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Updated: June 29, 2025
We were bewilderingly aware of a girlish figure amongst us. "You cowards!" she cried. "You cowards!" Lithe, and fairly quivering with passion, it was Nancy who showed us how to face the head-hunters. They gave back. They would have been brave indeed if they had not retreated before such an intense little nucleus of energy and indignation!...
"No, don't say anything about the images brass or gold," cautioned Tom. "But, Rad, there's another thing. We may run across the head-hunters down there in Mexico." "Head-hunters? What's dem?" "They crush you, and chop off your head for an ornament." "Ha! Ha! Den I ain't in no danger, Massa Tom. Nobody would want de head ob an old colored man fo' an ornament. By golly!
Until lately these inveterate head-hunters would cross the mountains, make prahus, then travel down the Upper Mahakam, and commit serious depredations among the kampongs, killing whomsoever they could, the others fleeing to the mountains. As one Penihing chief expressed it to me: "The river was full of their prahus from the Kasao River to Long Blu."
"But how did they get it open? and what were they doing with the head-hunters, and why didn't the head-hunters attack them?" Ned wanted to know. "Well, I guess perhaps Delazes knew how to handle those head-hunters," replied Tom. "They may be a sort of lost tribe of Mexicans, and perhaps their ancestors centuries ago owned the city of gold.
At any rate I think some of them knew the secret of raising the door." And later Tom learned in a roundabout way from the Fogers that this was so. The father and son had after much hardship joined forces with Delazes and he, by a promise of the heads of the party of our friends, and much tobacco, had gained the head-hunters as allies.
We went over a fine bridge, copied from one of their own into the walled city of Manila. Here in one room you see all of its war exhibits, immense cannons, the blow guns of the Negritos; axes the Iggorote head-hunters used to cut off the heads of their enemies.
Divine, feeling that immediate danger from bullets was past, raised his head above the edge of the earthwork. "We have something to communicate, Mr. Ward," he called. "Spit it out, then; I'm a-listenin'," called back the mate. "Miss Harding, Mr. Theriere, Byrne, Miller, and Swenson have been captured and killed by native head-hunters," said Divine.
I returned to Sibu with Mingo, and we took with us the ringleader of the head-hunters. He was kept handcuffed in the hold, and he worked himself up into a pitiable state of fright. He thought he was going to be killed, and the whole of the voyage he was chanting a most mournful kind of song, a regular torrent of words going to one note.
The particular instance I have in mind was on Malaita, the most savage island in the easterly Solomons. The natives had been remarkably friendly; and how were we to know that the whole village had been taking up a collection for over two years with which to buy a white man's head? The beggars are all head-hunters, and they especially esteem that of a white man.
They all promised, and then they lent themselves to the task of getting things in shape for travel. Eradicate was a big help, and his cheerful good nature often lightened their toil. "Ho, for the interior!" cried Ned gaily. "Yes, we're off into the unknown all right," added Tom grimly, "and there's no telling when we'll get back, if we ever will, should the head-hunters get after us."
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