“But why did you send her off—because she was treating Olaff as if he were her pup?”
“Well, not exactly,” said Kray, “and yet maybe that was a bit of the reason. But mainly I expect it was something that happened years ago that rattled me; thirty years ago it was when I was with Becconi in Borneo on the exploring job. He was after minerals and if he’d stuck to them in his drinks as well as his prospectin’ he’d have pulled through; but the whisky did him. I’d been out East with a chap called Milner hunting, and we struck Sarawak coast. Milner was going home from there, and I was paid off with a bonus. I could have gone back with him to England, and maybe would only for this chap Becconi who happened along while we were waiting at Bintulu for a boat.
“Boats in those days weren’t plentiful along the coast, and you didn’t often know where they were going when they came, but as long as they took you somewhere else it didn’t much matter. 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. He must have weighed all of two hundred pounds, and he was turning gray with age. He was what the Dyaks call a Mayas Kassa, which means an orang-utan, with a face like a full moon. I’m not joking. There are three kinds of orang-utans; the Mayas Kassa, the Mayas Rabei, and the Mayas Tjaping, but the Kassa takes the bun for beauty. I never did see such a face. It was like nothing so much as a full moon broadened out, same as you see it when the moon’s rising through a bank of mist and in the middle of it two eyes and a nose, to say nothing of the mouth. That was what the monkey was like, and they had him in a cage close to the engine-room hatch, and he’d sit there the day long, scratching himself and talking to himself, his eyes traveling about round the decks as if he was watching something passing, and sometimes he’d look up at you, but he’d never meet your eye square, at least not for longer than the flick of a snapshot shutter.
“Taking him altogether he was near five feet in height and his chest looked as thick as a tree as he sat there scratching the fur on it, his hands were as big as hams; and I reckon he could have taken two ordinary men and knocked their heads together same as if they’d been two rag dolls.
“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; but if the whisky was out, and maybe a touch of liver on him, he’d be the other way about. I used to use the monkey on him for fun, or to see the state of his health, and then Kadjaman would sit watching us and pretending not to.
“We didn’t know that he’d been at work of nights, when the whole of Bintulu and the chaps on board were snoring. He’d worked on the cage bars, loosening them by degrees and little by little, so that the time might come when one big pluck could rip them out.
“No, sir, we didn’t know that or we couldn’t have sat there sucking our cheroots and bug juice and talking about monkeys having souls.
II.
“Now I must tell you that Milner had a servant, Tuan Marop by name, and Tuan had his child with him, a little chap of six or so, named Ting. Mrs. Tuan had been dead over a year, and he’d brought Ting down to Bintulu to leave him there while he accompanied Milner on his expedition. Ting and Kadjaman had struck up a friendship of sorts. The child would talk to the brute in the Dyak lingo and Kadjaman would scratch himself and talk back in orang-utan. I tell you it was talking.