Certainly the most nutritious of all things eatable or drinkable is the substance, or fluid, called milk. It becomes blood almost immediately, and then flesh, or muscle, as was designed by the Creator. Hence it is the first food given to all animated creatures—not alone to the mammalia, but to the oviparous animals—even to the infantile forms of the vegetable itself. To the first it is presented in the form of simple milk, or “lacteal fluid;” to the second in the “white” of the egg; while the young tree or plant, springing from its embryo, finds it in the farina, or succulent matter, with which it is surrounded, and in which it has hitherto lain embedded and apparently lifeless, till the nursing sun calls it into a growing existence. It is albumen, gluten, and other substances combined, all existing in the udder, in the egg-shell, in the seed, root, or fruit; from which springs the progeny, whether it be man or beast, flying bird or swimming fish, creeping reptile or fast-rooted forest tree.
The meal of oyster-meat had restored to healthy action the long-fasting stomachs of the castaways; the durion fruit, coming like a dessert, had no doubt acted with an exceedingly beneficial effect; but not till they had partaken of the true “staff of life”—represented in one of its elementary forms, the egg—did they feel their blood running in its right channels, alike restoring their vigour and strength.
Murtagh was one of the first to feel revivified, and declare himself ready for anything. But they were all much invigorated, and began to think and talk of plans for the future. The question, of course, was, how they should quit the shore on which shipwreck, and afterwards a chance wind, had cast them? So far the coast appeared to be uninhabited, and although not so very inhospitable, as their experience had proved, still it would never do for them to remain there.
The American merchant-skipper had no ambition to match the Scotchman Selkirk, and make a second Crusoe of himself. Neither would Murtagh or the Malay have cared to act as his man Friday for any very prolonged period of hermitage, so long as there was a mode of escaping from it.
During the remainder of that evening, therefore, they talked of a change of quarters, and discussed various plans for bringing this about. It was a question whether they should take to their boat and again put out to sea, or endeavour, by an overland expedition, to reach some part of the coast where they might find a European, and therefore a civilised, settlement. Captain Redwood knew there were more than one of these on the great island of Borneo. There were the Dutch residencies of Sambas and Sarabang; the English government depôt on the islet of Labuan; and the strange heterogeneous settlement—half colony, half kingdom—then acknowledging the authority of the bold British adventurer, Sir James Brooke, styled “Rajah of Sarawak.” If any of these places could be attained, either coastwise or across country, our castaways might consider their sufferings at an end; and it was only a question which would be the easiest to reach, and what the best way of reaching it.
After due consideration, Labuan was the point decided upon. From that part of the coast Captain Redwood supposed himself to be, it was by far the nearest civilised settlement—in fact, the only one that offered a chance of being reached by travellers circumstanced as they. Of course they had no intention to start immediately. Their strength was not sufficiently restored, and they were only discussing the question of a journey to be undertaken before long, and the probabilities of their being able to accomplish it.
Although they were now safe on land, and need no longer dread the “dangers of the deep,” they did not yet believe themselves delivered from all peril. The part of the coast on which they had landed appeared uninhabited; but it was not this that made them uneasy. On the contrary, human beings were the very things they did not desire just then to see. From the place where his ship had been struck by the typhoon, and the distance and direction in which they had since drifted, Captain Redwood conjectured—was indeed almost sure of it—that they were on some part of the north-eastern coast of Borneo, where it fronts the Celebes Sea; and he had traded long enough among the islands of the Malayan Archipelago to know that this was a most dangerous locality, not from beasts of prey, but fierce, predatory men; from pirates, in short.
These sea-robbers, issuing from their hiding-places and strongholds among the lagoons of many of the Malayan islands—more especially Mindanao—are to be met with all through the Indian Archipelago; but their most favourite cruising-grounds are in the seas lying around the Sooloo isles, and stretching between Borneo and New Guinea.
They are usually known as “Lanoons,” from Illanon, the southern peninsula of Mindanao, their principal place of refuge and residence. But they have also other haunts and ports where they make rendezvous—many on the shores of the Celebes Sea, in the island of Celebes itself, and also along the eastern and northern coast of Borneo. In this last they are usually known as “Dyak pirates,” a name not very correct; since most............