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"Poor! poor fellow! I could have done much to save his life," I exclaimed to myself. "But it is not a moment for regret." Scarcely a minute after, the prahu sunk, ingulfing all with her. Fairburn and I, with those who had been preserved, were going aft to the captain, when I caught sight of a marine levelling his musket at the head of a man floating in the water.
Two or three minutes later they returned, one man bearing in his arms a scarcely half-grown live pig, which had been hit by the sumpitan. The whole affair lasted barely ten minutes. At another place, where we were again waiting for the big prahu, the Penyahbongs amused themselves with wrestling in water up to their shoulders.
Far ahead of them in the bottom of the great prahu crouched the girl they sought. Her thoughts were of the man she felt intuitively to possess the strength, endurance and ability to overcome every obstacle and reach her at last. Would he come in time? Ah, that was the question. The mystery of the stranger appealed to her.
The Dyak bangkong draws very little water, and is both lighter and faster than the Malay prahu; it is a hundred feet long, and nine or ten broad. Sixty or eighty men with paddles make her skim through the water as swiftly as a London race-boat.
According to a Malay version, a raja of Bandjermasin was much disliked and the people made him leave the country. He took a female dog with him in the prahu and went to Sembulo, where he had children all of whom had tails.
I think I read somewhere once, in a paper, about a Malay prahu being taken by the captain of a ship pretending to be helpless, and this made the prahu, which could sail twice as fast as his ship, come close up to attack him." "Yes; and what then?" "The captain sunk the prahu, sir." "Humph!" said Captain Thwaites, frowning and leaning back in his chair.
Three days later we were lying in Singapore harbour, and I had one or two runs ashore to have a good look at the town, with its busy port full of all kinds of vessels, from the huge black-sided steamer and trim East Indiaman, to the clumsy high-sterned, mat-sailed, Chinese junk, and long narrow Malay prahu.
Bangsul and some Penyahbongs, at my request, searched in the surrounding jungle growth and found a hole that had been dug of the same size and shape as the stolen box, where no doubt it had been deposited until taken on board the prahu. The day previous to our departure Mr. Demmini again was taken ill, and in accordance with his own wish it was decided that he should return.
It was not for another two days that I learned where they were, and then I heard that they had gone into a creek twenty miles away; there one had sunk, and the other had been joined by the two prahus that had been far up the river; and I also learned that one of Sehi's men had gone into the village and let himself be captured, so that he might guide the ship's boats to the place where, as they thought, they would find but one prahu, while three would be waiting for them.
The men were sanguine and full of spirit, their only regret being that they had so far to go before they could reach the sides of the long prahu, which they found now on the move, her anchor having been slipped, so that she was slowly floating down the stream, as she kept up a lively fire against the boat.
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