And I'd Do It Again

by Crocker, Aimée;

It was Prince Joe.

  He was dressed in a garment that resembled the Javanese sarong, but was made of woven silk rather than of batik material. There was something like a turban on his head, and he looked for all the world like a person playing at charades.

  He stood there and stared at me as he always had, timid and faun-like.

  “I didn’t know how else to do it,” he explained. “You would never have come by yourself, and I want you to visit my country with me.”

  What was I to say? It was like talking to a young boy. There was no use getting angry, no sense in saying “How dare you?”

  What I said was:

  “You didn’t ask me.”

  He just looked and smiled.

  “You’ll come?”

  “And if I say ‘No’?”

  “I will send you back at once.”

  “What about the Resident?”

  “He will be very angry.”

  “How will you explain?”

  “Will you write him a note? Please tell him you wanted to come. I will have it taken to him.”

  He was pleading. I could see that he was very excited. Then it occurred to me that this half-savage boy was in love with me, that he was more frightened of my refusal than he was of the whole Dutch Government and all the complications which could arise out of this absurd abduction. He was in love with me, and it was not the cheap, sentimental thing that civilized people know, but instead it was like a great, muscular, wild puppy wanting his master to be kind to him.

  I wrote the note.

  I said that I had met the Prince and had decided to see Borneo with him as my guide. I wondered what the formal old Resident would say and think, and what crime I was committing by going away unprotected by my papers. I didn’t even care that all my clothes and other things were in Bandoeng in my trunks, and that I had nothing save what was on my body at the moment.

  But what a lark! Captured by savages, abducted by a Dyak prince, carried away into the wilds of Borneo by the Wild Man himself! What an adventure!

  Well, it turned out to be even more of an adventure than I had bargained for.

  I was rather a willing “prisoner.” I was given a sweet little cabin to myself on this fantastically modern mahogany yacht by its owner, just as fantastically a combination of a jungle chieftain and a Guardsman. I was treated with the utmost respect. I was mooned at and followed about the little ship by a human “doggy” hoping for a master. I was talked to in very civil monosyllables and made to feel that I had somehow taken advantage of a child.

  And, believe me, I had.

  We set out across Macassar Strait, which separates Java from the island of Borneo, and for one day and two nights I was blown upon by all the cinnamon-laden winds of the Indian Ocean, filled full of a rich delight in living and the pleased sense that a young girl has when she is being pleasantly naughty. And that savage royal child, Prince Joe, gone perhaps a little mad as he carried me away into the heart of his country, was so sweet, so simple and happy and infantile and kind, that I will always look back upon those hours as some of the fairest and most peaceful in my life.

  We sailed for Balik-Papan first, which I understand is now a petroleum depot, and I was fascinated by two things: first, the antics of the native dockworkers, who were loading and unloading everything you can think of, particularly some brown hogs who had lost their squeal because they were packed in wicker cylinders so tight they could not move nor squirm and were piled up like logs; and secondly at the dignity of the Dutch officials who came aboard. These were efficient gentlemen, and although they said nothing about my missing papers because of the power and authority of my young host, I could see they were puzzled and not a little annoyed.

  I wondered what the San Francisco press would have given to have my “latest story.” I had not forgotten their special attention to me when I was in Hawaii. “Aimée and the Wild Man of Borneo” would have made a good headline for the Sunday supplements.

  We tarried only a short time in Balik-Papan, leaving at noon and reaching Samarinda in the early evening.

  It was the most astonishing journey. We steamed up the Mahakan River inland to the very heart of Borneo, through a dense jungle, while monkeys screamed in the trees overhead, crocodiles splashed about us or lay like imitation logs on the banks of the river, and birds of bewildering plumage fluttered and cawed over and around the ship, and the purr of our gasoline engine mingled oddly with the inexplicable sounds of the jungle.

  Whatever curious qualities Prince Joe may have had, there was one thing about him that was remarkable for native intelligence and modern European knowledge and skill and that was his handling of the yacht Palipoeti. He never left the wheel, and he steered her round shallows, avoiding rocks, following the deep water at whichever side of the large, dangerous, shallow river it might be, and slid her gracefully through the water-lilies and algae that sometimes caused trouble and even wrecks, so I was told.

  During this run, he was less attentive to me, and I had time to lounge by myself in a deck-chair and admire the green passing show. Sometimes we would pass settlements, native clusters of thatched huts built high and narrow on stilts in the river itself, with carved and painted walls. He would occasionally stop and anchor the boat while a tribal chief and his painted crew would paddle out to us and carry on a rhythmic, monotonous conversation in their own language, and then would paddle back.

  Prince Joe had changed his costume from the first moment we reached the shores of Borneo and was wearing the silk sarong of his race. But when we steered into the jungle regions that flank the Mahakan River, he came to me and made excuses for the fact that he would have to change into something far simpler in order not to disturb the sense of proportion of the island natives, who had no faith in the customs of civilization.

  “Simpler” his costume certainly became. It consisted of a loin-cloth and a straw-like girdle with a fringe. But his body, standing there at the wheel, bronze and perfect in youthful power, muscled and rippling with every little movement, was really divine. A European or an American would have been conscious of such a body, but not he. He was only vaguely aware of the European proprieties, and soon made no restrictions of his movements or his contacts with me. And as the sun slowly dropped behind the Nippa-palms that lived in and caressed the water, I saw this young god, shining in the glow of the golden light, a bronze Achilles, something aflame.

  Yes, I liked him.

  We reached the last government post at Long Iram, and again I was embarrassed by the searching looks the Resident gave me when my “visit” was explained to him by the Prince. But my luck held, and his power likewise.

  Pushing on up the river, we plunged deeper and deeper into the jungle. The character of the country changed, and also that of the people. They were a different race from the Malays of the coast towns. The cheek-bones were more prominent, the skin a lighter brown. They were Dyaks, head-hunters, men of a jungle wilderness like my prince.

  We arrived. We arrived at Tenggorong where the magnificent palace of Prince Joe stood, the seat of the native government of Koetai. It is hard to describe it, not only because my memory has grown dim, but because it was so surprisingly in contrast with anything I had expected.

  Swarms of natives poured to the river’s edge to greet their wandering prince. Bearers brought a magnificent Sedan-chair to receive their royalty. I was installed beside him. Priests, or medicine men, or whatever they were called, in grotesque masks, beat upon skins stretched over gourds and others played on weird wood and string instruments.

  Then the palace.

  It was about 1000 feet square, of exquisitely carved wood, and removed from the river by about half a mile. The upper part was painted gray in good European paint, while the lower part or paneling which bore the carvings was dyed in soft, beautiful colors with native herb-dye. It was fronted by a verandah about 100 or more feet long and very deep, and leading up to this platform were white marble steps.

  It came upon me that I wa
s being treated as a sort of goddess or living spirit, and I tried to find out from Prince Joe what it was all about, but he looked blankly at me and said nothing. Later I observed that he never attempted to explain nor even to cope with the two fundamentally different parts of his life and training. He accepted simply, as a child, what happened. It pleased him childishly to bewilder and alarm his subjects a little by some of the “miracles” which he had brought from England, but he never tried to change them, nor to explain. I often wondered how much he understood himself and how much he accepted from mere habit.

  Then I met his father.

  He was known, in his native language which I dare not try to imitate in phonetics, as the “Wise One.” He was an extraordinary man. Tall … about six-foot-three … bearded like the Prince Edward he had met on his Great Adventure abroad, bronze, and clad in a sarong over which he wore a British officer’s belt and a British saber. He was easily discerned as a born ruler. He spoke English very little, but was able to shake my hand and to say:

  “How do you do thank you if you please,” so that I knew what he meant.

  Then began three weeks of astounding life. There is little use and less space for me to go into the details of it, but it consisted of fishing, hunting with the much-described poison arrows and blowguns (not that I used them), paddling through the tiny tributaries to the great river, and romancing in the moist, rugged jungle of Borneo with a prince who became inarticulate half the day and much too articulate the rest of the time.

  But trouble came.

  This trouble makes a good story. There was no doubt that Prince Joe was growing more and more in love with me. I do not write this with any conceit nor with any sense of boasting. He was a strange child of the islands and had been spoiled curiously by an exposure to the civilization which was too much for him to swallow all at once. He came back to his native country with a sense of having lost something, much as he had known nostalgia for his Borneo when in England.

  Then I came into the picture. I was the symbol of all he had lost, all the new things he had learned to admire and to wonder at. It was natural that I should seem to him something far more valuable than I really was. At any rate, in love he was, and that was the cause of it all.

  “It” became noticeable one day when the prince and I returned from a picnic. We had taken a basket of food, American fashion, and had rambled over the most extraordinary country, and I had learned the names of dozens of birds, of plants, of so many things … all of which I, of course, promptly forgot.

  As our canoe came silently to the river landing where a very plausible road led up to the palace, there was a little knot of Dyak men pow-wowing in a group, all of them very much painted as to the face with earth or clay and seeming very excited.

  Joe’s face became suddenly animal. There was fear in it. There was suspicion. Paddling, kneeling in the bow, as is the queer habit in that country, he motioned me to be still. Every sign of the European in him disappeared. He was immediately an alert, wild head hunter of the island of Borneo.

  I obeyed him. Unspoken force compelled me to slide to the bottom of the canoe, and I was frightened of something I could neither see nor understand.

  Instead of going straight to the mooring, Prince Joe gave a vigorous thrust and sent us whirling out into the middle of the river where a strong current took us like mad over to the other side. I felt it pull us. I could see nothing but the sky from my position. But I felt a slight tap on the bottom of the canoe, and glanced down my nose almost unconsciously. There lay a tiny arrow as though it had fallen from the clouds.

  Some one in that knot of men on the shore had favored me with his blowgun, aiming it high in the air, and letting the dart describe a wide arc. I had seen it done with an uncanny precision. I knew that the point contained a poison as sure as cyanide.

  Amusing contemplation.

  Out of sight and out of shot, the prince relaxed.

  “What does it mean?” I asked.

  He became the English schoolboy again.

  “They are only savages. They do not understand you. They do not love you.” He was apologizing for them as a missionary might have done. It would have been amusing, had it not been tragic.

  “What have I done?” I asked, and I pointed out that I had already been at the palace for over two weeks and that they had not seemed to object to me until now.

  “It is my father,” he said. “When I inherit, he knows that you will be my queen. He wishes me to take a native queen, but that I will never do.”

  Complicated!

  He had never before mentioned to me that I was to “be his queen,” and certainly I had never consented to such a proposal. I told him so. The information made very little impression.

  “You will be my queen,” he insisted, “because you cannot leave Koetai without me. You have been happy, have you not? Why should you not stay?”

  There was no time to argue. I passed it over. I asked what we were to do next.

  The wild man appeared in his eyes again. For answer he whirled the dugout in the river and drove it across to the other side once more. We followed the bank in silence until we came to a little stream. We pushed through water-lilies and branches that overhung the stream and made our way slowly up. After half a mile or so we could go no further. He motioned me to follow him and we dragged the canoe into some bushes on the bank and started forcing our way through the heavy, jungle undergrowth.

  Joe was a picture. Every muscle and nerve in his lithe body was taut. Like a panther he crept ahead of me, and never have I been so conscious of the natural clumsiness of the civilized person as I was then.

  We came to a clearing, and I could see the palace less than a hundred yards away. We reached the picket fence that surrounded the castle and crawled under a washed-out place and found ourselves inside, unhurt, but very nervous.

  I retreated at once to my “passang grahan,” or guesthouse, in the palace enclosure. I made hysterical and undefined plans for leaving. I had had enough. Then I suddenly heard a weird, strange piping. It was a mad reed, an insane flute playing about half a mile away. At first it disturbed me only by its weirdness, until it came upon me that its meaning was even more terrible than its sound.

  It was the “Kanjor Dodo,” the flute of the head-dance. It meant that the entire tribe would be inflamed into a state of fanaticism by the dance of death … that only a human head could satisfy the religious lust which the flute was fanning.

  I have learned later that the Dutch and the British have forbidden the playing of the “Kanjor Dodo” in the island as the most direct means of suppressing the head-hunting of the natives. But in the days of my visit to Borneo no such suppression existed. Why was it playing? What did it mean? I could only imagine that it had something to do with the dark hinting Prince Joe had done when we were escaping from the evil-intentioned group by the landing.

  Then Joe came running to my “passang,” animal again, and out of breath with excitement.

  “Come,” he said sharply, “I will take you away. It is too late to escape them. That is the war dance. Do you hear the flute?”

  I was in a predicament.

  “Let me talk to your father,” I said. “Let me explain. He will not dare to do me any harm. He will send me away peacefully. I don’t want to stay here.”

  “Too late. He has already dressed in his ceremonial robes, and the bill of the ‘toekang’ bird is hanging in his ears. The entire country is alarmed. It is the ‘takvet pared,’ the fear of weakness, that you have inspired in them. They are afraid that you, a white woman, may be queen, and they will kill us both if they cannot kill you separately. My father has stirred them up in order to make me afraid for you, and now it is too late.”

  I begged Joe to return and ask him once more to put me aboard the Palipoeti and send me back to Long Iram. He finally agreed, and left unwillingly.

  It was quite dusk now, and I was growing hysterical. I had to escape … alone. I ran out of my little house, across
the enclosure to the fence through which we had come. I followed, as best I could, the tiny trail we had made from the river. I grew more and more frightened as dark came on. Finally, I started to crawl, never realizing in my fear that in order to see me one would have to be within a few yards, and after half an hour or more of torture I reached the bank of the Mahakan River, torn and scratched up and exhausted.

  It took me another hysterical quarter of an hour to find the canoe where he had dragged it. But I cannot describe how happy I felt and how safe when I succeeded in pushing that heavy and unwieldy boat into the current and was caught hold of by the swift waters and whirled out into mid-stream.

  It was night, and I could see nothing. I thought of crocodiles, animals that scream overhead and around the banks of the river, monkeys, and creatures that never existed in Borneo. I was in terror of everything, and especially of the lithe, powerful, bronzed, hairless men who were probably behind me in their swifter boats, fanatically pursuing me to carry my head triumphantly back for “the good of the race.”

  Finally I could stand it no more. I fell asleep with my arm dragging overside, paddle and all. I awoke hours later, cold and wet and sick. I abandoned myself to everything, letting the current take the boat on, drifting and sleeping. I had lost one paddle.

  Finally it was morning. The dugout had caught on a low-hanging tree branch and was broadside to it, and the water was nearly mounting over the gunwales.

  My fear returned, although I was now so stiff with muscular pain and cold that I thought death was almost better. I pushed clear and began paddling again. I could see a little settlement of Dyak houses with their thatched roofs, and about them children running. I was not seen yet. Could I get by them? You can imagine my terror.

  On down the river. All day long I drifted or paddled, half starved, and baked by the sun when I was in the open or bitten by the jungle damp when the river narrowed and flowed through the dank wood country. Then I saw twenty or more canoes ahead of me, and some heavier craft. Round the bend there seemed to be some sort of a larger settlement. I wondered whether I should go boldly by it, or try to hide.