United States or Burkina Faso ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The three stood conversing in low tones, pointing repeatedly at the spot where the chest lay hidden. Bulan could understand but little of their conversation, but it was evident that von Horn was urging some proposition to which the warriors demurred. Suddenly, without an instant's warning, von Horn drew his gun, wheeled, and fired point-blank, first at one of his companions, then at the other.
Then another fowl and another pig were sacrificed in similar fashion at each altar, and the second part of the rite was finished by the men sticking the carcases of the slaughtered beasts each one on the point of a pole, and fixing the poles upright in the earth before the images. Tama Bulan now came up into the house to perform the third and last act.
The outcome of it was that von Horn finally decided to make an attempt to follow the trail of the creature that the woman had seen, and with this plan in view persuaded Muda Saffir to arrange with the chief of the long-house at which they then were to furnish him with trackers and an escort of warriors, promising them some splendid heads should they be successful in overhauling Bulan and his pack.
And then as Tama Bulan, pretty well covered with blood, went away to wash himself, I felt as though I had just lived through a book of the AENEID, and was about to follow Father Aeneas to the shores of Latium. This elaborate rite, so well fitted to set agoing the speculative fancy of any one acquainted with the writings of Robertson Smith and Messrs.
For a long time he lay looking up into her eyes longingly, wistfully. "I wish that it had been for life," he said. At first she did not quite realize what he meant, but presently the tired and hopeless expression of his eyes brought to her a sudden knowledge of his meaning. "Oh, Bulan," she cried, "you must not say that. Why should you wish to die?" "Because I love you, Virginia," he replied.
The silence which followed was broken by Sing who had kneeled opposite Virginia upon the other side of Bulan, where he was feeling the giant's wrists and pressing his ear close above his heart. "Do'n cly, Linee," said the kindly old Chinaman. "Him no dlead."
From the bodies of the dead Dyaks Bulan and his three companions, Number Three, Number Ten, and Number Twelve, took enough loin cloths, caps, war-coats, shields and weapons to fit them out completely, after discarding the ragged remnants of their cotton pajamas, and now, even more terrible in appearance than before, the rapidly vanishing company of soulless monsters continued their aimless wandering down the river's brim.
Then, with his men, he hastened down the stream until they reached the head of prahu navigation where they stole a craft and paddled swiftly on toward the sea. When the three bull ourang outangs closed upon Bulan he felt no fear as to the outcome of the battle, for never in his experience had he coped with any muscles that his own mighty thews could not overcome.
A = BELILING BULAN, full moons; B = DULANG HAROK, bows of a boat; C = KAWIT, hooks; D = DAUN WI, leaves of rattan; E = TUSHUN TUVA, bundles of tuba root. From a carved wooden model in the Sarawak Museum. From a tatu-block in the Sarawak Museum. From a tatu-block in the Sarawak Museum. Plate 141. Design on the hand of a Skapan chief tatued in the Kayan manner. From a drawing.
The object of the expedition was to visit and make peace with another great fighting tribe, the Madangs, who live in the remotest interior of Borneo. Tama Bulan, whose belief in the value of the omens had been slightly shaken, was willing to start without ceremonies, and to make those powers which he believed to protect us responsible for himself and his people also.
Word Of The Day