Every Night, As Soon As I
Was In Bed, I Could Hear Them Searching About For What They Could
Devour, Under My Table, And All About My Boxes And Baskets,
Keeping Me In A State Of Suspense Till Morning, Lest Something Of
Value Might Incautiously Have Been Left Within Their Read.
They
would drink the oil of my floating lamp and eat the wick, and
upset or break my crockery if my lazy boys had neglected to wash
away even the smell of anything eatable.
Bad, however, as they
are here, they were worse in a Dyak's house in Borneo where I was
once staying, for there they gnawed off the tops of my waterproof
boots, ate a large piece out of an old leather game-bag, besides
devouring a portion of my mosquito curtain!
April 28th. - Last evening we had a grand consultation, which had
evidently been arranged and discussed beforehand. A number of the
natives gathered round me, and said they wanted to talk. Two of
the best Malay scholars helped each other, the rest putting in
hints and ideas in their own language. They told me a long
rambling story; but, partly owing to their imperfect knowledge of
Malay, partly through my ignorance of local terms, and partly
through the incoherence of their narrative, I could not make it
out very clearly. It was, however, a tradition, and I was glad to
find they had anything of the kind. A long time ago, they said,
some strangers came to Aru, and came here to Wanumbai, and the
chief of the Wanumbai people did not like them, and wanted them
to go away, but they would not go, and so it came to fighting,
and many Aru men were killed, and some, along with the chief,
were taken prisoners, and carried away by the strangers.
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