The Malays Now All Attacked With Their Parangs, But The Orang-Utan, Taking Hold Of The End Of The Pole, Swept It From Side To Side With Terrifying Effect, And As The Locality Made It Impossible To Surround Him, They All Soon Had To Take To The Water To Save Themselves.

My informant, who had spent several years travelling in Southern Borneo buying rubber from the natives, told me that one day his prahu passed a big orang-utan sitting on the branch of a tree.

The Malay paddlers shouted to it derisively, and the animal began to break off branches and hurled sticks at the prahu with astonishing force, making the Malays paddle off as fast as they could. The several points of similarity between man and highly developed monkeys are the cause of the amusing saying of the natives of Java: the monkeys can talk, but they don't want to, because they don't like to work.

The controleur obligingly put the government's steam launch Selatan at my disposal, which would take me to the kampong Sembulo on the lake of the same name, whence it was my intention to return eastward, marching partly overland. One evening in the middle of June we started. On entering the sea the small vessel rolled more and more; when the water came over the deck I put on my overcoat and lay down on top of the entrance to the cabin, which was below. The wind was blowing harder than it usually does on the coasts of Borneo, and in the early morning shallow waters, which assume a dirty red-brown colour long before reaching the mouths of the mud-laden rivers, rose into waves that became higher as we approached the wide entrance to the Pembuang River.

The sea washed over the port side as if we were on a sailing-boat, but the water flowed out again through a number of small, oblong doors at the sides which opened and closed mechanically. The launch, which was built in Singapore, behaved well, but we had a good deal of cargo on deck as well as down in the cabin. Besides, the approach to Pembuang River is not without risks. The sand-bars can be passed only at one place, which is twelve or thirteen metres wide and, at low water, less than a metre deep. The route is at present marked out, but in bygone years many ships were wrecked here.

As the sea became more shallow the yellow-crested waves of dirty water mixed with sand assumed an aspect of fury, and lying on my back I seemed to be tossed from one wave to another, while I listened with some apprehension to the melodious report of the man who took the depth of the water: "Fourteen kaki" (feet)! Our boat drew only six feet of water; "Seven kaki," he sang out, and immediately afterward, "Six kaki!" Now we are "in for it," I thought. But a few seconds more and we successfully passed the dangerous bar, the waves actually lifting us over it.

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