Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/243

 deposit in certain well-known places in the jungle, whence they are removed by the lamer tribesmen, who replace them by salt, knife-blades, flints and steels and other similar articles. Now and again a successful slave-raid has resulted in the capture of a few of these savages, but their extraordinary elusiveness, added to the fact that they live the life of the primitive nomadic hunter, roaming the forest in small family groups, renders them difficult to locate, and impossible to round up in any large numbers.

Kûlop Sûmbing, of course, took very little interest in them, for to his utilitarian mind people who possessed no property could make no claim upon the attention of a serious man. Therefore, he pushed on through the wild Sâkai country, following game paths and wading down the beds of shallow streams until the upper waters of the Bĕtok, the principal tributary of the Jĕlai River, were struck. Here bamboos were felled, a long, narrow raft was constructed, and Kûlop Sûmbing, dismissing his Pêrak Sâkai, began the descent of the unknown river. He knew only that the stream upon which he was navigating would lead, if followed far enough, into the country inhabited by Malays; that somewhere between it and himself lay a tract peopled by semi-civilized Sâkai; that he proposed to despoil the latter, and would have some difficulty in preventing the Pahang Malays from pillaging him in their turn; but he fared onward undismayed, alone save for his weapons, and was filled with a sublime confidence in his ability to plunder the undiscovered land that lay before him.