H. De Vere Stacpoole

“ Well, that was the worst present a man ever got. Havenmouth had said: 'It isn't more than twenty miles way back there,' and that was the string that tied us to the circle, for we went wandering round like the Egyptians in the wilderness, round and round, hunting for that darned stream for months and months. ”

“ Tuan, though he didn’t know anything much more than the difference between the two ends of a blowgun, said all men had been monkeys once, but so long ago that man had forgotten, and if a child was to go and live in the trees with the monkeys he’d revert to the old times in a year or two, and not twenty or fifty years would fetch him back.
“I thought he was talking through his hat, but out in India, since then, I’ve seen the truth of what he said. You’ve heard of wolf children? Wolves are always carrying off children ”

“ Why, they had a wolf child in the Secundra Missionary Asylum and kept it there till it grew up to a man over thirty. It died somewhere about '95, and it never learned to speak, couldn't do more than run about on all fours and snarl. Rum, isn't it?
“Meanwhile Becconi was getting the lads together for his expedition, and he wasn't finding it an easy matter, for in those days Sea Dyaks weren't anxious for payment much except in human heads, and even heads were sometimes pretty much at a discount. The head-hunting chaps have got a bad name, but they weren't so black as they were painted. ”

“ Then when we camped on a bit of high ground the black ants raised objections, and the black ants of Borneo sting like wasps.
“I give you that as a sample of twenty-four hours in the jungle. You didn’t get swamp all the time nor wait-a-bit thorn all the time, but you got lots of other things not much better, and it was always that infernal glass-house damp heat and smell. It’s the smell that gets you, not a bad smell, mind you, but just the smell of a glass house—only more so. ”

“ He was a chap by name of Havenmouth. He'd shoved east with an expedition from Maka, crossing the Balinean River, and he'd found the gold. But he was dying. I never did see such a skeleton. The jungle fever or something like that had done for him, and he said he'd been living on quinine and whisky, but that he didn't care as he'd found the gold. It was in a little stream to the nor'east. He said there was dead loads of it, even though the stream was so small.
“He said that little stream must have been washing its gold for ages to make us rich. ”

“ Tuan had found a creese down below, and, before the monkey had made twenty yards, he was on deck and after him to recover his property. Becconi and Milner, who'd armed themselves, were after Tuan to lend a hand, and there was I stuck on the opposite bank only able to look on.
“On the flat Kadjaman was nowhere, but once he'd got among the trees he was the whole of the circus and the elephant.
“Just by the river there, the undergrowth's so thick you can't go more than a yard in a precious long minute. ”

“ He said he couldn’t lead us any longer till he had that matter settled, and Becconi agreed that it was only right and proper to get the child back and said he’d wait there with the whisky while Tuan and myself made the journey and fetched the goods. The place was only a day’s journey from where we were. I agreed. I judged he couldn’t kill himself with the whisky in two days and that if he did it’d maybe be a mercy for him, and taking my gun I followed Tuan and the fisher Dyak, striking in the direction of the Tatan. ”

“ That’s what Tuan told us with a straight face, but we didn’t laugh, for we knew what he meant. The orangs build houses of sorts away up in the trees. They haven’t walls or roofs or lavatory accommodation; they’re just platforms built between two branches and furnished with bundles of brushwood and leaves. This fishing Dyak was a blood relation of Tuan’s. He knew Ting, and he knew of the carrying off, and a month before, going along through the forest by the river and chancing to look up he saw Kadjaman’s platform away up in a tree. ”

“ That’s how we were placed at Bintulu when out of the sea haze one day a little paddle-wheel boat came snortin’ and tied up to the rotten old wharf where the Sea Dyak children used to sit fishing when they weren’t playing headhunting with wooden parangs.
“The Tanjong Data was the name of the boat, and she was bound for Rejang and Kuching and ports beyond with a mixed cargo and a big monkey for the Dutch government that had been caught somewheres to the north of the Tubao River. ”

“ The Tanjong had blown a cylinder cover off or something, and she lay at Bintulu a week for repairs and while she was repairing and taking more cargo I was often on board talking to the captain and Becconi, who had come by her and was sticking on board till the last minute, seeing that his cabin was a sight more comfortable than shore quarters. The monkey interested me a lot, for in all my shooting I'd never come across the big monkeys much, and this chap was big. ”

“ I don’t know, neither does Kray, neither does he care. He says he has hunted everything in his time but the dollar, and that a free life in the open air is all he wants now that he has done with hunting and got married. ”

“ Becconi took a lot of interest in the chap, too, and we’d sit under the double awning they’d rigged aft of the funnel and have our drinks and watch Kadjaman, for that was his name, given him because he was caught at Kadjaman, which is north of Fort Bellaja near the Tubao River. Becconi, when he had the whisky in him, would stand up for Kadjaman having a soul of his own, same as a man ”