The deadly blow-pipe is the Murut's chief weapon, for guns are few and only obtained where the Arab trader has penetrated to buy "gutta" and other jungle produce. The blow-pipe is about six feet long and is bored with wonderful skill from a perfectly straight piece of seasoned hard wood. Its darts are made from bamboo, thin as a knitting needle, and with a very sharp point, which is nearly cut through, so that it breaks off in the wound before the dart can be withdrawn. A piece of pith that exactly fits the bore of the tube is fixed to the other end of the dart, and so powerful is this primitive weapon that a skilled warrior can blow a dart with extreme accuracy to forty or even fifty yards range.
The Malay next Rupert dropped his paddle, which floated away, and when he looked at him he saw a thin line of blood running down his face from a hole in his left temple. He was stone dead, but still squatted in his place. A bullet now broke the steersman's, Unju's, paddle, and the canoe began to drift towards the bank.
It had all happened so quickly that they had scarcely time to realise their danger, and it was not till a shower of spears had wounded Unju and killed the other two Malays, that Patterson saw they were almost ashore.
"Quick, Cotton, paddle for your life!" he shouted, and, seizing a paddle, he tried to turn the bow of the canoe to the stream again.
But it was too late, a score of naked forms leapt from the bank and threw themselves upon the canoe, which filled with water, and surrounded by shrieking savages was soon fast wedged in the undergrowth on the wear side.
It would have gone hard with the two white men, for a dozen spears were poised against them, when Unju, the Dyack, yelling his war-cry, leapt into the midst of the Muruts, his heavy parang swung by an arm of steel, cleaving through skull and shoulder, breast or back, and sending death and destruction on every side. In a moment he had cleared a circle round the canoe. Suddenly a shot rang out, and Unju collapsed into Rupert's arms, and an instant later a tall native with a Winchester repeating rifle in his hand, stepped from behind a tree, and, signing to the Muruts to keep back, approached the canoe.
He wore a short Arab coat, a pair of tight-fitting "sluar," and a small handkerchief turban of stiff gold embroidery round his head. An acquiline nose, two piercing black eyes set very close together, and a small black moustache that covered but did not hide a thin, cruel mouth, showed that the newcomer was not a Murut. He addressed Patterson in Malay with the peculiar drawl of the Brunie noble.
"Surrender, and the Muruts shall not kill you. Touch not your guns but step up upon the land."
He then turned to the Muruts and gave some orders in their own language. Unju had sat up, and Rupert was trying to staunch the bullet wound in his left shoulder. With Patterson's assistance they lifted him from the canoe and laid him against a tree on the river bank. The Muruts were cutting branches of trees and with a few rattans soon constructed a rough litter.
What fate awaited them Rupert hardly dared to guess. That their lives had been spared was evidently due to the presence of the Brunie chief, whom they learnt later on was an outlaw and a desperado called Mat Salleh, who, in his young days, had been a pirate and was a native of Suloo, an island of the north coast. Old Unju knew him well by reputation, and seemed to fear him far more than he did the Muruts, whom he really despised. Mat Salleh had obtained a great influence over the Muruts of the interior, who believed him to be invulnerable and possessed with supernatural power.