48 
NORTH BORNEO. 
appeared at the bottom of our ladder with their krises in their hands, and entered our 
house—a most foolish thing to do on their part, as I covered the first with my gun, but did 
not fire on them as it flashed through my mind that they had come to warn us. Seeing 
that they had made a mistake, they dropped their swords and sat down. All this occurred 
in less time than it takes to read it. The men were two Orang Sungei, dressed in loose, 
dirty-white trousers and jackets, with red handkerchiefs on their heads: in a few minutes 
they explained that they had come to warn us of what had taken place at their house, and 
to advise us to be on the look-out; they said that the “ amoker ” had already killed several 
men and wounded many more, and asked me to lend them a gun to shoot this maniac with 
before he did any further harm. As they did not understand guns, they thought it would 
perhaps be better for me to go with them and shoot him. Their invitation I naturally 
declined, not caring to embroil myself in native quarrels, neither did I see the necessity of 
running the risk of being sliced up by this madman, whose whereabouts no one knew. So 
I lent them two guns on the understanding that they would first call upon the “ amoker ” 
to throw down his sword and surrender, or to shoot him. They left us at once, going in 
their canoes to the houses where the amoker was last seen. We were left to our own 
thoughts for a short space of time, when the distant and expected boom of a gun was borne 
to us on the still night air. We knew what that sound meant; it was the knell of Bandeira 
the amoker. It was now 9 o’clock; the moon, being in its early days, shed but little light 
on the scene. Not feeling secure in our fort of leaves, we decided, before retiring to rest, to 
make sure that the wretched man was beyond further mischief, so we started with two of 
our neighbours to visit the scene of this tragedy. Our guide was armed with a spear, which 
he held close to the blade ready to plunge into any one who should attack us ; Nyhan and 
myself carried guns. After cutting across a long bend of the river we arrived at the small 
lalang-grass plain where we had seen the attap-makers busy at work on our arrival. Here 
our guide suddenly halted, and at his feet lay stretched out, with his bones glistening in 
the pale moonlight, the body of Bandeira the “ amoker.” He had been shot from a canoe 
by the men who visited us, and then hacked all over by their swords. Whether he was 
asked to surrender or not I cannot say, though his executioners told me that they gave him 
the choice of throwing his “barong” or Sulu knife (see illustration, page 130) into the river 
or being shot, and the only answer received was a threat daring them to come and take it. 
A few yards further we passed a hut in which a man was resting on his hands and 
knees, gazing apparently at us. Thinking this peculiar, I asked my guide what he was 
doing. “ Matti tuhan! ” was the answer ; and, sure enough, he was dead and stiff, with a 
fearful cut which had nearly severed his head from his body, death being so sudden that 
he remained as he fell. In another hut was the body of a native over which Bandeira had 
devoted more of his energies, carving the unfortunate man into ribbons; he had also hacked 
the attap roof in all directions. The custom of mutilating, or rather of hacking up, a fallen 
enemy prevails amongst all the Mohammedan sect in Borneo; the aborigines prefer to cut 
off the heads and limbs of their victims, which they keep as trophies. 
Bandeira’s executioners crossed the river and asked me to visit one of the wounded 
men, so I went with them to a house some short distance off, and found one of their friends 
looking very sick indeed from loss of blood. In trying to shield his head from Bandeira's 
