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A game at foot-ball, which generally took place at sunset, was, however, much more interesting to me. The ball used is a rather small one, and is made of rattan, hollow, light, and elastic. The player keeps it dancing a little while on his foot, then occasionally on his arm or thigh, till suddenly he gives it a good blow with the hollow of the foot, and sends it flying high in the air.
Three more Malays darted from their hiding-places, and in a few minutes he was securely bound, with a portion of his sarong thrust into his mouth to keep him from crying for help; another Malay, who had been pulling a long rattan on ahead to imitate the sound of an escaping animal, coming from his hiding-place and smiling at the success of the ruse. "What does it mean?"
As soon as the services were over and I had surrendered my flock to the yard master, I was summoned before the superintendent where the pious chaplain accused me of insulting him by not keeping the children awake. I quietly asked him how this could be done. "Go among them with a rattan," said he.
On leaving this place our anchor had got foul in some rock or sunken log in very deep water, and after many unsuccessful attempts, we were forced to cut our rattan cable and leave it behind us. We had now only one anchor left. Starting early, on the 4th of October, the same S.S.W wind continued, and we began to fear that we should hardly clear the southern point of Gilolo.
Alelu'k and Alebu'tud lived together in their own house. They had no neighbors. One day Alelu'k said to his wife, "I must go and hunt some pigs." Then he started out to hunt, taking with him his three dogs. He did not find any wild pigs; but before long he sighted a big deer with many-branched antlers. Then the man tied to the deer's antlers a strong piece of rattan, and dragged it home.
The cart had solid wooden wheels, made out of one thick section that had been cut from a mahogany tree. There was no iron rim around the edge of the wheel. The sides of the cart, however, were light, as they were made from bamboo posts with rattan vine woven between them. The driver sat on the shafts, and directed the heavy animal, just as much by words as by pulling the long rope.
His ears were again pierced with those cries he had heard in the church tower. But wearied nature soon began to confuse his ideas and the veil of sleep descended upon his eyes. He saw a bedroom where two dim tapers burned. The curate, with a rattan whip in his hand, was listening gloomily to something that the senior sacristan was telling him in a strange tongue with horrible gestures.
When darkness was over the forest, the young men would ascend the trees, and stretch lines of rattan from bough to bough, over the places where the trees were too far apart for a woman to leap, and when all was ready, we would climb into the branches, carrying our cooking-pots and all that we possessed, the women bearing their babies at their breasts, and the little children following at their mothers' heels.
The children play this in the cool, long-shadowed afternoons, when they have returned from school, have doffed their white canvas shoes and short socks, and have reverted to the single slip of the country. There is a local game of football which is played with a hollow ball or basket of twisted rattan fibres.
I am told 'Tis a fine healthy Child." Casually thereafter he mentions "my Daughter." Twice her mother "Requested me to Chastise her for Unchristian Temper," which chastisement he seems to have administered with thoroughness and a rattan, in his office. On the second occasion, "I whip'd her Severely & did at the same Time admonish her to Ask Pardon of God.
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