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Updated: May 17, 2025
Here and there, too, I could descry a tiny beach of mud a yard or two wide, with a hut and a canoe tied to the mangrove roots, and black, naked people crouched on their hams in the shadows cast by the forest, engaged in their to me mysterious business of living. They were far-away and more or less picturesque.
Whenever we brought up, we pulled off in the boat to supply ourselves with fish, which we seldom failed to take with hook and line, even when the skipper was unsuccessful with his grains. We baited with land-crabs, which abound in the mangrove swamps.
Among these were mahogany of five different sorts, tulip-wood, satin-wood, cam-wood, bar-wood, fustic, black and yellow ebony, palm-tree, mangrove, calabash, and date.
I was sent on shore to look for them, it being supposed that they were not far off, but after a long search I had to return on board and say that I could not find them. There was a creek a little way off lined with mangrove bushes.
Then Tom brought us our dinner, and the dark began to settle down upon us, thrillingly lonely, and full of strange, desolate cries of night creatures from the mangrove swamps that surrounded our little oasis for miles. Not even when Tom and I had been alone on "Dead Men's Shoes" had I felt so utterly out of and beyond the world. Charlie smacked his big smiling lips at the savage solitude of it.
Payne held his precarious perch, scrutinizing the treacherous ground which they must cross if they were to continue their journey, until the sun, like a blazing red wafer, had slipped down behind the mangrove swamp in the west and darkness had come to the earth below.
The little Prince soon forgot his childhood companions in the gorgeous court of his Highness, the Sultan of Johore, and Noa took the place of his father on the launch, while the old man silently mourned as he leaned back in its stern, and alternately watched the sunlight that played along the carefully polished rails, and the deepening shadows that bound the black labyrinth of mangrove roots on the opposite shore.
A crowd of bronzed, naked little figures sport within the shadow of a maze of drying nets, and flee in consternation as the black, log-like head and cruel, watchful eyes of a crocodile glide quietly along the mangrove roots. On another island you discern the grim breastworks and the frowning mouth of a piece of heavy ordnance.
All I can say is, that the next morning, in a huge straw hat, and with a big striped parasol in my hand, I performed the functions of dragoman to his Excellency Commander Lahalle, full lieutenant, representing France and the French navy. We began by crossing a swamp, covered with huge mangrove trees, through which small canals had been cut to allow of the canoes getting up to the houses.
We walked for a short distance in the mangrove swamp, and came out on an open spot where we found a native camp, which from appearances had been but recently abandoned, the ashes of the fire being still warm: we made a strict search, but found nothing; we proceeded, passed through a small belt of mangroves, and came on an open plain; here Jackey and Tommy being the leading men, saw five natives, about fifty yards from us, planted behind trees, each had a bundle of spears, they were evidently watching us, Jackey levelled his gun at the nearest, and off they ran and disappeared immediately; Jackey seemed very desirous to shoot them, but I told him not to fire, as I wished to speak to them.
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