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There was nothing to reflect a glint of light except a collection of weapons of all ages which occupied the wall behind a bare stone hearth; suits of inlaid armour, coats of chainmail as flexible as silk, assegais and blowpipes, Bornean parangs and Gurkha kukris, Abyssinian shotels with their double blades, Mexican knives in chert and chalcedony, damascened swords and automatic pistols, a Chinese bronze drum, a Persian mace of the date of Rustum, and an Austrian cavalry helmet marked with a bullet-hole and a stain.
Like a great cat Bulan drew himself cautiously to all fours every nerve and muscle taut with the excitement of the moment. Before him he saw a hundred and fifty ferocious Borneo head hunters, armed with parangs, spears and sumpitans.
At first they were terror stricken at the hideous visages of five of the creatures they beheld, but when they saw how few their numbers, and how poorly armed they were, as well as the awkwardness with which they carried their parangs, denoting their unfamiliarity with the weapons, they took heart and prepared to ambush them.
Bulan was in the lead, and close behind him in single file lumbered his awkward crew. Suddenly there was a chorus of savage cries close beside him and simultaneously he found himself in the midst of twenty cutting, slashing parangs. Like lightning his bull whip flew into action, and to the astonished warriors it was as though a score of men were upon them in the person of this mighty white giant.
Aboo Din lashed them mercilessly and drove them into the jungle, where he followed on his hands and knees. Then I plunged into the jungle path that my kebuns had cut with their keen parangs, or jungle-knives. Ten feet within the confines of the forest the metallic glare of the sun and the pitiless reflections of the China Sea were lost in a dim, green twilight.
They had experienced adventures by the score, though none of them were of sufficient importance to be narrated here, and more than once they had come within a hair's-breadth of being compelled to retrace their steps. They rode upon the small wiry ponies of the country, their servants clearing a way before them with their parangs as they advanced.
Such a party carries no provisions, eating sago and animals that they kill. Their weapons are sumpitans and parangs, and equipment for stamping sago forms part of their outfit. The rhino is approached stealthily and the large spear-point on one end of the sumpitan is thrust into its belly.
The sharp parangs of the head hunters were no match for the superhuman muscles of the creatures that battered them about; now lifting one high above his fellows and using the body as a club to beat down those nearby; again snapping an arm or leg as one might break a pipe stem; or hurling a living antagonist headlong above the heads of his fellows to the dark waters of the river.
Another dance succeeded this one, performed by two boys, apparently each about thirteen years old, who went through it with surprising grace. Although using full-sized Parangs and shields, they whirled them round their heads with the greatest ease, for dancing, like paddling, deer-snaring, and the use of the Parang ilang, are part of the Kayan education.
A single backward glance was all that Virginia Maxon found it possible to throw in the direction of the rescue party, and in that she saw a sight that lived forever in her memory. At the head of his hideous, misshapen pack sprang the stalwart young giant straight into the heart of the flashing parangs of the howling savages.
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