OUTPOSTS OF EMPIRE
We sailed at sunset out of Jolo and all through the breathless tropic
night the _Negros_ forged ahead at half-speed, her sharp prow cleaving
the still bosom of the Sulu Sea as silently as a gondola stealing down
the Canale Grande. So oppressive was the night that sleep was out of
the question, and I leaned upon the rail of the bridge, the hot land
breeze, laden with the mysterious odors of the tropics, beating softly
in my face, and listlessly watched the phosphorescent ostrich feathers
curling from our bows. Behind me, in the darkened chart-room, the
Filipino quartermaster gently swung the wheel from time to time in
response to the direction of the needle on the illuminated
compass-dial. So lifeless was the sea that our foremast barely swayed
against the stars. The smoke from our funnel trailed across the purple
canopy of the sky as though smeared with an inky brush.
How long I stood there, lost in reverie, I have no idea: hours no
doubt. I must have fallen into a doze, for I was awakened by the brisk,
incisive strokes of the ship's bell, echoed, a moment later, by eight
fainter strokes coming from the deck below. Then the soft patter of
bare feet which meant the changing of the watch. Though the velvety
darkness into which we were steadily ploughing had not perceptibly
decreased, it was now cut sharply across, from right to left, by what
looked like a tightly stretched wire of glowing silver. Even as I
looked this slender fissure of illumination widened, almost
imperceptibly at first, then faster, faster, until at one burst came
the dawn. The sombre hangings of the night were swept aside by an
invisible hand as are drawn back the curtains at a window. As you have
seen from a hill the winking lights of a city disappear at daybreak,
so, one by one, the stars went out. Masses of angry clouds reared
themselves in ominous, fantastic forms against a sullen sky. The hot
land breeze changed to a cold wind which made me shiver. Suddenly the
mounting rampart of clouds, which seemed about to burst in a tempest,
was pierced by a hundred flaming lances coming from beyond the
horizon's rim. Before their onslaught the threatening cloud-wall
crumbled, faded, and abruptly dropped away to reveal the sun advancing
in all that brazen effrontery which it assumes in those lawless
latitudes along the Line. Now the sky was become a huge inverted bowl
of flawless azure porcelain, the surface of the Sulu Sea sparkled as
though strewn with a million diamonds, and, not a league off our bows,
rose the jungle-clothed shores of Borneo.
Scattered along the fringes of the world are certain places whose names
ring in the ears of youth like trumpet-calls. They are passwords to
romance and high adventure. Their very mention makes the feet of the
young men restless. They mark the places where the strange trails go
down. Of them all, the one that most completely captivated my boyish
imagination was Borneo. To me, as to millions of other youngsters, its
name had been made familiar by that purveyor of entertainment to
American boyhood, Phineas T. Barnum, as the reputed home of the wild
man. In its jungles, through the magic of Marryat's breathless pages, I
fought the head-hunter and pursued the boa-constrictor and the
orang-utan. It was then, a boyhood dream come true when I stood at
daybreak on the bridge of the _Negros_ and through my glasses watched
the mysterious island, which I had so often pictured in my imagination,
rise with tantalizing slowness from the sapphire sea.
We forged ahead cautiously, for our charts were none too recent or
reliable and we lacked the "Malay Archipelago" volume of _The Sailing
Directions_--the "Sailor's Bible," as the big, orange-covered book,
full of comforting detail, is known. As the morning mists dissolved
before the sun I could make out a pale ivory beach, and back of the
beach a band of green which I knew for jungle, and back of that, in
turn, a range of purple mountains which culminated in a majestic,
cloud-wreathed peak. An off-shore breeze brought to my nostrils the
strange, sweet odors of the hot lands. A Malay _vinta_ with widespread
bamboo outriggers and twin sails of orange flitted by an enormous
butterfly skimming the surface of the water. I was actually within
sight of that grim island whose name has ever been a synonym for
savagery. For never think that piracy, head-hunting, poisoned darts
shot from blow-guns are horrors extinct in Borneo today, for they are
not. Ask the mariners who sail these waters; ask the keepers of the
lonely lighthouses, the officers who command the constabulary outposts
in the bush. They know Borneo, and not favorably.
You will picture Borneo, if you please, as a vast, squat island the
third largest in the world, in fact--half again as large as France,
bordered by a sandy littoral, moated by swamps reeking with putrid
miasmata and pernicious vapors, covered with dense forests and
impenetrable jungles, ridged by mile-high mountain ranges, seamed by
mighty rivers, inhabited by the most savage beasts and the most bestial
savages known to man. Lying squarely athwart the Line, the sun beats
down upon it like the blast from an open furnace-door. The story is
told in Borneo of a dissolute planter who died from sunstroke. The day
after the funeral a spirit message reached the widow of the dear
departed. "Please send down my blankets" it said. But it is the
terrible humidity which makes the climate dangerous; a humidity due to
the innumerable swamps, the source of pestilence and fever, and to the
incredible rainfall, which _averages over six and a half feet a year_.
No wonder that in the Indies Borneo is known as "The White Man's
Graveyard."
[Map: Malaysia]
Imbedded in the northern coast of the island, like a row of
semi-precious stones set in a barbaric brooch, are the states of
British North Borneo, Brunei, and Sarawak. Their back-doors open on the
wilderness of mountain, forest and jungle which marks the northern
boundary of Dutch Borneo; their front windows look out upon the Sulu
and the China Seas. Of these three territories, the first is under the
jurisdiction of the British North Borneo Company, a private
corporation, which administers it under the terms of a royal charter.
The second is ruled by the Sultan of Brunei, whose once vast dominions
have steadily dwindled through cession and conquest until they are now
no larger than Connecticut. On the throne of the last sits one of the
most romantic and picturesque figures in the world, His Highness James
Vyner Brooke, a descendant of that Sir James Brooke who, in the middle
years of the last century, made himself the "White Rajah" of Sarawak,
and who might well have been the original of _The Man Who Would Be
King_. Though all three governments are permitted virtually a free hand
so far as their domestic affairs are concerned, they are under the
protection of Great Britain and their foreign affairs are controlled
from Westminster. The remaining three-quarters of Borneo, which
contains the richest mines, the finest forests, the largest rivers,
and, most important of all, the great oil-fields of Balik-Papan, forms
one of the Outer Possessions, or Outposts, of Holland's East Indian
Empire.
Long before the yellow ribbon of the coast, with its fringe of palms,
became visible we could make out the towering outline of Kina Balu, the
sacred mountain, fourteen thousand feet high, which, seen from the
north, bears a rather striking resemblance in its general contour to
Gibraltar. The natives regard Kina Balu with awe and veneration as the
home of departed spirits, believing that it exercises a powerful
influence on their lives. When a man is dying they speak of him as
ascending Kina Balu and in times of drought they formerly practised a
curious and horrible custom, known as _sumunguping_, which the
authorities have now suppressed. When the crops showed signs of failing
the natives decided to despatch a messenger direct to the spirits of
their relatives and friends in the other world entreating them to
implore relief from the gods who control the rains. The person chosen
to convey the message was usually a slave or an enemy captured in
battle. Binding their victim to a post, the warriors of the tribe
advanced, one by one, and drove their spears into his body, shouting
with each thrust the messages which they wished conveyed to the spirits
on the mountain.
With the coming of day we pushed ahead at full speed. Soon we could
make out the precipitous sandstone cliffs of Balhalla, the island which
screens the entrance to Sandakan harbor. But long before we came
abreast of the town signs of human habitation became increasingly
apparent: little clusters of nipa-thatched huts built on stilts over
the water; others hidden away in the jungle and betraying themselves
only by spirals of smoke rising lazily above the feathery tops of the
palms. Sandakan itself straggles up a steep wooded hill, the Chinese
and native quarters at its base wallowing amid a network of
foul-smelling and incredibly filthy sewers and canals or built on
rickety wooden platforms which extend for half a mile or more along the
harbor's edge. A little higher up, fronting on a parade ground which
looks from the distance like a huge green rug spread in the sun to air,
are the government offices, low structures of frame and plaster,
designed so as to admit a maximum of air and a minimum of heat; the
long, low building of the Planters Club, encircled by deep, cool
verandahs; a Chinese joss-house, its facade enlivened by grotesque and
brilliantly colored carvings; and a down-at-heels hotel. Close by are
the churches erected and maintained by the Protestant and Roman
Catholic missions--the former the only stone building in the
protectorate. At the summit of the hill, reached by a steeply winding
carriage road, are the bungalows of the Europeans, their white walls,
smothered in crimson masses of bougainvillæa and shaded by stately
palms and blazing fire-trees, peeping out from a wilderness of tropic
vegetation. Viewed from the harbor, Sandakan is one of the most
enchanting places that I have ever seen. It looks like a setting on a
stage and you have the feeling that at any moment the curtain may
descend and destroy the illusion. It is not until you go ashore and
wander in the native quarter, where vice in every form stalks naked
and unashamed, that you realize that the town is like a beautiful
harlot, whose loveliness of face and figure belie the evil in her
heart. Even after I came to understand that the place is a sink of
iniquity, I never ceased to marvel at its beauty. It reminded me of the
exclamation of a young English girl, the wife of a German merchant, as
their steamer approached Hong Kong and the superb panorama which
culminates in The Peak slowly unrolled.
"Look, Otto! Look!" she cried. "You must say that it is beautiful even
if it _is_ English."
* * * * *
Of those lands which have not yet submitted to the bit and bridle of
civilization--and they can be numbered on the fingers of one's two
hands--Borneo is the most intractable. Of all the regions which the
predatory European has claimed for his own, it is the least submissive,
the least civilized, the least exploited and the least known. Its
interior remains as untamed as before the first white man set foot on
its shores four hundred years ago. The exploits of those bold and hardy
spirits--explorers, soldiers, missionaries, administrators--who have
attempted to carry to the natives of Borneo the Gospel of the Clean
Shirt and the Square Deal form one of the epics of colonization. They
have died with their boots on from fever, plague and snake-bite, from
poisoned dart and Dyak spear. Though their lives would yield material
for a hundred books of adventure, their story, which is the story of
the white man's war for civilization throughout Malaysia, is epitomized
in the few lines graven on the modest marble monument which stands at
the edge of Sandakan's sun-scorched parade ground:
In
Memory
of
Francis Xavier Witti
Killed near the Sibuco River
May, 1882
of
Frank Hatton
Accidentally shot at Segamah
March, 1883
of
Dr. D. Manson Fraser
and
Jemadhar Asa Singh
the two latter mortally wounded at Kopang
May, 1883
and of
Alfred Jones, Adjutant
Shere Singh, Regimental Sergeant-Major
of the British North Borneo Constabulary
Killed at Ranau 1897-98
and of
George Graham Warder
District Officer, Tindang Batu
Murdered at Marak Parak
28th July 1903
This Monument Is Erected as a Mark of Respect
by their Brother Officers
Though Sandakan is the chief port of British North Borneo, with a
population of perhaps fifteen thousand, it has barely a hundred
European inhabitants, of whom only a dozen are women. Girls marry
almost as fast as they arrive, and the incoming boats are eagerly
scanned by the bachelor population, much in the same spirit as that in
which a ticket-holder scans the lists of winning numbers in a lottery,
wondering when his turn will come to draw something. If the bulk of the
men are confirmed misogynists and confine themselves to the club bar
and card-room it is only because there are not enough women to go
round. The sacrifice of the women who, in order to be near their
husbands, consent to sicken and fade and grow old before their time in
such a spot, is very great. With their children at school in England,
they pass their lonely lives in palm-thatched bungalows, raised high
above the ground on piles as a protection against insects, snakes and
floods, without amusements save such as they can provide themselves,
and in a climate so humid that mushrooms will grow on one's boots in a
single night during the rains. They are as truly empire-builders as the
men and, though the parts they play are less conspicuous, perhaps, they
are as truly deserving of honors and rewards.
There is no servant problem in Borneo. Cooks jostle one another to cook
for you. They will even go to the length of poisoning each other in
order to step into a lucrative position, with a really big master and a
memsahib who does not give too much trouble. But there are other
features of domestic life for which the plenitude of servants does not
compensate. Because existence is made almost unendurable by mosquitoes
and other insects, within each sleeping room is constructed a
rectangular framework, covered with mosquito-netting and just large
enough to contain a bed, a dressing-table and an arm-chair. In these
insect-proof cells the Europeans spend all of their sleeping and many
of their waking hours. So aggressive are the mosquitoes, particularly
during the rains, that, when one invites people in for dinner or
bridge, the servants hand the guests long sacks of netting which are
drawn over the feet and legs, the top being tied about the waist with a
draw-string. Were it not for these mosquito-bags there would be neither
bridge nor table conversation. Everyone would be too busy scratching.
The houses, as I have already mentioned, are raised above the ground on
brick piles or wooden stilts. Though this arrangement serves the
purpose of keeping things which creep and crawl out of the house
itself, the custom of utilizing the open space beneath the house as a
hen-roost offers a standing invitation to the reptiles with which
Borneo abounds. While we were in Sandakan a python invaded the
chicken-house beneath the dwelling of the local magistrate one night
and devoured half a dozen of the judge's imported Leghorns. Gorged to
repletion, the great reptile fell asleep, being discovered by the
servants the next morning. The magistrate put an end to its predatory
career with a shot-gun. It measured slightly over twenty feet from nose
to tail and in circumference was considerably larger than an inflated
fire-hose. Imagine finding such a thing coiled up at the foot of your
cellar-stairs after you had been indulging in home-brew!
One evening a party of us were seated on the verandah of the Planters
Club in Sandakan. The conversation, which had pretty much covered the
world, eventually turned to snakes.
"That reminds me," remarked a constabulary officer who had spent many
years in Malaysia, "of a queer thing that happened in a place where I
was stationed once in the Straits Settlements. It was one of those
deadly dull places--only a handful of white women, no cinema, no race
course, nothing. But the Devil, you know, always finds mischief for
idle hands to do. One day a youngster--a subaltern in the battalion
that was stationed there--returned from a leave spent in England. He
brought back with him a young English girl whom he had married while he
was at home. A slender, willowy thing she was, with great masses of
coppery-red hair and the loveliest pink-and-white complexion. She
quickly adapted herself to the disagreeable features of life in the
tropics--with one exception. The exception was that she could never
overcome her inherent and unreasoning fear of snakes. The mere sight of
one would send her into hysterics.
"One afternoon, while she was out at tea with some friends, the Malay
gardener brought to the house the carcass of a hamadryad which he had
killed in the garden. The hamadryad, as you probably know, is perhaps
the deadliest of all Eastern reptiles. Its bite usually causes death in
a few minutes. Moreover, it is one of the few snakes that will attack
human beings without provocation. The husband, with two other chaps,
both officers in his battalion, was sitting on the verandah when the
snake was brought in.
"'I say,' suggested one of the officers, 'here's a chance to break
Madge of her fear of snakes. Why not curl this fellow up on her bed?
She'll get a jolly good fright, of course, but when she discovers that
he's dead and that she's been panicky about nothing, she'll get over
her silly fear of the beggars. What say, old chap?'
"To this insane suggestion, in spite of the protests of the other
officer, the husband assented. Probably he had been having too many
brandies and sodas. I don't know. But in any event, they put the
witless idea into execution. Toward nightfall the young wife returned.
She had on a frock of some thin, slinky stuff and a droopy garden hat
with flowers on it and carried a sunshade. She was awfully pretty. She
hadn't been out there long enough to lose her English coloring, you
see.
"'Oh, I say, Madge,' called her husband, 'There's a surprise for you in
your bedroom.'
"With a little cry of delighted anticipation she hurried into the
house. She thought her husband had bought her a gift, I suppose. A
moment later the trio waiting on the verandah heard a piercing shriek.
The first shriek was followed by another and then another. Pretty soon,
though, the screams died down to a whimper--a sort of sobbing moan.
Then silence. After a few minutes, as there was no further sound from
the bedroom and his wife did not reappear, the husband became uneasy.
He rose to enter the house, but the chap who had suggested the scheme
pulled him back.
"'She's all right,' he assured him. 'She sees it's a joke and she's
keeping quiet so as to frighten you. If you go in there now the laugh
will be on you. She'll be out directly.'
"But as the minutes passed and she did not reappear all three of the
men became increasingly uneasy.
"'We'd better have a look,' the one who had demurred suggested after a
quarter of an hour had passed, during which no further sound had come
from the bedroom. 'Madge is very high-strung. She may have fainted from
the shock. I told you fellows that it was an idiotic thing to do.'
"When they opened the door they thought that she had fainted, for she
lay in an inert heap on the floor at the foot of the bed. But a hasty
examination showed them, to their horror, that the girl was dead--heart
failure, presumably. But when they raised her from the floor they
discovered the real cause of her death, for a _second hamadryad_, which
had been concealed by her skirts, darted noiselessly under the bed. It
was the mate of the one that had been killed--for hamadryads always
travel in pairs, you know--and had evidently entered the room in quest
of its companion."
"What happened to the husband and to the man who suggested the plan?"
I asked. "Were they punished?"
"They were punished right enough," the constabulary officer said dryly.
"The chap who suggested the scheme tried to forget it in drink, was
cashiered from the army and died of delirium tremens. As for the
husband, he is still living--in a madhouse."
* * * * *
Even in so far-distant a corner of the Empire as Borneo, ten thousand
miles from the lights of the restaurants in Piccadilly, the men
religiously observe the English ritual of dressing for dinner, for when
the mercury climbs to 110, though the temptation is to go about in
pajamas, one's drenched body and drooping spirits need to be bolstered
up with a stiff shirt and a white mess jacket. That the stiffest
shirt-front is wilted in an hour makes no difference: it reminds them
that they are still Englishmen. Nor, in view of the appalling
loneliness of the life, is it to be wondered at that the Chinese
bartenders at the club are kept busy until far into the night, and that
every month or so the entire male white population goes on a terrific
spree. The government doctor in Sandakan assured me very earnestly
that, in order to stand the climate, it is necessary to keep one's
liver afloat--in alcohol. He had contributed to thus preserving the
livers and lives of his fellow exiles by the invention of two drinks,
of which he was inordinately proud. One he had dubbed "Tarantula
Juice;" the other he called "Whisper of Death." He told me that the
amateur who took three drinks of the latter would have no further need
for his services; the only person whose services he would require would
be the undertaker.
There is something of the pathetic in the eagerness with which the
white men who dwell in exile along these forgotten seaboards long for
news from Home. After dinner they would cluster about me on the club
verandah and clamor for those odds-and-ends of English gossip which are
not important enough for inclusion in the laconic cable despatches
posted daily on the club bulletin-board and which the two-months-old
newspapers seldom mention. They insisted that I repeat the jokes which
were being cracked by the comedians at the Criterion and the
Shaftesbury. They wanted to know if toppers and tailcoats were again
being worn in The Row. They pleaded for the gossip of the clubs in Pall
Mall and Piccadilly. They begged me to tell them about the latest books
and plays and songs. But after a time I persuaded them to do the
talking, while I lounged in a deep cane chair, a tall, thin glass, with
ice tinkling in it, at my elbow, and listened spellbound to strange
dramas of "the Islands" recited by men who had themselves played the
leading roles. At first they were shy, as well-bred English often are,
but after much urging an officer of constabulary, the glow from his
cigar lighting up his sun-bronzed face and the rows of campaign ribbons
on his white jacket, was persuaded into telling how he had trailed a
marauding band of head-hunters right across Borneo, from coast to
coast, his only companions a handful of Dyak police, themselves but a
degree removed in savagery from those they were pursuing. A
bespectacled, studious-looking man, whom I had taken for a scientist or
a college professor, but who, I learned, had made a fortune buying
bird-of-paradise plumes for the European market, described the strange
and revolting customs practised by the cannibals of New Guinea. Then a
broad-shouldered, bearded Dutchman, a very Hercules of a man, with a
voice like a bass drum, told, between meditative puffs at his pipe, of
hair-raising adventures in capturing wild animals, so that those smug
and sheltered folk at home who visit the zoological gardens of a Sunday
afternoon might see for themselves the crocodile and the
boa-constrictor, the orang-utan and the clouded tiger. When, after the
last tale had been told and the last glass had been drained, we
strolled out into the fragrant tropic night, with the Cross swinging
low to the morn, I felt as though, in the space of a single evening, I
had lived through a whole library of adventure.
* * * * *
I once wrote--in _The Last Frontier_, if I remember rightly--that when
the English occupy a country the first thing they build is a
custom-house; the first thing the Germans build is a barracks; the
first thing the French build is a railway. As a result of my
observations in Malaysia, however, I am inclined to amend this by
saying that the first thing the English build is a race course. Lord
Cromer was fond of telling how, when he visited Perim, a miserable
little island at the foot of the Red Sea, inhabited by a few Arabs and
many snakes, his guide took him to the top of a hill and pointed out
the race course.
"But what do you want with a race course?" demanded the great
proconsul. "I didn't suppose that there was a four-footed animal on the
island."
The guide reluctantly admitted that, though they had no horses on the
island at the moment, if some were to come, why, there was the race
course ready for them. Though I don't recall having seen more than a
dozen horses in Borneo, the British have been true to their traditions
by building two race courses: one at Sandakan and one at Jesselton. On
the latter is run annually the North Borneo Derby. It is the most
brilliant sporting and social event of the year, the Europeans flocking
into Jesselton from the little trading stations along the coast and
from the lonely plantations in the interior just as their friends back
in England flock to Goodwood and Newmarket and Epsom. The Derby is
always followed by the Hunt Ball. In spite of the fact that there are
at least twenty men to every woman this is always a tremendous success.
It usually ends in everyone getting gloriously drunk.
Almost the only other form of entertainment is provided by a company of
Malay players which makes periodical visits to Sandakan and Jesselton.
Though the actors speak only Malay, this does not deter them from
including a number of Shakesperian plays in their repertoire (imagine
Macbeth being played by a company of piratical-looking Malays in a nipa
hut on the shores of the Sulu Sea!) but they attain their greatest
heights in _Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves_. There are no programmes,
but, in order that the audience may not be left in doubt as to the
identity of the players, the manager introduces the members of his
company one by one. "This is Ali Baba," he announces, leading a fat and
greasy Oriental to the footlights. "This is Fatimah." "These are the
Forty Thieves." When the latter announcement is made four actors stalk
ten times across the stage in naïve simulation of the specified number.
After the thieves have concealed themselves behind pasteboard
silhouettes of jars, Ali Baba's wife waddles on the stage bearing a
Standard Oil tin on her shoulder and with a dipper proceeds to ladle a
few drops of cocoanut oil on the head of each of the robbers. While she
is being introduced one of the thieves seizes the opportunity to take a
few whiffs from a cigarette, the smoke being plainly visible to the
audience. Another, wearying of his cramped position, incautiously shows
his head, whereupon Mrs. Ali Baba raps it sharply with her dipper,
eliciting from the actor an exclamation not in his lines. During the
intermissions the clown who accompanies the troupe convulses the
audience with side-splitting imitations of the pompous and frigid
Governor, who, as someone unkindly remarked, "must have been born in an
ice-chest," and of the bemoustached and bemonocled officer who commands
the constabulary, locally referred to as the Galloping Major. Compared
with the antics of these Malay comedians, the efforts of our own
professional laugh-makers seem dull and forced. Until you have seen
them you have never really laughed.
* * * * *
His Highness Haji Mohamed Jamalulhiram, Sultan of Sulu, was temporarily
sojourning in Sandakan when we were there, having come across from his
capital of Jolo for the purpose of collecting the monthly subsidy of
five hundred pesos paid him by the British North Borneo Company for
certain territorial concessions. The company would have sent the money
to Jolo, of course, but the Sultan preferred to come to Sandakan to
collect it; there are better facilities for gambling there.
Because I was curious to see the picturesque personage around whom
George Ade wrote his famous opera, _The Sultan of Sulu_, and because
the Lovely Lady and the Winsome Widow had read in a Sunday supplement
that he made it a practise to present those American women whom he met
with pearls of great price, upon our arrival at Sandakan I invited the
Sultan to dinner aboard the _Negros_. When I called on him at his hotel
to extend the invitation, I found him clad in a very soiled pink
kimono, a pair of red velvet slippers, and a smile made somewhat gory
by the betel-nut he had been chewing, but when he came aboard the
_Negros_ that evening he wore a red fez and irreproachable dinner
clothes of white linen. As the crew of the cutter was entirely composed
of Tagalogs and Visayans, from the northern Philippines, who, being
Christians, regard the Mohammedan Moro with contempt, not unmixed with
fear, when I called for side-boys to line the starboard rail when his
Highness came aboard, there were distinctly mutinous mutterings.
Captain Galvez tactfully settled the matter, however, by explaining to
the crew that the Sultan was, after all, an American subject, which
seemed to mollify, even if it did not entirely satisfy them. The
armament of the _Negros_ had been removed after the armistice, so that
we were without anything in the nature of a saluting cannon, but, as we
wished to observe all the formalities of naval etiquette, the Doctor
and Hawkinson volunteered to fire a royal salute with their automatic
pistols as the Sultan came over the side. That, in their enthusiasm,
they lost count and gave him about double the number of "guns"
prescribed for the President of the United States caused Haji Mohamed
no embarrassment; on the contrary, it seemed to please him immensely.
(Donald Thompson, who was my photographer in Belgium during the early
days of the war, always made it a point to address every officer he met
as "General." He explained that it never did any harm and that it
always put the officer in good humor.)
When the cocktails were served the Sultan gravely explained through the
interpreter that, being a devout Mohammedan and a Haji, he never
permitted alcohol to pass his lips, an assertion which he promptly
proceeded to prove by taking four Martinis in rapid succession. Now
the chef of the _Negros_ possessed the faculty of camouflaging his
dishes so successfully that neither by taste, looks nor smell could one
tell with certainty what one was eating. So, when the meat, smothered
in thick brown gravy, was passed to the Sultan, his Highness, who, like
all True Believers, abhors pork, regarded it dubiously. "Pig?" he
demanded of the steward. "No, sare," was the frightened answer. "Cow."
Over the coffee and cigarettes the Lovely Lady and the Winsome Widow
tactfully led the conversation around to the subject of pearls,
whereupon the Sultan thrust his hand into his pocket and produced a
round pink box, evidently originally intended for pills. Removing the
lid, he displayed, imbedded in cotton, half a dozen pearls of a size
and quality such as one seldom sees outside the window of a Fifth
Avenue jeweler. I could see that the Lovely Lady and the Winsome Widow
were mentally debating as to whether they would have them set in
brooches or rings. But when they had been passed from hand to hand,
accompanied by the customary exclamations of envy and admiration, back
they went into the royal pocket again. "And to think," one of the party
remarked afterward, "that we wasted two bottles of perfectly good gin
and a bottle of vermouth on him!"
It was after midnight when our guest took his departure, the ship's
orchestra playing him over the side with a selection from _The Sultan
of Sulu_, which, in view of my ignorance as to whether Sulu possessed
a national anthem, seemed highly appropriate to the occasion. As the
launch bearing the Sultan shot shoreward Hawkinson set off a couple of
magnesium flares, which he had brought along for the purpose of taking
pictures at night, making the whole harbor of Sandakan as bright as
day. I heard afterward that the Sultan remarked that we were the only
visitors since the Taft party who really appreciated his importance.
* * * * *
Two hours steam off the towering promontory which guards the entrance
to Sandakan harbor lies Baguian, a sandy islet covered with
cocoanut-palms, which is so small that it is not shown on ordinary
maps. Though the island is, for some unexplained reason, under the
jurisdiction of the British North Borneo Company, it is a part of the
Sulu Archipelago and belongs to the United States. Baguian is famed
throughout those seas as a rookery for the giant tortoise--_testudo
elephantopus_. Toward nightfall the mammoth chelonians--some of them
weigh upward of half a ton--come ashore in great numbers to lay their
eggs in nests made in the edge of the jungle which fringes the beach,
the old Chinaman and his two assistants, who are the only inhabitants
of the island, frequently collecting as many as four thousand eggs in a
single morning. The eggs, which in size and color exactly resemble
ping-pong balls and are almost as unbreakable, are collected once a
fortnight by a junk which takes them to China, where they are
considered great delicacies and command high prices. As we had brought
with us a supply of magnesium flares for night photography, we decided
to take the camera ashore and attempt to obtain pictures of the turtles
on their nests.
As we were going ashore in the gig we caught sight of a huge bull, as
large as a hogshead, which was floating on the surface. Ordering the
sailors to row quietly, we succeeded in getting within a hundred yards
before I let go with my .405, the soft-nosed bullet tearing a great
hole in the turtle's neck and dyeing the water scarlet. Almost before
the sound of the shot had died away one of the Filipino boat's crew
went overboard with a rope, which he attempted to attach to the monster
before it could sink to the bottom, but the turtle, though desperately
wounded, was still very much alive, giving the sailor a blow on his
head with its flapper which all but knocked him senseless. By the time
we had hauled the man into the boat the turtle had disappeared into the
depths.
Waiting until darkness had fallen, we sent parties of sailors, armed
with electric torches, along the beach in both directions with orders
to follow the tracks made by the turtles in crossing the sand, and to
notify us by firing a revolver when they located one. We did not have
long to wait before we heard the signal agreed upon, and, picking up
the heavy camera, we plunged across the sands to where the sailors were
awaiting us in the edge of the bush. While the bluejackets cut off the
retreat of the hissing, snapping monster, Hawkinson set up his camera
and, when all was ready, some one touched off a flare, illuminating
the beach and jungle as though the search-light of a warship had been
turned upon them. In this manner we obtained a series of
motion-pictures which are, I believe, from the zoological standpoint,
unique. Before leaving the island we killed two tortoises for food for
the crew--enough to keep them in turtle soup for a month. The larger,
which I shot with a revolver, weighed slightly over five hundred pounds
and lived for several days with three .45 caliber bullets in its
brain-pan. Everything considered, it was a very interesting expedition.
The only person who did not enjoy it was the old Chinese who held the
concession for collecting the turtle-eggs. Instead of recognizing the
great value of the service we were rendering to science, he acted as
though we were robbing his hen-roost. He had a sordid mind.