the camp is pitched, has been reaped painfully and laboriously in the native
fashion, each ripe ear being severed from its stalk separately and by hand. Then,
after many days, the grain has at last been stored in the big bark boxes, under
cover of the palm leaf thatch, and the Sâkai women, who have already
performed the lion's share of the work, are set to husk some portions of it for the
evening meal. This they do with clumsy wooden pestles, held as they stand erect
round a sort of trough, the ding-dong-ding of the pounders carrying far and wide
through the forest, and, at the sound, all wanderers from the camp turn their
faces homeward with the eagerness born of empty stomachs and the prospect of
a good meal. The grain is boiled in cooking pots, if the tribe possess any, or, if
they are wanting, in the hollow of a bamboo, for that marvellous jungle growth
is used for almost every conceivable purpose by natives of the far interior. The
fat new rice is sweet to eat. It differs as much from the parched and arid stuff
you know in Europe, as does the creamy butter in a cool Devonshire dairy from
the liquid yellow train oil which we dignify by that name in the sweltering
tropics, and the cooked grain is eaten ravenously, and in incredible quantities by
the hungry, squalid creatures in a Sâkai camp. These poor wretches know that, in
a day or two, the Malays will come up stream to 'barter' with them, and that the
priceless rice will be taken from them, almost by force, in exchange for a few
axe-heads and native wood knives. Therefore, the Sâkai eat while there is yet
time, and while distended stomachs will still bear the strain of a few additional
mouthfuls.
Thus is the harvest home supper devoured in a Sâkai camp, with gluttony and
beast noises of satisfaction, while the darkness is falling over the land; but, when
the meal has been completed, the sleep of repletion may not fall upon the people.
The Spirits of the Woods and of the Streams, and the Demons of the grain must
be thanked for their gifts, and propitiated for such evil as has been done them.
The forests have been felled to make the clearing, the crop has been reaped, and
the rice stored by the tribe. Clearly the Spirits stand in need of comfort for the
loss they have sustained, and the Sâkai customs provide for such emergencies.
The house of the Chief or the Medicine Man—the largest hut in the camp—is
filled to the roof with the sodden green growths of the jungle. The Sâkai have
trespassed on the domains of the Spirits, and now the Demons of the Woods are
invited to share the dwellings of men. Then, when night has fallen, the Sâkai,
men, women, and little children, creep into the house, stark naked and entirely
unarmed, and sitting huddled together in the darkness, under the shelter of the
leaves and branches with which the place is crammed, raise their voices in a
weird chant, which peals skyward till the dawn has come again.