Blown to Bits; or, The Lonely Man of Rakata

by R. M. Ballantyne

"Hallo?"

"Keep your heart up, for—we'll try to 'do to oders all around de t'ing what's good an' true!'"

"Das de way, boy—'an' oders, 'turning tit for tat, will do de same to you!'"

He yelled rather than sang this at the top of his tuneful voice, and waved his hand as the sharp craft shot away over the sea.

Fortunately the sea was calm, for it was growing dark when they reached the shores of Borneo and entered the mouth of a small stream, up which they proceeded to paddle. The banks of the stream were clothed with mangrove trees. We have said the banks, but in truth the mouth of that river had no distinguishable banks at all, for it is the nature of the mangrove to grow in the water—using its roots as legs with which, as it were, to wade away from shore. When darkness fell suddenly on the landscape, as it is prone to do in tropical regions, the gnarled roots of those mangroves assumed the appearance of twining snakes in Nigel's eyes. Possessing a strongly imaginative mind he could with difficulty resist the belief that he saw them moving slimily about in the black water, and, in the dim mysterious light, tree stems and other objects assumed the appearance of hideous living forms, so that he was enabled to indulge the uncomfortable fancy that they were traversing some terrestrial Styx into one of Dante's regions of horror.

In some respects this was not altogether a fancy, for they were unwittingly drawing near to a band of human beings whose purposes, if fully carried out, would render the earth little better than a hell to many of their countrymen.

It is pretty well known that there is a class of men in Borneo called Head Hunters. These men hold the extraordinary and gruesome opinion that a youth has not attained to respectable manhood until he has taken the life of some human being.

There are two distinct classes of Dyaks—those who inhabit the hills and those who dwell on the sea-coast. It is the latter who recruit the ranks of the pirates of those eastern seas, and it was to the camp of a band of such villains that our adventurers were, as already said, unwittingly drawing near.

They came upon them at a bend of the dark river beyond which point the mangroves gave place to other trees—but what sort of trees they were it was scarcely light enough to make out very distinctly, except in the case of the particular tree in front of which the Dyaks were encamped, the roots of which were strongly illuminated by their camp fire. We say roots advisedly, for this singular and gigantic tree started its branches from a complexity of aërial roots which themselves formed a pyramid some sixty feet high, before the branches proper of the tree began.

If our voyagers had used oars the sharp ears of the pirates would have instantly detected them. As it was, the softly moving paddles and the sharp cutwater of the canoe made no noise whatever. The instant that Van der Kemp, from his position in the bow, observed the camp, he dipped his paddle deep, and noiselessly backed water. There was no need to give any signal to his servant. Such a thorough understanding existed between them that the mere action of the hermit was sufficient to induce the negro to support him by a similar movement on the opposite side, and the canoe glided as quickly backward as it had previously advanced. When under the deep shadow of the bank Moses thrust the canoe close in, and his master, laying hold of the bushes, held fast and made a sign to him to land and reconnoitre.