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Now, Japan in Formosa has for years been struggling, and without success, to control or subdue the aborigines of the mountains, a people of the same blood as the Igorots, of the same habits and traits, savage head-hunters, the terror of all the plainsmen of no matter what origin.
They were one of the poorest races in Africa, both morally and physically, a result largely due to centuries of fear and oppression. Ibibio was the chief raiding-ground of the head-hunters, and the people lived in small isolated huts and villages deep in the forest, in order to lessen the risk of capture.
The aboriginal tribes are the Negritos, perhaps as close to primitive man as any people on earth; those are the ones I have been telling you about, and they are a race all to themselves, as different from the rest of the Filipinos as the negro is from the white man. The true Filipinos are Malays." "Even the head-hunters?" "Certainly.
The entrance to this stream was completely hidden from view, and no one but these Malays, who had been up here before, trading with the Dayaks, could have discovered it. I had told the Malay chief that I wished to visit a Dayak village where no white man had ever been and where they were head-hunters. He had smiled slyly and nodded as if he understood.
These people have been great head-hunters, and have not yet entirely abandoned the practice, though it is steadily diminishing. It should be recollected, however, that it is only within the last three or four years that we have had any relations with them, Mr. Worcester's first visit to Lubuagan having occurred in 1907.
With a rush that made my hot temples throb there came vividly to my mind recollections of the head-hunters those grim, flinty, relentless little men, never seen, but chilling the warmest noonday by the subtle terror of their concealed presence . . . From time to time, as vanity or ennui or love or jealousy or ambition may move him, one creeps forth with his snickersnee and takes up the silent trail . . . Back he comes, triumphant, bearing the severed, gory head of his victim . . . His particular brown or white maid lingers, with fluttering bosom, casting soft tiger's eyes at the evidence of his love for her.
A sufficiently thrilling pastime, this, for Nancy could take care of herself. I was a bungler beside her when it came to retaliation, and not the least of her attractions for me was her capacity for anger: fury would be a better term. She would fly at them even as she flew at the head-hunters when the Petrel was menaced; and she could run like a deer. Woe to the unfortunate victim she overtook!
She gave us hot coffee, and was back at her wash-tub in no time at all, her entire comment on a proceeding that seemed to Tom and me to have certain elements of gravity being, "By's will be by's!" The final ironical touch was given the anti-climax when our rescuer turned out to be the mother of the chief of the head-hunters himself!
In her tone and inflection Aunt Bell ably conveyed an exposition of the old gentleman's impossibility lucidly allotting him to spiritual fellowship with the head-hunters of Borneo. "I know it, but, Aunt Bell, those old sermons really did me good; all full of fire they were, too, but you felt a man back of them a good man, a real man.
"I hope so," answered our hero with a laugh, and then, a little saddened by his farewell, and pondering rather solemnly on what lay before him the dangers of travel as well as those of the head-hunters Tom hastened back to his own home.
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