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Updated: May 15, 2025
His body became white and his clothes silken. Pleased with this, Semang ascended the ladder, gathered together all the goods that he had found in the room, and began taking them to the prahu. There he found Deer asleep, and killed him with his spear. After bringing all the goods from the house to the prahu, Semang started down-stream.
"'Taint English 'taint game," he cried aloud, with the water at his lip; and checking the frantic desire to beat the surface with his hands in the natural last effort of a drowning creature, he swam steadily on, hailing the boat at intervals, but more and more feebly, as his despair increased; for he felt that he was only a lad, and that his life was a mere nothing compared to a successful capture of the prahu.
He therefore was going to walk himself and advised us to do likewise. Rain began to fall. On the high river bank I waited to see them off. The first prahu had to return and take another course; the men all seemed to be hesitating. Finally it made a fresh dash forward.
By this time the long swift boat was rapidly approaching, quite invisible to the little party of English, but audible enough; and they waited eagerly till it seemed as if she was bearing down upon them, when, with a short, sharp warning first to be ready, the lieutenant gave the word Fire! when about fifteen rifles went off almost like one, their flashes lighting up the darkness for an instant, and displaying close upon them the long dark prahu, with a long bank of oars, coming down fast.
The bark was pounded into small pieces and then thrown to one side upon large palm leaves which covered the bridge. Boarding a prahu, I next visited Amban Klesau's bridge, a little lower down, which was larger and more pretentious, with tall poles erected on it, and from the top hung ornamental wood shavings.
His own men he hastened to their posts in his prahu that they might be ready to pull swiftly away the moment that he and the captive were aboard. The Dyak warriors presented an awe inspiring spectacle in the fitful light of the nearby camp fire.
The prahu was gliding through a stretch of comparatively quiet and placid water where the stream spread out into a little basin just above a narrow gorge through which they had just forced their way by dint of the most laborious exertions on the part of the crew. Virginia watched the two men near her furtively. They were deeply engrossed in their conversation. Neither was looking in her direction.
Leaving the gig in charge of them, we went in pursuit of the fourth prahu, and soon came up with her; but her crew escaped by running the boat on shore. Another prahu now hove in sight, pulling, or rather paddling, towards us.
That he had not done so, under any other circumstances, would not have caused me any disappointment. Now that money was of so great importance to me, I keenly felt the want of it. "I will go, then, as a seaman before the mast," I cried energetically. "I will work my passage from place to place; I will go in every sort of craft, from the Chinese junk to the Malay prahu and sampan.
Nevertheless, the day had passed happily, as I accomplished much and acquired interesting information, for instance, about the flying prahu which I had secured. It was about half a metre long, and this and similar models seem to be quite an institution in the southern parts of Borneo.
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