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"Not allers," answered the negro simply, "sometimes I gibs way a good deal wuss. Depends on de inside ob my nose an' de state ob de wedder." What the professor would have replied we cannot say, for just then a Dyak youth rushed in to say that an unusually large and gorgeous butterfly had been seen just outside the village!
After a walk of another hour they reached the Dyak house, and the whole population of the place followed them to the shore. They were filled with wonder and admiration at the sight of the Blanchita, and went off to her in their sampans.
Monsieur de Haan, as well as the other Dutch officials whom I questioned on the subject, attributed the prevalence of head-hunting in Borneo to the vanity of the Dyak women. He explained that, just as American girls expect candy and flowers from the young men who are attentive to them, so Dyak maidens expect freshly severed human heads.
We ascertained that the pirates had retreated to a Dyak village, situated on the summit of a hill, some twenty-five miles higher up the Undop, five or six miles only of which we had succeeded in ascending, as a most dreary and rainy night closed in, during which we were joined by Mr. D'Aeth and his division from the Lupar river.
Some among a bloodthirsty and vengeful horde were even then pointing to the clustering stars that promised quick voyage to the isle where their kinsmen had been struck down by a white man who rescued a maid. Nevertheless, Grecian romance and Dyak lore alike relegate the influence of the Pleiades to the sea. Other stars are needed to foster enterprise ashore.
These the rajah's son and his hunters very politely requested our acceptance of. We now had quite sufficient materials for our dinner, and as we were literally as hungry as hunters, we were most anxious to fall to, and looked upon our pigs with very cannibal eyes. The first thing necessary was to light a fire, and for the first time I had an opportunity of seeing the Dyak way of obtaining it.
At last, however, it came to one of those Dyak roads of which we have made mention, so that it could not easily swing from one tree to another, and the stoppage of rustling among the leaves told that the creature had halted.
I stayed with such a woman in a home in Borneo. She had been a Dyak girl. Yet she did not look it. She had a beautiful home with beautiful English speaking children. I met her in the interior of Borneo a hundred miles from a single white woman.
Wounds in that burning clime are more dangerous than in colder latitudes; thus three of the wounded had died. One was a little boy, the child of a Dyak woman. He had been badly wounded in the shoulder while resting in her arms. The child sank gradually, nor could the surgeon's skill avail to arrest the progress of death.
Now, putting scalps for heads, the reader will perceive that their customs are nearly those of the American Indians. Every Dyak village has its head-house: it is generally the hall of audience as well. The interior is decorated with heads piled up in pyramids to the roof: of course the greater the number of heads the more celebrated they are as warriors.
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