They have more than once made use of their swimming powers in escaping from captivity. Several instances have been known where Andamaners have been kept prisoners on board ship, and have seemed tolerably reconciled to their lot. As soon, however, as the ship neared land, they contrived to escape for a moment from the eye of the sentry, slipped overboard, and swam to land. They always dived as soon as they struck the water, swam as far as they could without rising to the surface, and then, after taking a single respiration, dived again, and so swam the greater part of the distance under water. This mode of swimming was doubtless practised by them when trying to escape from the arrows of an unfriendly party.
In Captain Syme’s “Embassy to Ava” there is a curious account of two young Mincopie girls who had been decoyed on board the ship. They were treated very kindly, and soon learned that no harm would be done to them. “They suffered clothes to be put on, but took them off again as soon as opportunity offered, and threw them away as useless encumbrances. When their fears were over, they became cheerful, chattered with freedom, and were inexpressibly diverted at the sight of their own persons in a mirror.
“They were fond of singing, sometimes in a melancholy recitative, at others in a lively key; and often danced about the deck with great agility, slapping the lower part of their bodies with the back of their heels. Wine and spirituous liquors were disagreeable to them; no food seemed so palatable as fish, rice, and sugar. In a few weeks, having recovered strength and become fat, from the more than half-famished state in which they were brought on board, they began to think confinement irksome, and longed to regain their native freedom.
“In the middle of the night, when all but the watchman were asleep, they passed in silence into the Captain’s cabin, jumped out of the stern windows into the sea, and swam to an island half a mile distant, where it was in vain to pursue them, had there been any such intention; but the object was to retain them by kindness, and not by compulsion, an attempt that has failed on every trial. Hunger may (and these instances are rare) induce them to put themselves into the power of strangers; but the moment that their want is satisfied nothing short of coercion can prevent them from returning to a way of life more congenial to their savage nature.”
Like many other savage races, the Mincopies make a kind of festivity on each new moon; and as soon as the thin crescent appears they salute it after their odd fashion, and get up a dance. Their dances are rather grotesque, each performer jumping up and down, and kicking himself violently with the sole of his foot, so as to produce a smart slapping sound. This is the dance which is mentioned in the preceding account of the two captives.
When a Mincopie dies, he is buried in a very simple manner. No lamentations are made at the time; but the body is tied in a sitting position, with the head on the knees, much after the fashion employed among the Bechuanas, and described on page 300. It is then buried, and allowed to decay, when the remains are dug up, and the bones distributed among the relatives. The skull is the right of the widow, who ties it to a cord and hangs it round her neck, where it remains for the rest of her life. This outward observance is, however, all that is required of her, and is the only way in which she troubles herself to be faithful to the memory of her dead husband. It is rather strange that, though the Andamaners make no lamentations on the death of a relative, they do not altogether dispense with these expressions of sorrow, but postpone them to the exhumation and distribution of the relics, when each one who gets a bone howls over it for some time in honor of the dead.
THE NICOBAR ISLANDS.
Immediately to the south of the Andaman Islands, and barely thirty miles distant, lie the Nicobar Islands. The group consists of nine tolerably large islands, and several of much smaller size. One of the large islands, called Great Nicobar, is twenty miles long by eight wide, while Little Nicobar is barely half these dimensions.