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They are chiefly sugar, pepper, tin, nutmegs, mace, sago, tapioca, rice, buffalo hides and horns, rattans, gutta, india rubber, gambier, gums, coffee, dye-stuffs, and tobacco, but the island itself, though its soil looks rich from its redness, only produces pepper and gambier. In the latter year, tonnage to the amount of three millions of tons arrived in its harbor.
It produces in one year two hundred piculs of wax, fifty piculs of tortoise-shell, ten piculs of best camphor, and as much inferior; ten piculs of birds'-nests, at ten dollars the catty; 1st camphor, twenty-five; rattans, one dollar per picul; tortoise-shell, one dollar the catty; wax, twenty the picul. Articles required are the same as at Borneo Proper.
Assuredly I will go with you." When Abdool announced that he had cut through the rattans, Harry joined him, telling the interpreter to wait at the entrance till he called him. "What next, master?" Abdool asked. "The next thing will be to pull up the bamboos.
"And as to the trade . . . I will make your fortune yet, my boy. Never fear. Have you got any cargo for the schooner that brought me here?" "The shed is full of rattans," answered Almayer, "and I have about eighty tons of guttah in the well. The last lot I ever will have, no doubt," he added, bitterly. "So, after all, there was no robbery. You've lost nothing actually.
There was also a climbing variety of bamboo, which scrambled up to the tops of the largest trees. The undergrowth in places was most luxuriant and consisted of different species of palms, rattans, tree-ferns, pandanus, giant ginger, pipers, pothos, begonias, bananas, caladiums, ferns, selaginellas and lycopodiums, and many variegated plants. Growing on many of the trees were some fine orchids.
The other Malay brought from the sampan a couple of spears, a parong latok, and a bundle of ropes and rattans. "Do they use the sumpitan in Borneo now, Achang?" asked Louis. "Not Dyaks, Mr. Belgrave; Kyans use it; shoot poison arrows; sure death; very bad."
"The stockade will not stand a moment against those trees," he continued. "'Tis best to call the men in, at once." The rajah ordered the native beside him to sound his horn and, in two or three minutes, the men poured in at the entrance. As soon as the last had come in, the bamboos were put in the holes prepared for them, with some rattans twined between them.
Those belonging to the chiefs were smaller, well constructed of timber and plank, and covered with shingles or thin plates of board bound on with rattans, about the size and having much the appearance of our slates. The dresses of the young women of rank were pretty enough.
"Then we must try another way. First cut the rattans but not in a line with the entrance, a few feet on one side." The wood was extremely tough, and it was half an hour before Abdool could cut through them, and free three or four of the bamboo poles. While he was doing this, Harry and the interpreter stood talking together, apparently watching the movements of the Malays.
The slaves were still on board, waiting the orders of the governor. They had been on deck about ten minutes, when three or four men, with large panama straw hats on their heads, and long rattans in their hands, jumped upon the gunnel, and in a few seconds drove them all down below. I then turned round, and observed a black woman who had just climbed up the side of the frigate.
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