. This is yellow ochre in its native state. Breaking off a
fragment of it, he pulverizes it between his palms, then, with the
powder heaped equally in each hand, bends over in the manner of one
about to wash the face and briskly rubs the color over his entire face
and neck. The surplus he blows off by protuding the lower lip and
exhaling forcibly. His exertion over the club handle evidently started
the perspiration and this is his method of powdering his nose.
One Beau Brummel whom we dub “Little Playmate” for lack of a better
name, because he is really such a hideous sample of humanity, seems to
have some difficulty with his breathing and has removed his nose tubes
to inspect his nose. The tubes are slightly over an inch in diameter,
but the facility with which he reinserts them in the widely distended
sides of the nostrils makes evident the fact that he could wear even
larger ones without serious discomfort.
The majority of the women are down at the beach, for it is high tide and
the surf-fish are close inshore. The women will bring in many of these
queer little fellows, which have an odd habit of puffing themselves up
like tightly distended rubber balloons the minute they are taken from
the water. They are of a bright-blue color when freshly caught, but the
delicate hues soon fade, after death, to a somber olive. These fish are
considered a delicacy by all of the Malay-speaking peoples, and the
Polynesians, too.
As soon as the women return the company in the grove will break up and
all will repair to their respective shacks, where they will gather
around the fires and roast the fish on spits, eat their sago cake, and
at the same time pet the dogs and pigs which wander in and around the
family circles, as much at home, and quite as welcome, as any one
present. In the waning sunlight of late afternoon these simple groups
engaged in homely intercourse at their frugal meals are a pleasing
sight. The leaping flames of the firelight cast a ruddy glow over their
naked forms, bringing into relief the rugged contours of their torsos
and faces. As the evening creeps upon them they drift away, one by one,
to the smoke-filled shacks, where the smudge protects them from the
mosquitos. By the time darkness has come they are all inside, where they
gossip and carry on for an hour or two before finally falling off to
sleep.
[Illustration: Eating mud! That’s it, just plain, dried mud]
[Illustration: “Little Playmate” readjusts his nose-tubes]
Our own meals Moh serves beneath the protecting klambu, which encloses
within its spacious tent-like interior our camp table and several
folding-chairs. The large gasolene lamp, which is a continual source of
wonder to the natives, lights the camp with almost daytime brilliance,
and we doubly enjoy our dinner in the cool, refreshing air of early
evening.
During the month of February it grows dark shortly after six in Kia Kia
Land. As we are continuing the night sentry duty, which entails somewhat
broken slumber, the one of us who takes second watch turns in after an
after-dinner pipe, while the other mounts guard and for want of better
company talks to Moh until that worthy has finished with the dishes. His
fears are slowly diminishing, which fact we ascribe in part to the eyes
one of the dusky maidens has cast upon him. We have, however, stopped
the incipient affair with threats of dire punishment. Moh has a large
respect for our ability to punish and dutifully refrains from returning
the amorous glances of the charmer, who finds it convenient to pass the
cook-tent every now and then. To complicate matters, she speaks a little
Malay. As we keep Moh near us at all times, there is little to fear and
we warn him of how her Kia Kia “husband” will prepare him for the
roasting-pit without interference from us. Moh tells us volubly how much
he loves his _bagoose prempuan_ in Jahwa (Java), and we listen with
amused tolerance. The Malay does not live that is not susceptible to the
charms of the gentler sex, and Moh is no exception.
There is a young moon, and as it rises from the palms that fringe the
point that stretches seaward on the left of our camp the dogs gather in
what seems to be an indignation meeting. Their howling makes the night
hideous. There must be fully a hundred in the pack and each is trying to
outdo the others in the most soul-rasping, blood-curdling oratorio
imaginable. This is a nightly occurrence whenever there is a moon and is
one of the things that linger long in the memory. In no other place in
the world, it seems to us, have we ever heard the equal of these Kia Kia
dogs. Their howls might be the wails of long-departed spirits in
mourning over their untimely demise and subsequent place upon the menu.
CHAPTER IX
THE STORY OF THE SWISS SCIENTIST
With the passing of the days our hosts forget the gloom caused by the
death of the old man and resume their usual laughing, care-free
demeanor, much to our relief. They spend hours in the shade of our tent,
during which time we pick up many of their words,—enough, in fact, to
enable us to converse in a limited way with them. Curiously intermingled
with the pure words of their somewhat limited vocabulary are many of
either pure Malay or Malayan derivation, and the presence of these, we
find, helps us greatly.
[Illustration: The hairdresser plaits long strands of raffia into the
kinky wool of the Kia Kias]
[Illustration: The shiny inner surface of a Malay tobacco-box serves
them as a mirror]
By writing all their words down phonetically and setting the meaning
beside them, we are able to study the language, which is a surprisingly
simple one. They have no writing and their means of counting is limited
to the ten digits. All reckoning is done upon the fingers and when they
run out of fingers they are hard put to it to continue. However, if the
reckoning runs up to, say, thirty or forty, they count one another’s
fingers and remember the names of those individuals included in the
calculation. The task of remembering more than four participant pairs of
hands would be beyond the power of their intellects.
At Merauke we heard of the death, under mysterious conditions, of a
Swiss scientist who came to study these people about three years ago.
With the memory of this incident fresh in our minds, we inquire casually
concerning the white man reputed to have been eaten by them, but are met
with blank looks or glances of suspicion. Between ourselves, we decide
that if it is humanly possible to do so we will find the remains of the
unfortunate man, a martyr to scientific progress, and send his bones to
his institution in Switzerland. The demeanor of the natives makes us
sure that they have guilty knowledge of his death, at least.
Pursuing the matter further, and after having won the confidence of one
of the middle-aged men—whom, by the way, we have christened
“Intelligence”—we secure an admission that the man died in this very
locality, though by what means Intelligence will not divulge. After a
good deal of discussion, and deep cogitation on his part, Intelligence
agrees to bring all the older men of the kampong to a conference in the
afternoon, to discuss ways and means of finding the desired bones, which
he says he thinks were buried somewhere in the jungle. He is very
reticent, for he says the Tuan at Merauke sent soldiers to find the
white man and killed many men when he found that the white man was dead.
The only thing that moves Intelligence to admit as much as he does is
our story of how the man’s friends at home mourned his loss and how
greatly they desire to have his bones to inter properly, according to
the customs of their tribe.
Intelligence leaves us, his head bowed in thought. The situation is a
grave one and our story of the great mourning caused by the poor
scientist’s death, coming so shortly after the death of a member of the
tribe, sits heavily upon him. With all their savage characteristics,
these primitive men seem to have within them the milk of human kindness.
They are creatures of impulse.
While they are debating the thing among themselves, we go for a short
excursion in the environs of the camp. In the course of conversations
with Intelligence we have learned that in this neighborhood a Jesuit
missionary formerly held forth, but that he, also, died, about the same
time that the Swiss lost his life. This is interesting, and we are
reminded that these people who have been so very cordial to us are
really eaters of men and will bear watching. Our attitude toward them is
one of firm superiority tempered with kindliness, but we are ever
watchful for any signs of treachery. As long as the tobacco holds out
our relations with them probably will be amicable enough. There is no
danger of their trying to take it by force when it is given them gratis
daily, and of course they do not know that our supply is not
inexhaustible.
As we stroll along a scarcely discernible path that threads the jungle
the mosquitos begin their accustomed attack, and we are thankful to
reach a tiny clearing on which the creepers and obliterating growths of
the primeval jungle are fast encroaching. When we finally get clear of
the thicket and round a large clump of young cocoas, there appears to
our astonished eyes a neat palm-thatched structure surmounted with a
cross. This, then, is the former missionary’s little church, in which he
gave up his life while trying to bring the light to these benighted
people. For his pains he was eaten.
The door of the little building is closed, though not latched, and the
windows are all tightly shut. We go inside and with eyes straining in
the darkness try to make out the details of the interior. Everything is
just as the poor man left it. Nothing has been touched. The soldiers who
came to the place to avenge both his death and that of the scientist
ordered that the natives whom they spared keep away from the place upon
pain of another raid, and the black men have declared the place taboo.
The church is tenanted now by countless bats, whose noisome bodies
render the air fetid with their odor and whose wings almost touch us as
they wheel to and fro, roused from their slumber by the opening of the
door. Their squeaking remonstrance at being thus disturbed makes the
place eery,—like some abode of evil spirits of the nether world,—and we
beat a hasty retreat to the sunlight of the clearing outside.
We sit down to rest a moment on a fallen trunk a few yards from the
church and try to imagine the emotions of the man who, with total
sacrifice of self, came alone to these people to do them only good
according to his lights, and who in turn suffered the extreme penalty at
their ungrateful hands. What his last thoughts on earth must have been
and what he said are part of our conjectures. We find ourselves
wondering if he was strong enough to say with his last expiring breath,
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Mixed with our anger at the Kia Kias as we gaze upon the mute witness to
their murderous proclivities, however, there comes pity for their
ignorance, and we tell ourselves that their crime was due to savage
ignorance and a natural hunting-instinct for the animal food their
bodies crave. Man-eating is their custom, and this is their country, and
it is reasonable to expect that some lives must be sacrificed before
they can be shown the error of their way,—error in our eyes, but not in
theirs to whom the land belongs. We whites have become so accustomed to
taking that which we desire from those not gifted with the power for
sheer conquest which our cultural progression has produced and which
gives us our feeling of superiority to others, that, filled with
self-importance, we must needs seek lands afar belonging to others, farm
them regardless of the owners’ remonstrances, and then add insult to
injury by punishing these owners for continuing in their age-old
practices. There are two sides to the question. True, there is no doubt
that our civilization is the better,—for us. They have not found it so
for them. Laurence Hope has said the Creator, after molding One,
sublimely perfect, “doubtless in some idle moment mixed the forces that
fashioned me.”
Our kodaks perpetuate the little church for us and we leave it with no
regret, for it does not engender the most pleasant of thoughts. When we
return to camp, we find that our intermediary, Intelligence, has
arranged for the conference earlier than was expected, and that the
others are ready to gather at our pleasure. There is no time like the
present, so we tell him to summon his clan that we may start the powwow.
We place our chairs under the shade of the fly at the rear of our tent
and soon the older men begin to drift toward us. They seat themselves in
a semicircle facing us and at a distance of ten or fifteen feet. When
all are seated, Intelligence begins a long harangue,—a torrent of words
which fall from his lips so fast that they are wholly unintelligible to
us. His discourse is received coldly by some of his fellows, but one or
two—those who have seemed most friendly to us—take kindly to our plan,
judging from the expression on their faces.
A hot debate ensues. After several hours of earnest palaver in which we
take no part, Intelligence turns to us and signifies that he would like
us to speak on the subject. This we do, assuring them that the Dutch
Government has no part in our plan, and that if they will deliver the
bones of the Swiss to us we will guarantee that no punishment whatever
shall befall the members of the community. We draw as vivid a picture of
the scientist’s grieving relatives as is possible with our limited
vocabulary, and at length prevail upon the savage assembly to promise to
bring the poor man’s bones to camp upon the morrow.
[Illustration: The deserted Jesuit mission which formerly was the pride
and hope of its unfortunate builder]
[Illustration: In the early evening the women sit around on the
copra-drying platforms and watch the sunset]
Our apparent victory, has not, however, been achieved without the
exchange of some very black looks among several of the Kia Kias. There
are still a few who remain firm in their belief that this is some trick
of the white man’s to make them incriminate themselves. Upon the
decision of the majority to hand over the remains to the white men, the
meeting breaks up and all but Intelligence leave for their respective
quarters. He lingers to tell us that he, himself, will bring the bones
in to-morrow afternoon. So grateful are we that we present him with a
shiny trade hatchet and an American trench mirror. He departs with many
thanks.
The request we have made has caused a stir in the kampong and the
accustomed afternoon meeting in the shade of the grove back of the
village does not take place. A few of the younger people gather there
for their usual enjoyment of one another’s society, but the elders are
all grouped about their doorways, earnestly discussing something. Now
and then speculative glances in our direction tell us that we are the
chief topic of conversation. Moh is distinctly uneasy.
In the very outer fringe of the grove, and directly back of our tent,
there is a little knot of young men and women who are apparently very
much interested in something which is screened from our view by the
intervening bodies of the watchers. We do not wish to miss anything
unusual, so we hasten over to see what is taking place. From the extreme
absorption of the onlookers and the absence of the laughter and gaiety
which usually attend these gatherings we know that something of moment
is under way.
An amazing sight greets our eyes. Lying at full length upon the ground
is a young woman of perhaps eighteen years, undergoing what must be the
most exquisite torture. Ah, what woman will not endure to be in fashion!
At work upon her quivering body is an ancient crone, who with a
sharpened piece of shell is cutting deep cicatrices in the flesh of the
abdomen. The girl undergoing the operation is bearing with stoic courage
the pain it must cost her, though her face twists and her muscles
contract in a spasmodic tremor each time the old woman gashes her. The
artist is cutting a scar pattern, which is the highest type of personal
adornment these people know. The cuts are made diagonally underneath the
skin and to a depth of a full quarter of an inch, so that as each is
made there is a flap of skin turned up which varies from a thin edge to
a thickness equal to the full depth of the cut.
The poor girl looks as if she regrets having asked that the thing be
done, but, having started, is afraid of ridicule unless she goes through
with it. The others gaze upon her with varying expressions. Some of the
very young girls are palpably envious, while those whose bodies are
similarly adorned are commiserating in demeanor; they know the pain the
girl is suffering. The men look on with indifference, though they offer
suggestions now and then as to how to enhance the beauty of the design.
As each cut is made, a handful of dirt is scooped up from the ground and
rubbed well into the wound, care being taken to fill the cut to its
fullest depth.
Eight cuts have been made when the girl decides that she can stand no
more at the present and the old woman desists after carefully patting
the edges of the wounds and applying broad, fresh green leaves to them
as a dressing. These are held in place by thongs of kangaroo hide bound
around the body. The purpose of the dirt rubbed into the wounds is to
make them fester and thereby raise the great wales that are so admired
by the Kia Kias.
As the girl rises stiffly to her feet, the men present look at us with
approbative grins and nod their satisfaction. The decoration of this
particular girl promises well, for the old woman who has been doing the
work is acknowledged to be an artist at it, and one of the girls whose
scars have long since healed displays those upon her body, calling to
our attention proofs of the fine technique. She obligingly poses for our
cameras and in return for her kindness we present her with an extra
allowance of tobacco.
[Illustration: They are very proud of the scar-patterns]
[Illustration: The weals caused by the infection of the cuts sometimes
stand out nearly an inch from the surrounding flesh]
CHAPTER X
OUR CONSOLATION PRIZE
In our land the advent of a new member of the household is usually the
occasion of much todo. There are many whispered conferences and grave
speculations as to the advisability of this or that, and in many cases
Mother is summoned as mistress of ceremonies. Wife’s sister also may
attend and shuffle you unceremoniously out of the way of the trained
nurse that bustles by, redolent of some carbolic derivative, and utterly
unconscious of your existence. You who thought that you were in some
remote way interested, and at least partly responsible for the
commotion, are thrown temporarily into the discard and sometimes
permanently so.
This is not the case in Kia Kia households. There is no trained nurse.
There is no anæsthetic. Father’s feelings are not ruffled, for he may at
the moment be putting on his last coat of ochre or having his hair
re-dressed. Indeed, the farrowing of the family sow is of greater
moment, for the little pigs may be eaten, while the new human arrival
may not. True, after the child is born, it is the object of much
affection, but its actual advent is a matter that concerns the mother
only. In rare cases, we find, some friend of her own sex does attend,
but this is by no means the rule.
A young woman who we know is about to become a mother has just passed
our tent on her way into the jungle. She is going there alone. Something
in her demeanor tells us that this is to be the natal morning of a new
member of the tribe and the other women’s calls to her, as she wends her
way up the pathway, are significant. We question Intelligence, who is
fast becoming our instructor in things Kia Kia, and he describes to us
the method by which these savage mothers bring their offspring into the
world. With them nature takes its natural course. There have been no
displacements of internal organs in these women of the wilds, as there
has been in our women who wear tight corsets and destroy the natural
poise of the body and loins with high-heeled shoes.
When the woman we have just seen arrives at a place she has prepared the
day previous, where she knows she will be left severely alone, she
merely lies down and awaits her labor. When the new little being has
entered the big outside world in its natural, unassisted way, and the
proper time has come, it is the mother who handles the only instrument
used in the case,—a sharp sea-shell. She tenderly wraps the child in
broad leaves to protect its tender skin from insects, and within an
hour, or at most two, after the actual birth she returns proudly to the
kampong, carrying the little one, which is the object of much attention
from then on.
As Intelligence finishes his description one of his friends comes to the
tent and tells him that he is wanted elsewhere. Without excuse or
good-by, he rises and follows his friend away, leaving us for the time
being to our own devices.
The women of the shack nearest our tent are engaged in making _attaps_.
These are the thatch coverings with which the natives roof their homes.
The process is an interesting one and merits description. Several
bundles of cocoanut fronds have been gathered, and it is from these that
the women make the rain-proof roof sections. The midrib of each of the
fronds is stripped of the narrow sagittate leaves, split to render it
less thick and bulky, and cut into lengths of approximately four feet.
The leaves are then taken one by one and after being bent over the split
midrib are sewn upon it with fibers stripped from the stiff outer skin
of the rib. As the fronds selected have leaves nearly thirty inches
long, the section of attap when complete is about fourteen inches wide
and is as long as the stick which holds it together and supports it in
position when put to use. The leaves overlap one another and in
consequence the attaps will shed the hardest of the hard rains for which
these latitudes are noted. Not only are they admirable shelter from
inclement weather, but they are a great protection from the tropical sun
which beats fiercely during most of the year upon these shores. Nature
is kind to these people, for their every want is supplied by her from a
vast storehouse close at hand.
[Illustration: The men occupy their time with revision of their toilets,
rather than in doing the chores]
[Illustration: Sarah]
An interested observer of the making of the attaps is the ample Sarah,
the wabbly-fleshed sow that resides in our neighbor’s shack. We call her
Sarah, for that is the closest approximation our language affords to her
real name as pronounced by the natives.
Sarah finally decides that enough attaps have been completed for the
nonce and with porcine indifference to the plans of others deposits
herself with many wheedling grunts directly in front of one of the older
women and also upon the attap she is finishing. The woman roars with
laughter. She calls the attention of the others to Sarah’s appropriation
of the spot and Sarah adds to the conversation several louder grunts, as
though demanding attention. The woman slaps Sarah fondly upon her
swelling ham and proceeds to perform the operation that the big creature
has come to enjoy. Taking a short piece of one of the midribs, she
scratches Sarah’s back, which brings from the sow grunts of grateful
approval.
Moh has struck a deal with one of the women whereby we are kept supplied
with cocoanuts, which formerly were brought to us daily but of late have
been coming in decreasing numbers. He gives in return for five cocoanuts
one empty tomato can or a canned-corn tin. He has an eye to business and
the girl who made eyes at him a few days ago is now his customer.
Judging from his very businesslike attitude toward her, he has
discovered something unattractive about her. A young and very fearsome
Kia Kia spends a great deal of his time in her company.
Our safety razors are a great curiosity to the men, who shave in what to
us would be a most unpleasant way. They pluck their beards with tweezers
made of brass, of which there are several pairs in the kampong. These
are relics of former visits of Malay traders who come to the coast
during the calm season. When we shave, there invariably cluster around,
to watch the operation, a group of wondering men who shake their heads
as though the ways and implements of the white men were beyond their
comprehension. Our shoes are a source of amusement to them, for they
cannot understand why one should wish to incase the feet in such stiff,
unyielding contraptions. Our other clothing they admire greatly, and one
of them proudly wears one of our discarded shirts. The typewriter is a
continual source of wonder, for they sense the use to which it is put
and are awed by it as much as by anything that we possess.
Though it is midday, it suddenly grows dark and we go outside the tent,
where just a little while ago the glare was almost blinding. The entire
sky is overcast, and we see that we are to taste of a regular tropical
storm,—the first, in fact, that we have experienced since landing. The
wind is moaning through the palms in rapidly rising key, and the surf
not far distant is pounding upon the beach with a menacing roar. As the
wind rises the natives scurry around, gathering up their belongings, and
the children take to cover with cries of alarm. Even the dogs slink
through the little openings in the house fronts that are cut for their
especial use and in a surprisingly short space of time the kampong is
deserted.
We make a hurried examination of the guy-ropes of our tent and tighten
some of those that are loose.
The wind is fast becoming a hurricane and if it were not for the shelter
of the surrounding palms the tent would be blown flat in an instant. As
it is, however, it stands the tempest pretty well. The rain bursts upon
us without warning, obliterating from view the grove behind the tent.
The cocoas are thrashing wildly to and fro in a frenzy that makes us
wonder how they stand it. The torrential rain floods the kampong, which
for a few moments resembles a lake in which the houses are entirely
surrounded with water. A terrific peal of thunder follows one of the
most vivid of lightning-flashes and above the drumming patter of the
rain and the howling of the wind we hear the shrieks of the frightened
children in the shack next to us.
[Illustration: The _kapala kampong_ presents us with human skulls, the
highest token of their esteem]
[Illustration: A young and very fearsome Kia Kia spends a great deal of
his time with her]
The thirsty soil drinks up the moisture rapidly, and soon after the rain
ceases, which is scarcely ten minutes from the time the storm broke, the
ground is free of puddles. The air is cool and refreshing and there is a
clean smell in it that is invigorating. The sun comes out again and the
rain-washed palms take on a brighter green, as though some accommodating
painter had touched them up anew.
Our tent has shed the water perfectly, and we and our belongings are as
dry as one could wish. Shortly after the storm we have a visitor. It is
Intelligence. He brings with him our gifts of yesterday. These he
tenders us with downcast countenance, telling us at the same time that
he cannot find the bones of the Tuan.
His abject sorrow at disappointing us is evidence that he has met with
utter failure, though from what cause we are not sure. Very likely it is
on account of the opposition encountered from the other natives. As we
feel that his efforts in our behalf merit some token of our
appreciation, we tell him that he may keep the articles and he
withdraws, anxious to get away and cover his chagrin. Our hopes of
securing the remains of the Swiss must be abandoned.
Our disappointment is to be tempered, however, for in a short time signs
of life are evident in the spaces before the houses and we note that
drums are being tuned, feathered ornaments donned, and an air of
expectancy pervades the village. We recognize the signs as preparations
for a feast, and the loud squealing of a pig, ending abruptly, somewhere
back of the house, is conclusive evidence that a jollification is
planned.
Shortly before nightfall a delegation of natives waits upon us and
requests that we follow them to the beach. This we do, wondering the
while what is in progress; but as the men are most friendly in their
behavior, we feel sure that whatever it is, it is planned for our
entertainment. Arriving at the beach, we find the men of the kampong
assembled and as we step from the palms they raise their voices in a
chant of welcome. With all the wild savagery of the scene it is
strangely thrilling. As we approach they spread out and arrange
themselves in a large circle around a forked stick from which hang two
human skulls. We are led to the center of the circle where, after an
impressive speech by the kapala kampong, we are presented with the
skulls. These are a token of highest esteem and we accept them as
such,—and, too, as a sort of consolation prize for our disappointment of
an hour ago. Moh snaps a picture of the ceremony for us, but remarks
when returning the kodak:
“Tuan, ini gamber tida biak, Sahya korang preska brapa, Tuan. [Master,
this picture is not good; I do not know how, Master.]”
As it turns out, however, Moh got the picture.
CHAPTER XI
THE FEAST
The presentation of skulls is but the prelude to a great entertainment.
It has been planned for our especial benefit. As a sort of opening
chorus and introductory number, we are entertained with the Kia Kia song
of welcome as the circle of witnesses to the skull-presentation ceremony
breaks up.
The medicine man—who, by the way, is supposed to hold communion with the
spirits that every native believes inhabit the jungle—leads in the
opening number, which is an ensemble of all the adult males of the
kampong. He is attended by two others, who circle around him with heads
bowed, rattling castanets made of the great pincers of the crayfish with
which the coast abounds. These have a sound which reminds one of the
never-to-be forgotten but hard-to-describe warning of the diamond-back
crotalus or rattlesnake of America.
[Illustration: The circle breaks up and a dance takes place for our
entertainment]
[Illustration: They sang for us at the top of their leather lungs]
The medicine man is grotesque with his barbaric adornments. Surmounting
his head and securely fastened to his ordinary headdress, is a fish
carved of wood, of a light pithy variety. The fish is nearly two feet in
length and though its general color is white, the markings representing
its fins and eyes are in red. As the man walks it bobs up and down in a
funny way as though nodding its approval of the ceremony. While the
medicine man and his feather-bedecked attendants perform their dance
with extreme gravity, the others who are at some distance in the
background, nearer the water’s edge, stride up and down the beach in
close formation, singing at the top of their lungs a refrain that seems
to be a continuous repetition of perhaps a dozen notes.
They walk briskly ten or twelve yards past the little group of three in
the foreground and then reverse, those who had been in the rear now
becoming the leaders, and walk an equal distance to the other side of
the medicine man. Meanwhile, the song goes on and the castanets continue
their dry, menacing rattle. We watch them for a space of ten minutes,
but after that the dance begins to grow monotonous. The thump of the
drums keeps up with mechanical precision the even rhythm of the
walking-dance. The performance becomes a bore. While the dance is still
in progress we leave the beach to return to the camp. Once warmed up, as
they now are, they will continue to dance without interruption for
hours. As the older men become fatigued they will drop out and younger
ones take their place. When they have rested sufficiently, they will
return, and so the dance goes on.
While the men are dancing the women are not idle. The fires are burning
brightly in the kampong and over them the girls are roasting fish and
sago cakes, while three women are carefully turning the pig that
squealed this afternoon, in a pit dug for the purpose of roasting him
according to their method. The pit is filled with red-hot stones, we
find upon examination, and the odor that rises from the place makes us
hungry. We begin to wonder how we can refuse to partake of his porkship,
for we know that they will surely offer us some of the meat. That pig,
like all their others, has been too careless in its diet to suit us as
food, no matter how delicious the cooking may smell. In order that we
may have some semblance of an excuse to refuse the meat we order Moh to
watch the roasting and have our dinner ready to serve the moment the pig
is ready for the natives. We can then plead satiety without hurting
their feelings.
As it happens, we are able to evade the issue gracefully, for the women
take the food to the dancers on the beach, where they line up and
receive it upon broad palm-leaves the women provide for the purpose.
When all have eaten, the dancing is resumed. A great fire is built on
the sand and the dance goes on in its light,—the most savage scene
imaginable. Though our hosts began the party in our honor, now all are
joining in for the sheer pleasure it gives them, with no thought of us.
After our dinner we go down and watch them for an hour before turning
in. As the excitement heightens the affair becomes a wild orgy in which
all participate, and we beat a hasty retreat to the chaste seclusion of
our tent, there to conjure sleep in the midst of this most unholy
uproar.
Long into the night the mad festival continues, until one by one the
participants drop out from utter exhaustion and make their way to the
shacks, where they gossip in loud tones, much to our annoyance.
The sun is overhead when the natives emerge the next day. Unaccustomed
to violent exercise such as that of the night before, some of them
wearily drag themselves to the shade of the groves with the air of
persons trying to show signs of animation merely to save their friends
the trouble of a funeral.
[Illustration: Long into the night the mad festival continues. To exert
themselves in any productive occupation to a like extent would kill
them]
[Illustration: The drums are tuned in a peculiar manner. Having no
strings fastened to the heads with which to tighten them, they place
small lumps of resin mixed with clay on the heads to produce the desired
sound]
The women seem to be absolutely fagged out, and their feet drag as they
prepare food for the men. There is little to interest one in the kampong
to-day, but later on, when the heat of midday is past, the women gather
in groups to prepare _wady_, the fermented drink of the Kia Kias. Its
preparation is neither nice nor sanitary. The female of the species
being more deadly than the male, the women macerate in their mouths the
ingredients of the drink, to extract the juices. For the killing mixture
that produces wady, they chew up cocoanut meat, certain roots and leaves
they gather in the jungle, and the acrid outer husk of the cocoanut.
This juice mixed with saliva is diluted with water and stored in gourds.
It is allowed to ferment, enough sago starch being added to aid the
process. After the mixture has stood a day or two in the heat of the
sun, it has sufficient “kick” to floor a mule. While the wady is
ripening the kampong rests and visitors from a distant kampong drop in
to attend the coming wady party, for an invitation has been sent them by
messenger.
While the feast was in progress there seems to have developed a real
love-affair between two members of the community. They have decided that
they are for each other and that henceforth they will live together. The
decision is a momentous one, for it involves a ceremony so utterly
incomprehensible to the white man that we are aghast at its unbridled
license.
According to Kia Kia ideas, a woman, to remain true to her husband, must
have removed from her mind any desire for male companionship other than
his. She therefore must submit herself to every man of her tribe before
the marriage is recognized. This ceremony is made the occasion for an
orgy, and though the participants are severely punished by the Dutch
officials when discovered, it is still in vogue clandestinely.
It is due to this that many of the women prefer to remain single and
free to choose. Those who undergo the frightful ordeal are never
molested, we are told. Indeed, it is said that two out of every five
women succumb after such an experience. Preparations are in progress for
the ceremony, which is to take place this evening, and the bride is even
now adorning herself with feathered finery and besmearing her dusky body
with oil and paint. After night has settled down, all the natives repair
to a clearing where the drums are calling and a huge fire is built. The
occasion is one of merriment and the ceremony continues far into the
night.
The day that the wady is ready the natives gather in the shade for the
express purpose of becoming thoroughly and most comfortably inebriated.
As the liquor begins to take effect they dance and sing. While they
dance more wady is given them, until they are overcome and perforce must
stagger away and lie down. Soon they fall asleep, not to waken until
late the next day, when they experience the most depressing of “mornings
after.” By this time the wady is all gone, and, too, there is no
ice-water! After a wady party of this kind the men do not fully recover
for days, for the stuff is almost paralyzing in its effect.
CHAPTER XII
THE HEAD DANCE
It seems that while the wady party was in progress something occurred
that aroused the ire of one or two of the older women of the kampong.
The visitors who came to partake of the cup that cheers partook of
something else, not on the program, and this occasioned a great deal of
discussion, conducted mainly by the wife of the injured party.
A very fine stone club turned up missing, so to speak, and the family
wealth was thus greatly depleted. While the loss is of moment, the men
are inclined to pass the matter over, but this is not the case with the
women. Things have been going too smoothly of late, and they desire some
real diversion. The feast just held has served but to whet their
appetite for excitement and they demand that the men go to the other
kampong and either secure the stolen club, which took so many weary
hours in the making, or collect other indemnity. At the threat that all
the women will hold themselves aloof until the demand is obeyed, the men
go on what purports to be a friendly visit and actually do return two
days later with the stolen club.
[Illustration: The Dutch officials punish them severely for indulging in
these practices]
[Illustration: The Head Dance. Two girls begin it by slowly walking up
and down in the center of the circle of onlookers]
Our interest is aroused, and Intelligence is questioned as to what would
have happened had the thieving member of the neighboring tribe failed to
return the weapon. In the course of his long-winded reply he tells us
many things of interest.
His description of the fights in which he has taken part, himself, and
the manner in which the Kia Kia warrior goes after “long pig,” is given
so naïvely that it is a pity one cannot repeat it in Intelligence’s
inimitable way.
When pig is scarce and there has been no fresh meat in the kampong for a
long time, he says, the old women begin to whine and complain that the
hunters are no good, and if they are unable to bring in meat after a
long, hard hunting-trip, the women gather in a clearing and make wady.
When the wady is ready the men are called to the clearing and each
receives a small portion, but not enough to make him at all hilarious.
The younger women then gather in the center of the circle of men, who
are sitting cross-legged around the edge of the open space, and dance.
At first the dancing is done quietly, merely to amuse the men, and some
of the younger men beat the drums and sing. The men under the
stimulating influence of the wady join in, singing at the top of their
voices, their bodies swaying to and fro to the time of the music. When
all are singing, the old women, who have been waiting for the party to
reach this stage, bring from the houses all the smoked human heads that
they have on hand, decorated with bird-of-paradise feathers for the
occasion. These they give to the youngest and most comely of the
dancers, although in some cases the old women themselves swing into the
moving throng, and, after marching up and down with measured tread for a
time, finally break into a wild dance, swinging the heads in their
hands.
They screech and scream the praises of their warrior ancestors and
reproach the men present. As the dance goes on they grow hysterical, and
it becomes a frenzied whirl of twisting, contorting women, who swing
around the circle and thrust into the men’s faces the heads they carry,
upbraiding them for their laziness and inability to bring in meat for
their women. They again threaten the men with total exclusion from all
intercourse with themselves and with promises and cajolery seek to rouse
them from their apathy.
Here and there in the circle are a few men who by their tense attitude
and sparkling eyes show the women that their interest is awakened. The
women play up to these and by means of blood-curdling screeches and much
waving of the grisly trophies excite the men to the point where they
leap to their feet and join the dance. Some of them take the heads
themselves and endeavor to stir in their fellows a like spirit of
enthusiasm. One by one the others respond to the appeal, until all are
dancing in a twisting, milling mass of yelling savages. When this point
is reached the old women bring the weapons from the houses and the scene
becomes one of the wildest, most barbaric imaginable. More wady is given
the men, and they gradually muster up enough courage to take to the
war-path.
This does not mean that they go boldly forth to attack their enemies; it
means only that they have decided to have a feast the main attraction of
which will be the bodies of as many victims as they can collect without
undue risk to themselves. The procedure is to bedeck themselves in their
finest fashion and visit a kampong remote from their own. They choose
one which lies on the far side of one or two others with which they
themselves are friendly. When they pass through these kampongs they tell
their neighbors that they are going hunting and in no manner hint at
their real errand.
Upon arrival at the kampong selected for their visit, they stroll in
from the jungle as though tired out from a not very successful
hunting-excursion and, being hospitable, their hosts immediately prepare
food and places for them to rest. Friendships are struck up and two or
three days are loitered away while the lay of the land is being
observed. Two or three victims—who live in shacks remote from the main
houses of the village, as a rule—are selected, and the final plans are
laid. One or two of the visiting tribe strike up a friendship with the
victims and go with them to their shacks at night, ostensibly to gossip
and sleep. A signal is arranged: the cry of a nightbird or a song by one
of their own men, purposely awake and watching with some of his fellows
by the fireside, is the usual indication that all is ready.
When the silence tells those on guard that their hosts are all asleep,
the signal is given; the visitors who are feigning sleep rise cautiously
and, with weapon ready, each suddenly wakens his intended victim.
Aroused from a deep slumber, the poor fellow usually wakes with some
sort of exclamation or cry. At the first word spoken the stone-bitted
war-club descends with terrible finality and the victim lapses into a
slumber from which he never wakens. The deed is done quietly, with every
precaution taken to guard against the awakening of the rest of the
kampong. In many instances several small shacks have been erected for
the convenience of the visitors and the victims are lured into these to
be murdered.
Some of the girls of the place may take a liking to the visitors, in
which case there may be one or two men and a like number of girls in the
shacks of the strangers. The result is the same, and girls are highly
prized, as Intelligence tells us that they are more tender than the men.
In fact, he says that there is no morsel that equals the left
shoulder-blade of a ten- or twelve-year-old girl. Immediately upon
killing their victims, the visitors stealthily remove the bodies from
the kampong, and in the concealing darkness of the jungle decapitate
them. After trussing up the bodies upon bamboo poles for ease in
carrying them, they depart in haste for their own kampong, taking a
circuitous route to avoid other kampongs between them and home.
The head of each victim is the property of him who delivered the fatal
blow, and the murderer struts into his family circle very proud of his
success. While the men were away the women have prepared the
roasting-pit for the bodies that they know will be brought.
The pits in which the bodies are roasted are dug well away from the
kampong as a rule, and are filled with alternate layers of wood and
stones. By the time the wood is all burned away the stones are intensely
hot, and they are kept so with a great fire built over them, until the
warriors return. After all ornaments such as necklaces and bracelets
have been removed, the bodies are placed in the pits without further
preparation, upon bars of ironwood or some similar hardwood which keep
them from actual contact with the red-hot stones, and covered with green
palm-branches and a layer of earth to exclude the air.
When the roasting is completed, the time required being dependent upon
the number of stones in a pit and the age of the victim, the pits are
opened and the bodies eaten. The choicest pieces go to the men who have
done the killing and the rest are divided equally among the remaining
inhabitants of the village. All partake of the feast, from the youngest
infant able to masticate solid food to the oldest member of the tribe.
The dogs come in for their share and as a rule are given the bones to
squabble over, though occasionally some of these are kept to be made
into ornaments.
Intelligence tells us that one _bagoose laki laki_ (good man) will
satisfy the hunger of ten persons, but adds with a smile that it is
better to have enough _babi panjang_ (long pig) so that one body need be
divided among only five or six. All the flesh is consumed at one sitting
and after the feast is over the place is usually cleaned up and the pits
covered carefully with earth and brush to hide the evidence of guilt,
for the feasters are sure that sooner or later they will be visited by
members of other kampongs who are curious to learn whether or not they
know anything of the disappearance of certain people of Kampong Sangase
or Watambi, or whatever the name may be.
[Illustration: Under the influence of the wady, exhilarated by the wild
dance, the men finally take part]
[Illustration: They again threaten the men with total exclusion from all
intercourse with their families]
With the coming of dawn in the kampong the hunting-party visited, there
is weeping and wailing when the absence of the visitors together with
their victims is discovered. The men vow vengeance and make a warlike
showing, and even venture a short distance into the jungle, where they
gather and discuss the situation. They will remain there a while and
upon returning to the kampong they will tell wild tales of how they
chased their visitors many miles but could not overtake them.
The matter, by reason of their cowardice and utter inability to bring
themselves to engage in open warfare, finally passes into the limbo of
forgotten things, although in time some of their bravest may go on a
round of a few kampongs to see if anything can be learned regarding the
tribe responsible for the outrage. If they identify the guilty tribe,
they may lie in ambush for some lone member hunting in the neighborhood
of his own kampong and murder him. This is the most common course
followed in reprisal. In fact, a large percentage of the cannibal feasts
are thus inspired.
Absorbed in the chase of wild pig or other game, the hunter often enters
the preserves of another tribe, and if he is discovered he more often
than not disappears. It is for this reason that the men hunt only when
driven to it by the women or when game is plentiful within reasonable
distance of their own village.
We ask Intelligence the reason for waking the victim up before killing
him rather than simply striking him while asleep. For a moment he
ponders, for putting things so that we can understand him taxes his
powers of narration. He finally makes us understand that the purpose is
to obtain a name for the next male child born in the hunting-party’s
kampong, for the first word spoken is bestowed on the infant.
Intelligence himself was named in that manner, he tells us. His Kia Kia
name is Geki. He promises to show us the skull of the unfortunate man
who supplied it. Probably the “namee” falls heir to the skull of the man
responsible for the christening, though this is only conjecture on our
part.
CHAPTER XIII
A KANGAROO HUNT
The men of the kampong are planning a kangaroo hunt in the lowlands not
far distant from the kampong. They say the hunt will take two days and
that if we wish to go with them it will be necessary to make provision
ourselves for our food and shelter. They, of course, sleep in rude
palm-leaf lean-tos and subsist on their staple sago cake. The prospect
of witnessing a kangaroo drive fills us with enthusiasm, and with all
speed we prepare to accompany them. Early the next morning we set out
with a light outfit and enough food for two days. By dint of much
coaxing and promises of much tobacco we have persuaded three of the
young men of the tribe to carry our _barang_.
[Illustration: This man confessed to having eaten many human beings. To
estimate the number accurately was beyond his power of reckoning]
[Illustration: The sharp-edged stone war-club in the hands of such men
as these makes quick work of a victim]
The way leads up the coast for about ten miles and thence into the
jungle through swampy tangles of tapa grass to a point three miles from
the ocean. Here we strike camp, and after a hurried meal the hunters go
out to reconnoiter. There are kangaroos in the vicinity; in the course
of our hike into the swampy region we see several of the timid
creatures, which turn at sight of us and bound away to the protection of
the thickets. They are a very small variety of kangaroo and not at all
like the giant bush animal of Australia. The kangaroos of New Guinea
seldom reach a height of over three feet when standing erect.
About seventy of the natives have come to participate in the hunt and
these soon take to the jungle, where they make their way silently to
points which form a semicircle a mile in radius. The center of this
half-circle is a swamp where the water is a foot or so in depth and the
rushes scarce. It is to this place the natives will drive the little
animals when the hunt begins in the morning.
With the earliest signs of dawn the men are up and stirring. A hasty
breakfast concluded, they spread out and start slowly toward the swamp,
beating the brush and thickets with flails and at the same time shouting
at the top of their voices. In this manner they slowly drive the game
before them, though at first the jungle seems to be deserted, so wary
are the animals.
As the men advance and the circle closes up we see now and then
swift-moving dun-colored objects bounding ahead of us through the
half-light of the jungle. The men on the right and left of us nod their
satisfaction, for there seems to be a good-sized herd of kangaroos
enclosed in the converging human trap. Now and then one of the animals
tries to break through the line, but it is almost invariably headed off
and driven back into the thickets ahead.
The men, as the line approaches the swamp, are scarcely six yards apart
and within this close-drawn ring are nearly a hundred of the animals.
The ground has become increasingly marshy, and soon we are wading
ankle-deep in water. As we break through the last thicket the open swamp
is disclosed to view. Here an exciting scene greets our eyes.
Entirely surrounded by a cordon of naked, yelling savages are a hundred
kangaroos leaping and bounding here and there in the swamp, trying to
escape the advancing line of men. Their splashing is prodigious, and
because of their leaping this way and that there seem to be many more of
them than there really are. Their frightened little cries appeal to our
sympathies and we drop out of the line, not caring to engage in the
coming slaughter.
The Kia Kias soon get within striking-distance and in a very short time
the excitement is over. Many of the animals escape, much to our
satisfaction, but when the toll of the hunt is taken there are sixty of
them stretched out on a strip of dry ground which caps a low rise beside
the swamp. The natives are wild with joy at their success, for they tell
us that in their last drive they succeeded in catching only twelve
animals.
Grasping the kangaroos by their powerful hind legs and carrying them
dangling down their backs from the shoulders, the natives set out on the
return to the kampong. Unaccustomed to the bearing of burdens, they stop
for rest frequently and it is late in the afternoon when we enter the
kampong. Here the women greet us with great joy, for their stomachs will
be full for a long time to come. While immediate preparations are made
for roasting some of the animals, the men prepare to cure the remainder
by drying and smoking them.
Strangely enough, there is no attempt to save or cure the skins, and
when we question the savages regarding this, they shake their heads.
They have no use for them, they say, and let it go at that. Wearing no
clothes, they do not require the skins for bodily covering and the only
use they have for leather is for covering the heads of their drums, for
which purpose they invariably use pigskin. A few of the women save
narrow strips of the hide, from which they will make the seed-decorated
bandoleers that some of them affect, but this is the only use to which
they seem to put the skin of the kangaroo. Yet, properly tanned, it
would make admirable leather, for it is as soft as kid.
The dogs make short work of the many skins, eating them hair and all and
disgorging the balled-up hair later. The men save some of the leg bones,
from which they make nose ornaments, but in the main the dogs get these
also. It is surprising how the dogs fatten up after one of these feasts.
Between feasts one can count every rib and the poor creatures are so
gaunt that it would seem an act of mercy to put them out of their
misery. Nature never intended dogs to exist on a diet consisting mainly
of cocoanut. After a feast, however, the dogs drag themselves around
with stomachs bulging. In a few days, and until the bones and meat are
quite gone, their hair is sleek and shiny and in contrast to their
former appearance they are positively fat.
The men and women gorge themselves exactly as the dogs do, with the
result that there is little activity in the kampong until the meat is
entirely consumed. They then fall back on their staple diet until such
time as the women can prevail upon the men to go on another excursion.
The natives generously offer us two of the kangaroos to vary our diet of
tinned goods, but the little animals seem so much like things to be
petted rather than eaten that we thank our hosts warmly and tell them
that, inasmuch as we have plenty of our own kind of food and they have
so little, we could not think of taking their meat from them. The excuse
passes muster with them and they do not press the matter, much to our
satisfaction; for at times it becomes awkward to explain certain things
which to us are a matter of course.
CHAPTER XIV
THE BIRD OF PARADISE
Shortly after the kangaroo hunt there come to the kampong two Chinese,
with a party of Moresby boys, who are making their way to the coast and
Merauke, where they can dispose of the skins of the birds of paradise
they have taken. The Chinese are of the typical trader class and appear
prosperous, for their watch-chains are very heavy and of pure gold,—not
the red gold we know, but the twenty-two-karat metal of the Orient.
Their advent causes a stir in the kampong, for the moment the dogs give
warning of the approach of strangers the natives all dive into the
shacks, to peer furtively through the crevices until assured the
visitors mean them no harm. The Chinese enter the kampong boldly and,
espying our camp, come to greet us immediately; and as the Chinaman is
always hail fellow well met, we invite the men in and give them a cup of
tea. Moh is most happy to serve them and beams upon them as he passes
the tea.
They seem much surprised to find two white men here and question us
regarding the purpose of our visit, thinking at first, doubtless, that
we are on the same errand as they. They cannot comprehend how we two
Americans can find recreation and amusement in coming to this
Godforsaken spot, putting up with untold hardship and inconvenience
merely to meet and study the lives of the Kia Kia savages. The Chinese
is first, last, and always a business man and bends all his energies
toward succeeding in his business. The Moresby boys immediately take up
their abode with Ula and the crew of the _Nautilus_, who are camped near
the kampong, and we make the Chinese comfortable in a spare tent, where
they spread their mats and prepare to stay a day or two to rest.
They have been successful in their hunting and have nearly sixty codies,
or twelve hundred of the skins, though they have been in the interior
only since last May. The skins, well preserved in arsenic, are done up
in parcels. There is a small fortune in the proceeds of their season’s
hunting and they are most happy at their success, though they of course
do not boast of it. It is not the Chinaman’s way to wax exuberant over
anything. Win or lose, his face never changes expression.
In the course of the evening our visitors tell us in perfect Malay—they
speak only a word or two of English—of the manner of hunting their
beautiful quarry. The habits of the birds are most interesting. They
also tell us something which is news to us. We had supposed that the
restrictions placed upon the importation of the skins into America were
due to the possibility of the species becoming extinct, but the hunters
tell us that this is not the case. They say that only the male birds in
full plumage are taken and that the bird never attains his fullest
plumage until after the second bird-mating season. This being the case,
it would seem that there is no danger of extinction, and the Chinese
seemed to think that the ruling was unjust.
The method of hunting the birds is odd and requires much patience. When
the locality they frequent is located, search is made for the
dancing-tree. This is usually an immense bare-limbed tree that towers
above the surrounding jungle. When such a tree is found it is watched
for several mornings to see if the birds come to it, and if this is the
case, a blind is constructed well up in its branches where the hunters
can hide from the sight of the birds but are within easy bow-shot of
them. Two bowmen will ascend to this masking shelter, two or three hours
before dawn, and lie in wait for the birds that they know will come with
the first rays of the rising sun.
The trees surrounding the large one fill with female birds, come to
witness the dancing of the males who strut and dance on the bare
branches of the large tree. The hunters lie in wait in their blind until
the tree is literally filled with the gorgeous male birds.
The birds become so engrossed in their strutting and vain showing-off to
the females that the hunters are able to shoot them down one by one with
the blunt arrows used for this purpose. The large round ends of the
arrows merely stun the birds, which fall to the ground and are picked up
by men below.
Frequently the hunters are able to kill two thirds of the birds before
the others take alarm and fly away. The skins, as they are gathered, are
washed in arsenic soap and packed away in bundles of twenty. The washing
shrinks a skin so that the true proportions of the bird are lost: the
head is large in relation to the rest of the body, but with the removal
of the skull it shrinks to such an extent that it seems to be
exceedingly small.
The skin is taken for the gorgeous plumes which spring from the side of
the bird and are seen on the live bird only when he is strutting or in
flight. It is a matter of interest that the nests of the birds, and
consequently their eggs, are never found, and large prices have been
offered for a specimen of each. Among the hunters there seems to be a
general belief that only one bird is reared at a time, though this is
only conjecture.
On the morrow the hunters gather some surf-fish as a welcome change in
their diet and, after smoking these a little and drying them after the
Chinese fashion, depart on the last long leg of their trip to Merauke.
We tell them in response to their invitation to accompany them that we
are quite content here and will await the coming of the next trading
Malay who happens along. The trip through the jungle with our
multitudinous effects offers no inducements to us.
CHAPTER XV
THE COMING OF THE BURONG MAS
Kampong days melt into one another with such indolent smoothness that
the weeks slide into months without tally. Were it not for the calendar
that hangs on the wall of the tent our count of them would be entirely
lost. The simple routine life of the natives of the kampong, except for
the diversions we have seen, becomes monotonous and boredom grips us.
It is a week since our yellow brethren left us with much ado and genial
wishes for our welfare. They are well on their way by this time. Some of
our own boys from the _Nautilus_ accompanied them, for they had through
some misdeeds become _persona non grata_ with our hosts. On the beach
there is a heavy surf rolling, for some distant storm at sea has raised
a great swell, and dozens of Medusæ and other ocean polyps have been
thrown up by the waves, to die in the fierce rays of the sun.
While we are walking along beside the thundering surf inspecting
these,—a sort of natural-history lesson for want of more engrossing
occupation,—a glance seaward gives us a thrill. Far out upon the
horizon, almost hull down, is a schooner. It seems to be headed in our
direction. She is the first sign of life we have seen at sea since our
arrival here, and our minds are instantly filled with conjecture as to
her destination. “Will she touch here?” we ask each other.
We hasten back to the kampong to tell the natives of the schooner and
also to see if they know anything about her. She may be, we think, a
boat that customarily touches at this place to trade. Upon seeing the
schooner, which is momentarily drawing nearer, the natives chatter
excitedly, finally making us understand that she will not come here, but
will undoubtedly touch at a kampong farther up the coast where much
copra or dried cocoanut meat, purchased from the natives with trade
tobacco, will be taken on. The schooner is tacking and, even as we
watch, takes a slant across the wind. The other kampong is fifteen miles
to the westward. If we can get there in time to intercept the schooner
before she has taken on her cargo and left, there is a good chance that
we can get back to Merauke on her and catch the steamer to Java.
A steamer is due to leave Merauke for civilization in four days,
according to our calendar. There is no time to lose. Instantly we make
up our minds to take that schooner back. This will necessitate our
packing up our equipment immediately and transporting it fifteen miles
in the broiling heat of midday, plowing through the soft beach sand. It
is a large order to undertake in the tropics. When we tell the natives
of our decision they shake their heads gravely and say it cannot be
done.
However, we strike camp in a jiffy and soon have our equipment snugly
done up in thirty- and forty-pound bundles. The next problem is to
secure the assistance of the natives, for without their aid the trip
will be impossible. At first they are most unwilling to accompany us,
but when we tell them that they are going whether they like it or not,
and make a show of becoming nasty, they decide not to arouse our anger
and gather round to load the bundles on their backs. Each tries to
select the lightest of the bundles, and there ensues a great squabble
among them. There are nearly sixty pieces of barang to be carried, and
of course this requires a like number of men. We settle the squabble by
telling all the men to take their bundles to a clear place on the sand
and lay them down. When they have done this, we line them up and pick
out the strongest-looking of them to carry the heavier pieces, so that
the weaker and the very old ones will not be overburdened. It is not
alone a sense of justice that prompts us in this, though, for were we to
overload the weaker ones they would lag behind the rest and thus delay
our march.
[Illustration: The skipper is a jolly fellow with a countenance that
beams good nature, mixed with a shrewdness that speaks of business
ability]
[Illustration: He beats a gong briskly and chants a prayer in Malay,
while the rest of the crew add their prayers to his petitions]
Before going we distribute part of our remaining tobacco among the
women, who have come to like us and appear sad over our sudden
leave-taking. The rest we will give to our carriers when they leave us
at the other kampong. With one of us white men in the lead to set the
pace and the other bringing up the rear to spur on the laggards, we
hasten away at a pace that soon starts the perspiration in streams. Moh
walks along in the middle of the procession, happier than he has been
since leaving Java. He has visions of his lady-love in Soerabaya
greeting him with outstretched arms. He feels sure of her fidelity; for
does she not know that he is well paid by the Tuans, and that his
pockets will be well lined with guilders?
The remaining crew of the _Nautilus_ also come with us, and are rather
useful, for they proudly tote our guns. They, too, are happy, as they
are anxious to return to their homes. Abreast of us is the schooner,
still tacking up the coast. It seems at first as though she were slowly
crawling ahead of us, but as the hours drag on we see that we are
holding our own, and we even stop once for refreshment and to rest the
weary natives, who are beginning to show signs of playing out. Some of
them stagger a little as they come to a halt where we are piling the
barang.
After the period of rest is over they shoulder their burdens and the
long file is again under way. The sky becomes overcast when we are on
the last four-mile stretch and still an hour from our destination. We
welcome the cloudiness, for the heat has been terrific. With the clouds
comes a rain-storm which soaks us to the skin, but which washes off the
perspiration and is gratefully cooling. Once our spirits fall as we near
the kampong. The schooner tacks again, which seems to indicate that she
is going out to sea and does not intend touching at the place at all.
There is excited comment from the natives at this and we indulge in a
little soul-satisfying invective, until we see that the manœuver is
simply to enable the boat to pass a mud-bar over which the tide is
breaking. As the schooner swerves and heads directly for the village, we
cheer loudly and urge the lagging Kia Kias to greater speed, that we may
arrive at the place ahead of her dinghy.
We just make it, for the men drop their burdens as the crew of the
schooner land through the surf. We go forward to meet the skipper of the
craft and find him to be a Chinese who greets us affably. To our inquiry
if he intends returning to Merauke he replies that he will after loading
on five piculs of copra. We tell him that we wish to return with him and
he looks at our pile of barang and shakes his head. After a little
mental calculation he says that he cannot accommodate us unless we wish
to leave some of our belongings for a later trip. At this we firmly
shake our heads, and we finally strike a bargain by chartering his whole
schooner for ourselves. The copra he leaves for a later trip.
We tell him that we must be in Merauke in time to catch the steamer for
Java. Again he shakes his head and with a glance at the sky says,
“_Angin tida baik_ [The wind is not good.]” While this conversation has
been under way, our bearers have cast themselves wearily down upon the
sand, and as the natives of the kampong drift down to the beach they
rise and try to slink away to the village, where they can hide from
further work. Moh calls our attention to this just in time, and we order
them back to their burdens. The schooner is lying about three hundred
yards from the high-tide mark and with the receding tide is canting
slowly on her side. She is aground in the mud of the river mouth.
The best way to load her with our barang is to have the men wade out and
put the stuff directly on her. This they do after some remonstrance, and
then our work is over. Tired out from the long hike in the heat, we go
aboard immediately and change to dry, clean clothes while Moh prepares
our dinner. The Kia Kias receive the remaining tobacco, five packages
each, with cries of glad surprise, and it touches us to hear them
singing to us while, tired as they are, they dance farewell to us up and
down the beach. With all their faults, they have hearts and can come
truly to like one who treats them with consideration and kindliness.
High tide is at eleven, the skipper tells us, and we must of necessity
wait for it. The crew are all on shore, visiting in the kampong, from
which there drifts to us the sound of merrymaking. A thump now and then
warns us of the incoming tide, and soon the schooner’s decks begin to
level up as she straightens to an even keel. At half-past ten o’clock
the skipper comes aboard with the crew and preparations are made for
getting under way. The skipper is a jolly fellow with a rotund
countenance beaming with good nature mixed with shrewdness that speaks
of his business ability. He has driven a hard bargain with us for the
charter, he thinks, but could he but know it, we would have paid him
double without rancor. In fact, we offer a prize or bonus for himself
and the crew if they land us in Merauke in time to catch our steamer.
The kampong is in utter darkness when we finally weigh anchor and glide
out from the shadow of the point beneath which it nestles. Only the
mournful howling of a dog bids us farewell, for the natives have all
turned in. There is a fair breeze, and with low contented murmurings the
wavelets lap the cutwater of the schooner.
Morning dawns on a glassy sea. There is not a breath of air stirring.
The sails hang motionless. The hours speed by with no change in the
motion of the schooner. As the situation begins to get on our nerves and
we contemplate a two-months’ stretch in Merauke, we anxiously question
the skipper as to the probability of the calm enduring. He gives us
little hope and we descend to the depths of gloom. The crew are gathered
up forward around the typical sheet-iron fireplace, cooking rice and
fish. When they have finished their meal one of them worms his way below
and emerges later with a large gong. He is about to call the attention
of the wind spirits to our plight and beseech them to favor us so that
the bonus can be collected. He beats the gong briskly and chants an
invocation in Malay, while the rest of the crew add their prayers to
his. We look upon the proceeding with cynical indifference, but, much to
our surprise, even while the men are still chanting and the gong
booming, a cool breath fans our faces and the sail above us bellies out
tentatively. At this the crew redouble their efforts and soon a spanking
breeze is sending us slithering through the surges in fine style.
The crew look at us with great pride in their gods, and an expression
of, “Your gods cannot do that.” It is a coincidence, we tell ourselves,
but underlying our skepticism is a lurking wonder if after all there is
not something in their faith. Only once on the voyage to Merauke does
the breeze lessen. As the sails flap in the falling breeze, the gong and
the chant are again brought to the fore, with instant results. The thing
is a little uncanny and the skipper assures us that when they are beset
with danger, in a storm, they call to the spirits in the same way and
always with the desired results.
At noon of the second day out we espy ahead the great red buoy that
marks the channel within the river of Merauke. As we turn the point to
enter the broad river a welcome sight greets us. Our steamer is just
coming abreast of the town, having arrived a few hours ahead of time.
To-night we shall sleep in a snow-white stateroom,—between clean sheets.
THE END
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors.
2. Retained anachronistic and non-standard spellings as printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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