“Well, I don’t know about Aunt Sophy,” I replied; “but I hope she would be very sorry.”
“Ah! well, you needn’t be nervous, Nat, for I don’t think the Malays are such bloodthirsty fellows as people say; and our captain here, in spite of his fierce aspect, is very gentlemanly and pleasant.”
I could not help looking at our captain, whom Uncle Dick called gentlemanly, for to my eyes he seemed to be a fierce savage, with his scarlet kerchief bound round his head, beneath which his dark eyes seemed to flash angrily.
“Shall you keep your loaded gun with you always, uncle, while we are with these people?” I said.
“No, my boy, certainly not,” he replied; “and you may take it for granted, Nat, that even the most savage people are as a rule inoffensive and ready to welcome a white man as a friend, except where they have been ill-treated by their civilised visitors. As for the Malays, I have met several travellers who have been amongst then and they all join in saying that they are a quiet superior race of people, with whom you may be perfectly safe, and who are pleased to be looked upon as friends.”
“But I thought, uncle,” I said, “that they were very dangerous, and that those krises they wore were poisoned?”
“Travellers’ tales, my boy. The kris is the Malay’s national weapon that everyone wears. Why, Nat, it is not so very long since every English gentleman wore a sword, and we were not considered savages.”
We had rather a long and tiresome voyage, for the prahu, though light and large, did not prove a very good sea-boat. When the wind was fair, and its great sail spread, we went along swiftly, and we were seldom for long out of sight of land, coasting, as we did, by the many islands scattered about the equator; but it was through seas intersected by endless cross currents and eddies, which seemed to seize upon the great prahu when the wind died down, and often took us so far out of our course one day, that sometimes it took the whole of the next to recover what we had lost.
So far, in spite of the novelty of many of the sights we had seen, I had met with nothing like that which I had pictured in my boyish dreams of wondrous foreign lands. The sea was very lovely, so was the sky at sunrise and sunset; but where we had touched upon land it was at ports swarming with shipping and sailors of all nations. I wanted to see beautiful islands, great forests and mountains, the home of strange beasts and birds of rare plumage, and to such a place as this it seemed as if we should never come.
I said so to Uncle Dick one day as we sat together during a calm, trying to catch a few fish to make a change in our food.