Four Young Explorers; Or, Sight-Seeing in the Tropics by Oliver Optic (best romantic novels to read .TXT) 📗

with them, and made the request of the captain for them. He learned that they were engaged in the business of catching crocodiles for the reward.

"They don't shoot crocodiles, and they have no rifles," added Achang.

"How do they get them then?" asked Louis.

"They fish for them."

"What, with a hook and line?" demanded Captain Scott.

"With a line, but have no fish-hook," replied the Bornean. "You must see them catch one."

"All right," replied the captain; "we will tow them down the river."[50]

After the yacht had been moving about an hour, they came to a colony of saurians apparently, for several of them were in sight at once. Achang directed the reptile-hunters to catch one of them, and they paddled their sampan towards a large one. The Blanchita kept near enough to enable all hands to witness the operation, which the Bornean described to them as the Malays made their preparations, for they had all their fishing-gear in their boat.

The line they used was a rattan about forty feet long. At the "business end," as Scott called it, they attached a float to keep it on the top of the water. The steamer just crawled along on the river in order not to disturb the game, though the reptiles were accustomed to the sight of vessels.

"Now you see that stick the hunter has in his hand," said Achang, though each of them had one. "'Most a foot long, like a new moon."

"Crescent-shaped," added Louis.

"Called an alir in Malay. Made of green wood, very tough, pointed at the ends; they fasten the rattan line to the middle of the stick."

Some tough green bark, braided together, was then wound around the stick so that the game could not bite it in two. A big fish for bait was then attached to the alir, and carefully fastened to it so that the reptile could not tear it off.

Thus prepared, the apparatus was thrown overboard, and the sampan paddled away from it to give the game an opportunity to approach it, the Malays[51] each paying out his forty feet of line, one on each side of the boat. The spectators watched the result with great interest. As the sampan receded from the saurians, they approached the bait. Crocodiles and alligators do not nibble at their prey, but bolt it as a snake does a frog.

The bait nearest to the observers on the yacht was soon gobbled up by the hungry crocodile, who appeared not to have been to breakfast that morning; and the Malay at the other end of the line gave a sharp jerk to his gear, the effect of which was to draw the pointed crescent "athwart ships," as the sailors would say, or across his stomach; and the harder it was pulled the more the pointed ends would penetrate the interior of the organ.

The first Malay had hardly hooked his game before the second had another ready to haul in. Both of the saurians struggled and lashed the dark water into a foam; but both of the men in the sampan kept the line as taut as they could with all their strength; and this is the rule in hauling in all gamey fish.

"Tell them we will go ahead, Achang, and all they need to do is to make fast their rattans to the sampan," said Captain Scott, when he had taken in the situation.

In reply to the message the Bornean delivered to them, the Malays nodded their heads vigorously, and smiled their assent.

"Go ahead, down the river, Clinch," added the captain to the helmsman.[52]

"I fancy there will be a lively kick-up on the part of the game," said Louis, as the boat came up to her course.

"Not much," added Scott. "If we put them through the water at the rate of eight knots an hour, the crocs will not feel much like doing any gambolling. We are not making more than four knots now."

"They are as lively now as a parched pea in a hot skillet."

"I will ring the speed-bell now, and see how that will affect them," replied the captain, suiting the action to the word.

The Blanchita darted ahead at her usual speed. Clingman began to overhaul the painter of the sampan, for it did not look strong enough for the present strain. He had scarcely got hold of it before it snapped in the middle, and relieved the strain on the crocodiles. The steamer backed at the order of the captain; and a strong line was thrown into the sampan, which one of the Malays seized and made fast.

When the strain upon them was thus removed, the saurians made violent struggles to escape. The yacht then went ahead again, and the speed-bell was rung immediately. The pressure on the game was renewed, and they ceased to struggle. The apparatus held fast, for the saurian fishers were experienced in their business, and had done their work well.[53]

At eight o'clock the Blanchita reached the mouth of the river. The crocodiles were not dead, but their stomachs must have been in a terrible condition. To Louis it seemed to be cruel to prolong their sufferings; and he wished Achang to request the Malays to kill them, and Scott agreed with him. The Bornean said they could not kill them while they were towing behind, and that, if the lines were slacked, they might get away.

The captain took the matter in hand, and told Achang what he intended to do, which he communicated to the reptile-hunters. On the starboard hand Scott fixed his gaze on a small tongue of land extending out into the river. Taking the wheel himself, he run her close to the land some distance above the point, and worked the sampan and its tow close to the shore. The tow-line of the sampan was then lengthened out to a hundred feet or more, and the yacht went ahead again, rounding the point, so that the peninsula lay between the steamer and her tow.

Then she went ahead again, and the result was that she pulled the sampan upon the point; and as she was flat-bottomed, there was no difficulty in doing so. The Blanchita continued on her course, and the two crocodiles were landed after her. One of the Malays then produced a parong latok; and even more skilfully than Achang had done the job, he cut off the heads of both reptiles. They were out of misery then, and Louis was satisfied.[54]

The yacht was then run up to the point, and Lane was sent on shore to measure the reptiles, while the fishermen proceeded to recover the apparatus from the stomachs of the defunct reptiles. The larger crocodile was twelve feet and four inches long, and the other ten feet and seven inches. The voyage was resumed on the sea to the mouth of the Sadong; and in three hours more she entered the stream, which was a large one, averaging half a mile wide for twenty miles.

"Bujang!" called Achang, as instructed by the captain. "Do you want to go any farther?"

The head man replied in his own language that they wished to go to Simujan, or till they came to plenty of game. The Bornean said Bujang was a great hunter, for he had killed fifty-three crocodiles that year. The yacht, with the sampan still in tow, started up the river, keeping in the middle of it. Just before sunset she reached the junction of the Simujan and Sadong.

On one side of the branch stream there was a considerable Malay village, backed by an abundance of cocoanut palms; and, of course, the houses were built on stilts close to the water. On the other side was the Chinese kampon, or quarter, consisting largely of shops and trading-houses. Louis Belgrave had been presented to the officials at Sarawak as the owner of the Guardian-Mother, and that established him as a person of great distinction.

After the ship departed on her voyage to Siam,[55] many attentions were bestowed upon him; and when, after the return of the yacht from up the Sarawak, they learned that she was going to the Simujan, one of the officials had given him a letter of introduction to the Chinese half-cast government official, who was the magnate of the place. Figuratively, he took the "Big Four" in his arms, and there was nothing he was not ready to do for them.

He conducted them to the government house, and insisted that they should live there during their stay at Simujan. It had been erected to receive such officials as might have occasion to remain there at any time. It was well built and comfortable, and each chamber had a veranda in front of it. It was set on posts six feet from the ground, like all the other dwellings near it. It was the police station of the region; and the two Malays collected eight or nine dollars for their game, which they did not offer to share with the crew of the yacht—no Malay would do such a thing.

The agent's tender of the rooms to the party was accepted, for the members wished to sleep in a four-posted bedstead once more for a change. The chief Malay of the place called upon them, and treated them very handsomely. The Chinese official gave them much information as they were seated on a veranda of the house.

"You may find the orang-outang up the Simujan; but I don't know that you want such large game," said he.[56]

"We have shot tigers in India, and Mr. McGavonty has shot more cobras than all the rest of us. He has a talent for killing snakes."

"Show me the snakes, and I will finish them," added Felix.

"You will not find many of them in the jungle. There are some water snakes taken occasionally, and people here eat them. They make a very fine curry."

"I should ask to be excused from partaking of that dish," said Scott.

"That is all prejudice," said the agent. "Perhaps you would like to go a-fishing in the Sadong and its branches. We have a peculiar way of taking fish here. We use the tuba plant, which the Malays prepare for use. It is a climbing-plant, the root of which has some of the properties of opium. It is reduced to a pulp, mixed with water. I cannot fully explain the process of preparation, in which the Malays are very skilful. At the right time of tide, the fluid is thrown into the stream. The effect is to stupefy and sometimes kill the fish. With dip-nets the fish are picked up, though some of them are so large that they can be secured only with a kind of barbed spear."

"I don't think I care to fish in that way," said Louis, with some disgust in his expression. "It is very unsportsmanlike, and it looks to me to be a mean way to do it."

"Just what some Englishmen who were here a[57] while ago said, and perhaps you are right; but it is a Malay art, and not English."

The party slept very comfortably on bedsteads that night, but they were up before the sun the next morning.[58]

CHAPTER VII A SPIRITED BATTLE WITH ORANG-OUTANGS

The civilized people of Simujan were not stirring when the party came from their chambers. Felipe had steam up at half-past five, for the captain intended to begin the ascent of the river; but he did not care to leave without bidding adieu to the kindly agent. But they got under way at his order, and ran up the river for a morning airing. The boat had not gone more than a mile when the young men discovered a sampan containing two Malays paddling with all their might for the shore.

They had no guns, and could not shoot their game, whatever it was; but each of them had a biliong. This was the implement Achang had bought in Sarawak. It looked something like a pickaxe with only one arm, the end of which was fashioned like a mortising chisel, and was used as an axe.

The edge of the chisel portion was parallel to the handle; but Achang explained that the Dyaks had another kind of biliong, with the cutting part at right angles with the handle, and this was used as an adze. While Lane, the carpenter, was ridiculing the tool, the Malays on shore moved to a tree in[59] sight of the steamer, which had stopped her screw close to the sampan.

"They are going to cut down a tree with the biliongs," said Achang. "Sometimes do that to get the game."

"They couldn't cut down a tree a foot through with those things in a week!" exclaimed Lane.

"So quick as you could cut it down," insisted the Bornean stoutly.

"Dry up, now, and let us see the Malays work with the thing," interposed the captain.

"Lane, you shall have a trial with a Dyak or a Malay, and I will give a prize of three dollars to the one that fells the tree first," said Louis.

"I should like to try that with any Dyak or Malay," replied Lane good-naturedly; and he was a stout Down-Easter, who