ling the tool, the Malays on shore
moved to a tree in sight of the steamer, which had stopped her screw
close to the sampan.

"They are going to cut down a tree with the biliongs," said Achang.
"Sometimes do that to get the game."

"They couldn't cut down a tree a foot through with those things in a
week!" exclaimed Lane.

"So quick as you could cut it down," insisted the Bornean stoutly.

"Dry up, now, and let us see the Malays work with the thing," interposed
the captain.

"Lane, you shall have a trial with a Dyak or a Malay, and I will give a
prize of three dollars to the one that fells the tree first," said
Louis.

"I should like to try that with any Dyak or Malay," replied Lane
good-naturedly; and he was a stout Down-Easter, who had been a logger in
the woods before he was a carpenter or a seaman.

"There are two animals in that tree where they are at work," cried
Morris, as he pointed to the scene of operations. "One of them is a big
one, and the other is a little one," he added, when he obtained a better
view of the game the Malays were trying to obtain. "What are they,
Achang?"

"Mias! Mias!" exclaimed the native, as a movement of the boat ahead gave
him a full view of the creatures. "One is a big one, and the other is
her baby."

"But what are the Malays doing now?" asked Louis.

"Make a stage to stand on," replied Achang.

"What do they want of a stage?" demanded Lane contemptuously.

"You will see if you wait," added the captain.

They were picking up poles where they could find them, and cutting
saplings, which they dropped with a single blow of the biliong. In a few
minutes they had constructed a rude framework on crotched sticks, driven
into the soft ground, with a platform of poles on the top. On this one
of the two men mounted with his biliong, with which he began his work
with a blow at the tree about four feet above the level of the ground.
The other Malay brought from the sampan a couple of spears, a parong
latok, and a bundle of ropes and rattans.

"Do they use the sumpitan in Borneo now, Achang?" asked Louis.

"Not Dyaks, Mr. Belgrave; Kyans use it; shoot poison arrows; sure death;
very bad."

The sumpitan is a kind of blow-gun, like the "bean-blower" formerly used
by American boys, which was a tin pipe, or the "pea-shooter," an English
plaything. It was used, it is said, by the Dyaks in former times; but
recent travellers do not mention it as used by them. It is about eight
fe