Page:Rowland--The Mountain of Fears.djvu/97

  languages of his five senses and has perhaps a dialect or two in reserve."

He was silent for a moment, letting his steady gray eyes rest upon the streaks of phosphorescent spume churned up about us by the stiff following trade. Abeam lay the moonlit isle of Curaçao, so near that one could see the towering yuccas standing sentinels upon the ridges of the broken hills—could almost see the yellow of their blossoms, for this moon gave color as well as perspective.

"This was in Borneo, Doctor," he began abruptly. "I had been sent there on a head-hunting expedition. Odd, is it not, but appropriate! A countryman of mine who was writing a book on anthropology had sent me there to take photographs and notes and measurements and to collect specimens of skulls as I saw fit—attached or unattached, that was my lookout. You know, Doctor, that although the coast of Borneo is occupied by Malays, Bajaus, or Sea Gypsies, Bugis, Chinese and [ 81 ]