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Updated: June 25, 2025
These creatures, although they can swim well enough, would only be found upon the banks of the river, when it returned within its proper channel. Now and then Guapo brought down a parrot, a macaw, or an aracari, with his blow-gun; but these were only temporary supplies.
In fact, M. de Haan told me that among certain of the Dyak tribes virtually all of the men suffer from rupture as a result of the constant use of the blow-gun. Though I have heard those who have never seen the sumpitan in use sneer at it as a toy, it is, at short distances, one of the most accurate weapons in existence and, when its darts are poisoned, one of the deadliest.
The latter was the weapon with which the tortoise was to be killed. Taking the bow, and adjusting an arrow to the string, Guapo stepped forward to the water's edge. All watched him, uttering their hopes of his success. It was still not clear with them how the turtle was to be killed by an arrow shot from a bow any more than by one sent from a blow-gun.
Stern grabbed the shade and steadied it. Beatrice stooped and snatched up the thing from where it lay beside the table. Only one glance Stern gave at it, as she held it up. A long reed stem he saw wrapped at its base with cotton fibers a fish-bone point, firm-lashed and on that point a dull red stain, a blotch of something dry and shiny. "Blow-gun darts!" cried he. "Poisoned!
The blow-gun, however, in the hands of an expert adult Indian, can be made to propel arrows so as to kill at a distance of fifty and sixty yards. The aim is most certain when the tube is held vertically, or nearly so.
"Yes, my mistress," said he, "it is a turtle, and a big one too. Please all keep quiet I think I can get him." How Guapo was to get the turtle was a mystery to all. The latter was about thirty paces distant, but it would be difficult, if not impossible, to hit his small snout the only part above water with the arrow of the blow-gun.
Then and there I determined that some day I would myself sail those adventurous seas in a vessel of my own, that I would poke the nose of my craft up steaming tropic rivers, that I would drop anchor off towns whose names could not be found on ordinary maps, and that I would go ashore in white linen and pipe-clayed shoes and a sun-hat to take tiffin with sultans and rajahs, and to barter beads and brass wire for curios a curly-bladed Malay kris, carved cocoanuts, a shark's-tooth necklace, a blow-gun with its poisoned darts, a stuffed bird of paradise, and, of course, a huge conch-shell and an enormous piece of branch-coral which I would bring home and display to admiring relatives and friends as convincing proofs of where I had been.
So went on several days, during which the trees were felled, and the process of digging them out began; while Ayacanora, silent and moody, wandered into the woods all day with her blow-gun, and brought home at evening a load of parrots, monkeys, and curassows; two or three old hands were sent out to hunt likewise; so that, what with the game and the fish of the river, which seemed inexhaustible, and the fruit of the neighboring palm-trees, there was no lack of food in the camp.
"Stop her!" were Amyas's first words; but his next were, "Let her go!" for, springing like a deer through the little garden and over the flower-fence, she turned, menacing with her blow-gun the sailors, who had already started in her pursuit.
A few silk nooses hung about the flowers where the birds are seen to frequent, will sometimes succeed in ensnaring their tiny forms. The blow-gun is often used with good success, and the concussion from a gun loaded simply with powder, and aimed in the direction of the bird, will often stun it so that it will fall to the ground.
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