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So I was busy, but managed to dismast the hantu prau and wrap it up in matting, so that it went aboard with the plunder. Nothing happened. Then I called myself a grandmother, and sailed for Batavia. Two nights later, a very singular thing happened. The mate this one with the sharp eyes is a quiet chap; seldom speaks to me except on business.
It was plain they meant to wait and see whether the hantu prau went out with the ebb or not; and as it was then flood, and dusk, they couldn't see before morning. So I picked some bananas and chicos, and made a dinner of them; then I lighted a fire under the tree, to smoke and read Virgil by, in fact, spent the evening over my notes. That editor was a pukkah ass!
Then they saw, too, and began to back water and turn, all pulling different ways and yelling: "Prau hantu!... sampar! ...Sakit lepra! Kolera!... hantu!" As we swung, I saw what it was, a little carved prau like a child's toy boat, perhaps four feet long, with red fiber sails and red and gilt flags from stem to stern.
"Considering the unholy strangeness of the world we live in " He puffed twice, the palm of his hand glowing. "Things you can't explain," he continued vaguely. "Now this I thought of it today, speaking of hantu. Perhaps you can explain it, being a youngster without theories. The point is, of what follows, how much, if any, was a dream?
But here, in Atuona Valley, the hoot of the owl, the kouku, which in Malay is the ghost-bird, the burong-hantu, seemed to deepen the silence. Does not that word hantu, meaning in Malay an evil spirit, have some obscure connection with our American negro "hant," a goblin or ghost?
Then I fed the fire, lay down again, and watched her back and fill on her tether, all clear and ruddy in the flame, even the carvings, and the little wooden figures of wizards on her deck. And while I looked, I grew drowsier and drowsier; my eyes would close, then half open, and there would be the hantu sails and the fire for company, growing more and more indistinct.
This seemed to have effect. "Row me round to that point and land me," I ordered. "Hantu does not come to white men. You go out to the ship; when I have met the soldier-messengers, row back, and take me on board with the gifts." The mate persuaded them, and they landed me on the point, half a mile away, with a box of cheroots, and a roll of matting to take my nap on.
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