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Some of these are exquisitely manufactured, and so hard that, without turning the edge, they cut ordinary wrought iron and steel. Among their other weapons is the sumpit, a hollow tube, through which they blow poisoned arrows. The latter are of various kinds, and those used in war are dipped in the sap of what the natives term the "upo."
It is held in the left hand, well advanced before the body, and meant not so much to receive the spear-point, as to divert it by a twist of the hand. It is generally painted in bright colours, and often decorated with human hair. Sometimes the shaft of the spear is a sumpit or blow-pipe. This is a small wooden tube about eight feet long. The smoothness and straightness of the bore is remarkable.
The hole is drilled with an iron rod, one end of which is chisel-pointed, through a log of hard wood, which is afterwards pared down and rounded till it is about an inch in diameter. The dart used with the sumpit is usually made of a thin splinter of the nibong palm, stuck into a round piece of very light wood, so as to afford a surface for the breath to act upon.
"Tay, cappen," said the Malay in a whisper; "leave me kill em. Sumpit bettel dun bullet. De gun makee noise wake old mias up, an' maybe no killee em. De upas poison bettel. It go silent quick. See how Saloo slay dem all tlee!" There was something in Saloo's suggestions which caused Captain Redwood to ground his rifle and reflect.
The effect of this poison is almost instantaneous, and destroys life in four or five minutes. Those who have seen a wound given accidentally, describe the changes that the poison occasions as plainly perceptible in its progress. Before using the arrow, its poisoned point is dipped in lime-juice to quicken it. The range of the sumpit is from fifty to sixty yards.
In the obscurity that shrouded the gorilla's roost, nothing at all was seen, and nothing heard; for the sumpit is as silent on its message as the wing of an owl when beating through the twilight. True, there was something heard, though it was not the sound of the arrow.
Saloo had been one of the best sumpitan shooters in all Sumatra, and could send an arrow with true aim a distance of a hundred and fifty yards. But to make its effect deadly at this distance, something more than the mere pricking of the tiny "sumpit" was needed.
Their sumpitans are most exactly bored, and look like Turkish tobacco-pipes. The inner end of the sumpit, or arrow, is run through a piece of pith fitting exactly to the tube, so that there is little friction as they are blown out of the tube by the mouth.
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