Before we take leave of the obliging little man he asks us to be permitted as an especial favor to ship a party of five Kia Kias up the coast a little distance on “our” schooner. They are some natives that have just finished a one-month term in the local hoosgow or jail. The offense was trivial. There had been a disagreement in their village with a visitor and when the argument ended the visitor was deceased.
“We have to check them a little,” remarks the Assistant. “We could not fix the blame exactly, so we gathered up three men who were implicated and two of them brought their wives.”
After further assurances on the part of the Assistant that the natives shall in no way interfere with our convenience on the schooner, and from us many expressions of our gratitude, we depart. As we walk down the sweltering roadway along the riverfront we congratulate ourselves on the success of the interview. The Nautilus will save us many heartbreaking miles of grueling jungle travel.
In the passangrahan Moh has a “rice-taffle” ready for us. Rice-taffle! No wonder these Dutch gentlemen indulge in an all-afternoon siesta! Every noon—rice-taffle! A tremendous bowl of rice, chicken cooked in four or five different ways,—boiled, fried, roasted, and I don’t know how to describe the others,—two or three varieties of fish; a peppery soup-like sauce with which to drench the heaped-up contents of the platter, and a dozen different sweetmeats, condiments, and garnitures. It is so good that one invariably overeats and repletion, together with the sultry heat of midday, brings a drowsiness that makes bed welcome. Even the ever-businesslike Chinese closes his toko and sleeps until four o’clock. At that hour, or shortly after, every one wakes up and the splashing in the bath-house is prodigious. The evening coolness brings the hour of the promenade and the streets and byways are gay with the varicolored sarongs that the Malay women affect. The men come forth in suits of white drill fresh from the dhobie and saunter along with cigarettes aglow, leading by the hands naked kiddies for whom they have a very genuine fondness.
Many of the little girls of, say, three to six years wear, suspended from a single cord around their plump little loins, a pendant that serves both as covering and ornament. This usually takes the form of a gold or silver heart of possibly three-inch length and proportionate width. It is amusing to watch a group of these innocents at play. Sometimes a small girl’s heart becomes displaced, and hangs unnoticed for a time upon her hip. This is not at all disconcerting to her or to her infant male companions. When she discovers the disarrangement of this sole article of her apparel she will stop play and readjust it with the utmost unconcern and charming naïveté. Play is then resumed. Her manner is precisely that of one of our high-school girls who pauses between sets in tennis to powder her nose.
As we pass the people in the promenade, all from elders down to the little naked tots, greet us with “Tabe, Tuan,” and the elders smile in fond amusement at their offsprings’ baby lisping of the greeting. We like the Malays very much; and the Chinese, too, for they are always pleasant to us.
CHAPTER V
We’re Off!
High tide at nine to-day! On the Nautilus the crew are shortening up on the anchor chain, for the rusty old hook has been buried in the river mud for two months. We sail at full tide, which enables us to skirt the shore of the western flats and save much time in getting out to sea.
Moh has superintended the moving of all our effects to the little schooner while we have been in the trading-company’s store making some eleventh-hour purchases of tobacco and tin mirrors for the natives and cigars for ourselves. The three white men in charge bid us Godspeed, after many admonitions to take care of ourselves and warnings not to trust the Kia Kias too far. Grouped in a little knot upon the veranda of the store, silent, they sadly watch us depart. We, too, hate to say good-by; we have had some pleasant chats with them.
We go directly to the schooner, anxious to take up the trail to adventure. Ula is waiting for us beside the wharf in the tiny dinghy. As we drop into it it sinks with our weight so that the gunwale is scarcely three inches above water and we have visions of making the short trip to the Nautilus each for himself, swimming. Nothing more serious than the shipping of a few gallons of the muddy river water happens, however, and we arrive alongside the Nautilus, in high spirits, though with feet and legs soaked. We probably shall be much wetter than this before the trip is over, is the cheering thought that comes to us.