With the passing of the days our hosts forget the gloom caused by the death of the old man and resume their usual laughing, care-free demeanor, much to our relief. They spend hours in the shade of our tent, during which time we pick up many of their words,—enough, in fact, to enable us to converse in a limited way with them. Curiously intermingled with the pure words of their somewhat limited vocabulary are many of either pure Malay or Malayan derivation, and the presence of these, we find, helps us greatly.
The hairdresser plaits long strands of raffia into the kinky wool of the Kia Kias
The shiny inner surface of a Malay tobacco-box serves them as a mirror
117By writing all their words down phonetically and setting the meaning beside them, we are able to study the language, which is a surprisingly simple one. They have no writing and their means of counting is limited to the ten digits. All reckoning is done upon the fingers and when they run out of fingers they are hard put to it to continue. However, if the reckoning runs up to, say, thirty or forty, they count one another’s fingers and remember the names of those individuals included in the calculation. The task of remembering more than four participant pairs of hands would be beyond the power of their intellects.
At Merauke we heard of the death, under mysterious conditions, of a Swiss scientist who came to study these people about three years ago. With the memory of this incident fresh in our minds, we inquire casually concerning the white man reputed to have been eaten by them, but are met with blank looks or glances of suspicion. Between ourselves, we decide that if it is humanly possible to do so we will find the remains of the unfortunate man, a martyr to scientific progress, and send his bones to his institution in Switzerland. The demeanor of the natives makes us sure that they have guilty knowledge of his death, at least.
118Pursuing the matter further, and after having won the confidence of one of the middle-aged men—whom, by the way, we have christened “Intelligence”—we secure an admission that the man died in this very locality, though by what means Intelligence will not divulge. After a good deal of discussion, and deep cogitation on his part, Intelligence agrees to bring all the older men of the kampong to a conference in the afternoon, to discuss ways and means of finding the desired bones, which he says he thinks were buried somewhere in the jungle. He is very reticent, for he says the Tuan at Merauke sent soldiers to find the white man and killed many men when he found that the white man was dead. The only thing that moves Intelligence to admit as much as he does is our story of how the man’s friends at home mourned his loss and how greatly they desire to have his bones to inter properly, according to the customs of their tribe.
Intelligence leaves us, his head bowed in thought. The situation is a grave one and our story of the great mourning caused by the poor 119scientist’s death, coming so shortly after the death of a member of the tribe, sits heavily upon him. With all their savage characteristics, these primitive men seem to have within them the milk of human kindness. They are creatures of impulse.
While they are debating the thing among themselves, we go for a short excursion in the environs of the camp. In the course of conversations with Intelligence we have learned that in this neighborhood a Jesuit missionary formerly held forth, but that he, also, died, about the same time that the Swiss lost his life. This is interesting, and we are reminded that these people who have been so very cordial to us are really eaters of men and will bear watching. Our attitude toward them is one of firm superiority tempered with kindliness, but we are ever watchful for any signs of treachery. As long as the tobacco holds out our relations with them probably will be amicable enough. There is no danger of their trying to take it by force when it is given them gratis daily, and of course they 120do not know that our supply is not inexhaustible.
As we stroll along a scarcely discernible path that threads the jungle the mosquitos begin their accustomed attack, and we are thankful to reach a tiny clearing on which the creepers and obliterating growths of the primeval jungle are fast encroaching. When we finally get clear of the thicket and round a large clump of young cocoas, there appears to our astonished eyes a neat palm-thatched structure surmounted with a cross. This, then, is the former missionary’s little church, in which he gave up his life while trying to bring the light to these benighted people. For his pains he was eaten.
The door of the little building is closed, though not latched, and the windows are all tightly shut. We go inside and with eyes straining in the darkness try to make out the details of the interior. Everything is just as the poor man left it. Nothing has been touched. The soldiers who came to the place to avenge both 121his death and that of the scientist ordered that the natives whom they spared keep away from the place upon pain of another raid, and the black men have declared the place taboo. The church is tenanted now by countless bats, whose noisome bodies render the air fetid with their odor and whose wings almost touch us as they wheel to and fro, roused from their slumber by the opening of the door. Their squeaking remonstrance at being thus disturbed makes the place eery,—like some abode of evil spirits of the nether world,—and we beat a hasty retreat to the sunlight of the clearing outside.
We sit down to rest a moment on a fallen trunk a few yards from the church and try to imagine the emotions of the man who, with total sacrifice of self, came alone to these people to do them only good according to his lights, and who in turn suffered the extreme penalty at their ungrateful hands. What his last thoughts on earth must have been and what he said are part of our conjectures. We find ourselves wondering if he 122was strong enough to say with his last expiring breath, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.”
Mixed with our anger at the Kia Kias as we gaze upon the mute witness to their murderous proclivities, however, there comes pity for their ignorance, and we tell ourselves that their crime was due to savage ignorance and a natural hunting-instinct for the animal food their bodies crave. Man-eating is their custom, and this is their country, and it is reasonable to expect that some lives must be sacrificed before they can be shown the error of their way,—error in our eyes, but not in theirs to whom the land belongs. We whites have become so accustomed to taking that which we desire from those not gifted with th............