"Where shall we land?" he asked in Malay.
"I don't know—wherever your honour wishes," the helmsman replied. "Your honour knows best."
Before Patterson could reply a huge tree on the right bank, not twenty yards ahead, crashed down right across the stream, its great branches throwing up a column of water, while its dense top was locked in the foliage of the other bank.
"Murut! Murut!" shouted the Malays. "Turn quick! Quick!"
The water swirled beneath the swift strokes of the paddles as they turned the canoe in its own length. A sudden crack with the rending sound of a falling tree caused them to pause with paddles in the air, as another giant of the forest crashed down the stream below them. Instantly a shot rang out from the jungle and the air was filled with yells of "Hoot-ka-Poot," the dread war-cry of the Head-hunting Muruts.
Naked figures climbed over the fallen trees that hemmed them in, and musket shots from both banks added to the din, though the bullets whizzed high overhead or harmlessly struck the water.
At the first alarm Rupert and Patterson had seized their rifles and opened fire, Patterson shouting orders to keep the canoe in mid-stream.
"Fire at the men on the tree ahead, Cotton," he said. "We must force a passage up stream.... Good shot!" as a Murut who had reached the middle of the tree threw up his arms and toppled face down into the stream.
Two more were lying limp in the tangle of branches and another went splashing and spluttering past the canoe, the swift running current red with his blood. Suddenly the man in the bows leaped up with a shriek that ran high above the noise of the fight, his eyes starting from his head with horror, as he stared at a tiny bamboo shaft that he held in his left hand, while his right plucked convulsively at his side, from which a few drops of blood were oozing. Slowly he sank to his knees, while his fellow paddlemen huddled away from him, muttering the dread words, "Upas, Upas poison! He's hit!"
As the cruel poison began to work, the poor fellow's face became livid and his limbs contorted with agony, and soon he lay a knotted and inanimate mass of twisted limbs in the bottom of the canoe.