472 The Aru Islands, 



and iu tlie sky, and could not find them ; therefore, they must 

 be in my country, and they begged me to tell them, for 1 must 

 surely know, as I came from across the great sea. I tried to 

 explain to them that their friends could not have reached my 

 country in small boats ; and that there were plenty of islands 

 like Aru all about the sea, which they would be sure to find. 

 Besides, as it was so long ago, the chief and all the people must 

 be dead. But they quite laughed at this idea, and said they 

 were sure they were alive, for they had proof of it. And then 

 they told me that a good many years ago, when the speakers 

 were boys, some Wokan men who were out fishing met these 

 lost people in the sea, and spoke to them ; and the chief gave 

 the Wokan men a hundred fathoms of cloth to bring to the 

 men of Wanumbai, to show that they were alive and would 

 soon come back to them ; but the Wokan men were thieves, 

 and kept the cloth, and they only heard of it afterward ; and 

 when they spoke about it, the Wokan men denied it, and pre- 

 tended they had not received the cloth; so they were quite 

 sure their friends were at that time alive and somewhere in 

 the sea. And again, not many years ago, a report came to 

 them that some Bugis traders had brought some children of 

 their lost people ; so they went to Dobbo to see about it, and 

 the owner of the house, who was now sj^eaking to me, was one 

 who went; but the Bugis man would not let them see the 

 children and threatened to kill them if they came into his 

 house. He kept the children shut up in a large box, and when 

 he went away he took them with him. And at the end of 

 each of these stories, they begged me in an imploring tone to 

 tell them if I knew where their chief and their people now 

 were. 



By dint of questioning, I got some account of the strangers 

 who had taken away their people. They said they wei-e won- 

 derfully strong, and each one could kill a great many Aru 

 men ; and when they were wounded, however badly, they spit 

 upon the place, and it immediately became well. And they 

 made a great net of rattans, and entangled their prisoners in 

 it, and sunk them in the water ; and the next day, when they 

 pulled the net up on the shore, they made the drowned men 

 come to life again, and can-ied them away. 



Much more of the same kind was told me, but in so con- 



