I Married Adventure

by Osa Johnson

  We found the streets almost deserted during the day, but at sundown Chinese lanterns were hung in front of the low houses and shops, and the streets were soon thronging with people of a dozen nationalities: Chinese women in bright silks; Japanese in quaint kimonos; Filipino belles in long-fringed mantillas; Malays in intricately designed batik sarongs; Europeans in their familiar tailored things; and would-be native dandies in amusing combinations of their own and European dress.

  All the sound seemed high-pitched after the low tones of boo-boos and cannibal chantings. Here the voices were shrill and mingled with the shriller music from the Chinese and Malay theaters. Even the colors and smells were in a higher key. Martin and I never wearied of strolling through the narrow streets. Often we saw the procession of a funeral or a wedding, both of which were identical except that the bride was carried in a sedan chair, while in the funeral the body, enclosed in a coffin of rough boards, was slung on ropes and borne by coolies. It was an exasperation to Martin that the picturesque activity of this beautiful town should only come alive in the cool of the evening, and that for this reason, with light gone, it would always elude his camera.

  We put up at the surprisingly bad hotel only long enough to look around and find a place which, however briefly, we could call home. I doubt that ever a woman lived who had a stronger instinct for homemaking than I, or a man with greater need for a home than Martin. Fortunately, we learned of a missionary on the point of taking a leave of absence, and his hilltop dwelling of two houses just outside of town, together with cook, waterboy, and houseboy, became ours for four months. These houses, like most of those owned by Europeans there, were built carefully of wood with high, pointed grass roofs. Lizards in large numbers shared our new quarters. Their favorite diet of huge, fat spiders, and scorpions up to five inches in length was well supplied here, and, plump and saucy, they seemed to know themselves to be more than welcome. I had supposed we had become insect-hardened down in the New Hebrides, but here, it seemed to me, we were forced to pay blood-tribute to an even greater variety of Mother Nature’s hungry insect hordes.

  My husband’s patience, where small annoyances were concerned, was a source of never-ending wonder to me, and an example of which I was much in need. A man of unerring singleness of purpose, he used his energies for the things that really counted. While I fussed about the house—quite as if we were settling down for at least a year—cleaning it, reorganizing it, routing the deadly scorpions out of the corners, teaching the cook some of the dishes which I knew were good for Martin, and between times prowling around the garden with my .22 and polishing off the somewhat too numerous snakes, Martin was going quietly about arranging for our first trip into the interior and learning Malay. I joined him in this in the evening, with a saucer of kerosene oil and a swab of cotton at my elbow for the mosquitoes. The wetter I made my face and arms with the smelly stuff, the less mosquitoes liked me, I found, so I took my choice of the two evils.

  During his inquiries into the best methods of going into the interior on our animal quest, Martin learned that here, as in the New Hebrides, distinct dangers lay ahead. He said little to me about these, but even after all our plans were made he lingered in Sandakan. Then one morning, some three weeks later, I saw him shaving with more than usual care.

  “You can come along if you want to.” He grinned. “Better put on something besides those overalls, though—a skirt, I mean.”

  “Well, my goodness,” I replied, but hurried to do as he suggested. “Must be important,” I added as I got out a fresh white shirtwaist.

  It was. Less than an hour later we were ushered into the presence of Sir West Ridgeway, who had arrived at Sandakan just the night before. The president of the British North Borneo Company and virtual ruler of British North Borneo itself, he was a tall, erect, keen-eyed old gentlemen of seventy-five who appeared less than sixty. He had spent most of his life in the service of the British colonial government, serving with Kitchener in Egypt and as governor and commander-in-chief of Ceylon from 1896 to 1903.

  I liked the old gentleman instantly, even though he was a little truculent toward Martin and his plan to go into the interior and take me with him.

  “She ought to be at home with her mother or in school,” he said impatiently, fixing me with a scowling, contemplative look. “Women weren’t made for such hardships.”

  “Yes, I know, but my wife—” Martin began.

  “An expedition such as you contemplate would be dangerous even for experienced, hardened men. I tell you, Mr. Johnson, death in a hundred forms awaits any white man who ventures into the interior. Poisonous insects, fevers, snakes, animals—headhunters, sir, as vicious as any on earth!”

  “I know,” Martin said. “I’ve heard of the pirates of Borneo. Hafees, I think they’re called. They use blowpipes, don’t they, and poisoned darts?”

  “Exactly, and yet you would take a woman, young and soft—your wife, sir—into such dangers! Why, you must be a madman!”

  Martin smiled. “I know that’s how Osa looks, Sir West, soft and weak, but when you consider that she’s the only woman who ever dared to cross Malaita down in the Solomons, and that she’s even been where white men haven’t dared to go among the natives of the New Hebrides, then you’ll realize that there’s more to her than you’d first imagine.”

  “Bless my soul!” said Sir West.

  A few days later we received word to present ourselves at the offices of the British North Borneo Company, where we were graciously received by Sir West and informed that the government was very much interested in our plan to make a motion-picture record of Borneo’s wildlife; that it would be pleased to accept Martin’s offer of a print for its permanent files; and that certainly the safeguarding of our lives during this project would be its first concern. To which Sir West added that he, personally, would not sanction Martin’s taking me on the expedition—irrespective of earlier hazards braved and survived—unless every precaution possible were observed.

  How carefully our needs were considered may be gathered from the fact that the government furnished us with an escort of native policemen, an interpreter, four coolies as carriers, and a government launch. The salaries and food allowances for the men assigned to us were to be paid by the government, and our party as it continued its journey was to be put up at government outstations that lay along our route.

  Before venturing on our long trip into the interior, Martin felt we should make a trial excursion or two to test our equipment and familiarize ourselves with the country. Less than a week later we were off across the bay in the government’s fine, sturdy launch. We went up one of the many rivers that empty into the ocean there. It was alive with crocodiles. Soon the nipa-thatched native huts gave way to a jungle so dense with giant trees, vines, and parasitic roots that it appeared impenetrable fifty feet back from the shores, and monkeys, literally thousands, jabbered at our intrusion.

  Martin, beside himself with delight, set up his camera, but he encountered a curious difficulty. Monkeys the color of mud remained on the dark earth at the foot of the nipa palms, monkeys the color of rust remained among leaves of a reddish hue, and leaping about in the high branches were big-nosed monkeys with long snouts, little black monkeys that were all tall, and large brown monkeys with practically no tails whatever—all blending exasperatingly with the grays, greens, browns, and reds of their background, or else losing themselves in the thick shadows. It was clear even on this first experimental trip that the photographic problem was going to be a serious one.

  We chose another river out of the bay for our second trip and, at the suggestion of one of our native guides, anchored the launch about thirty miles upstream and went ashore. The jungle thinned a little here, and we were able to penetrate for perhaps a quarter of a mile where, in a clearing, we came on a herd of forty water buffaloes. The light was good, so Martin set up his camera. It was a moment of great excitement for us as he ground o
ut his first hundred feet of wild-animal film.

  Suddenly a grizzled, wise-looking old buffalo decided to resent our intrusion and, snorting, lowered his head for a charge. The rest followed suit, and the herd came at us. Martin caught me and swung me behind him with one hand and kept on grinding with the other. The natives had already scrambled for cover.

  Both angry and frightened at what seemed the certain destruction of our one and only motion-picture camera, and with it the end of our entire expedition (that our lives might be in danger didn’t occur to me at the moment), I let out a scream that for noise and shrillness must have been startling indeed, for the lead buffalo threw up his head and swerved off, the rest of the herd following him. Martin kept right on grinding, with the result that we returned to Sandakan shortly, much pleased with the result of our second experimental trip.

  I shall never forget my introduction to some of the more noisome inhabitants of the Borneo jungle—for one thing, snakes in amazing numbers, king cobras among them. Fortunately, most of those reptiles, with all their deadliness, are inclined to flee rather than attack. Death in the jungle would be certain were it otherwise. We were on our way back to the launch, triumphant after securing our shot of the buffaloes. It was frightfully hot and steamy, and I paused to push my hair more securely under my hat when my hand encountered something clammy and soft on the back of my neck. I screamed and pulled it off. It was a yellow tree leech, some two inches long. And then I found five more of various colors attached to my arms, to my back under my shirt, and one on my leg just above my high boot. Many more had attached themselves to Martin. All were fast swelling with our blood. Our native carriers immediately took us in hand and singed them off. To pull them off meant to leave a bad sore, they said. The one I had already pulled from the back of my neck soon proved this to be only too true. We found these pests everywhere in the jungle, hidden on the underside of leaves of their own color and waiting to drop on man or beast below. They had the look of thin worms before their meal. Equipped with a most efficient sucker at each end, they swelled with the blood of their victims to many times their original size and, when full, dropped off. An ugly red mark remained for many months. The ability of these leeches to accomplish all this without the knowledge of their victims will always be a mystery to me.

  Between our different experimental trips, Martin made his plans for our major expedition. After much conflicting advice, he decided upon the Kinabatangan River, the largest waterway in North Borneo, as our quickest route deep into the interior. Some one hundred and forty miles inland, at the village of Lamag, we learned there was a government station. The resident commissioner there, Mr. Holmes, informed of our plans by the British North Borneo Company, came to Sandakan to give us his help and advice. We can never be grateful enough to this charming Englishman, who not only supplied us with provisions and native boatmen and coolies but, in addition, accompanied us on our difficult and often dangerous trip.

  At length we were ready, and by daybreak we had crossed the twenty miles of the Sandakan Bay and were at the broad mouth of the Kinabatangan River. There were five of us: Mr. Holmes, Martin and I, an interpreter, and a government man to take us in the launch as far as Lamag. There we were to pick up our native men and coolies, together with the larger portion of our provisions, and continue our journey up the narrowing river in native canoes, or gobongs.

  The deeper we went inland, along the always-narrowing river, the more excited we became over what lay ahead, for there were increasing evidences in the thick, green jungle on both banks that here indeed was wild-animal country. We were a little over three days in reaching Lamag, where we were glad to leave the comfortable but close confines of the launch.

  Here at the government station we were met by an army of four privates and a corporal who were drawn up at salute to greet us. Six dogs and a pet monkey gave Mr. Holmes a rousing welcome, and fifty more monkeys, on a raid of the sweet-potato patch, chattering wildly, raced back into the jungle.

  We spent two days as Mr. Homes’s guests. The official residence, the barracks, and a slightly larger house were built of wood on piles some ten feet from the ground and were thatched with nipa palm. These and a few native huts, all hard-pressed by the thick jungle, made up the government station.

  It did not take Mr. Holmes long to organize our excursion, and we made quite an imposing gobong fleet (a gobong, or native canoe, is sometimes hollowed from a tree trunk and sometimes made of boards). In the first canoe were three well-armed police boys. Next came Mr. Holmes’s personal deluxe gobong, which was thirty-five feet long and completely enclosed with nipa leaf, and required eight boatmen to paddle it. It carried as passengers Mr. Holmes, Martin, me, and a native hunter, together with our film and camera equipment, which were seldom separated from Martin by much more than the length of his arm. Following in a smaller canoe were an interpreter and the native Martin had selected as his personal camera assistant. Then came ten canoes loaded with provisions and general equipment.

  I observed that the native police in the canoe ahead kept their guns always ready at hand, and that they watched closely the jungle walls on either bank for the slight breaks that indicated the mouth of brooks. These waterways, dark and narrow, cut through hundreds of miles of jungle and empty into the larger streams. I learned after much probing that they are the hiding places for island pirates, descendants of the Malay pirates that once were the terror of the South Seas. We were told by Mr. Holmes that the very nature of these water labyrinths makes it extremely difficult for the government to bring the hafees under control, and that hence they are a constant menace to river traffic.

  Our destination was the Tenggara village at the headwaters, the farthest navigable point on the river. En route we stopped at Pintasin, the native capital of the Kinabatangan District and the home of Hadji Mohammed Nur, chief of all the tribes in a territory covering hundreds of square miles.

  The chief himself, an elderly, intelligent-looking man with clear, parchment-like skin and a firm mouth, met us at the log wharf accompanied by two dignitaries. All were attired in colorful native garb and turbans. They wore shoes in our honor and escorted us to the chiefs house where, with much ceremony, we sat down to dinner. The entire village and thirty dogs looked on, and we in turn supplied a dinner for countless hungry fleas and sand flies.

  We spent three days at Pintasin. As we were about to leave, Chief Hadji offered to accompany us in his own elaborate gobong. Martin and Mr. Holmes were delighted, for his presence insured the fullest cooperation of the natives wherever we might choose to go in the Kinabatangan territory. One happy circumstance in this connection was the renewal of our crews. Few natives will travel far from their villages, so we were obliged daily to arrange for a fresh group of paddlers. The good Hadji solved this problem for us by taking from his boat a brass gong and a stick of native hard rubber and beating a tattoo. There was the sound of answering drums in the distance, and we awoke in the morning to find a crew of the needed number awaiting us.

  Another bit of magic which I have always attributed to the Hadji was the appearance every so often of natives along the river banks carying freshly gathered wild lemons, guavas, and bananas. A few ounces of salt, we found, would buy all the fruit we needed from day to day. Martin, in his careful inquiries regarding the interior, had learned that salt was prized even above money and had had the foresight to bring a plentiful supply.

  The more deeply we penetrated into the interior along the narrow waterway, the hotter it became. My head ached, I ached all over, I was a mass of mosquito bites, and the pain in my back from the crouching position I was forced to maintain in the canoe under the low nipa canopy was excruciating. Every now and then we stopped at springs and plunged our hands and faces into the cool water, but this did little good.

  I often think a more patient or more considerate man than my husband never lived. He must have been far more uncomfortable than I, if for no other reason than
his height. Taller than average, there was so much of him to fold up in the limited space. Too, he felt that he must be constantly alert with the cameras, and yet I never heard him complain. On the contrary, all of his concern was for me. Often he insisted that I stretch out and try to sleep, even though my doing so crowded him that much more. His concern also extended to Mr. Holmes, to Chief Hadji, and on down to our crew.

  During all this I said little, but I made up my mind that on the trip back at least I was somehow going to have things better for him. When we had stopped and made camp on a sandbar, I consulted Mr. Holmes.

  “I’ve simply got to do something about Martin,” I said as I hurried about preparing supper. I laid nipa leaves on the sand for a tablecloth. Our twelve gobongs were safely beached and the crew—nearly fifty, I think—were cooking their rice and dried fish over little campfires.

  “What are you going to do about me?” Martin grinned, coming up. He had been directing our hunters as they drove small trees into the sand of the riverbed to keep the crocodiles away from our camp. This also gave us a place where we could bathe safely.

  “Look at you,” I said. “You can’t even straighten up. You’ll grow that way!”

  “Oh, I could straighten up all right if I wanted to,” he said, “only if I stay this way I fit the gobong better when I get back in.”

  “Gobong disease, that’s what it is.” I was indignant. “And I’m sick of it!”

  We all laughed and let it go at that for the time being.

  My plan, as I confided to Mr. Holmes, was to arrange at the nearest village this side of the rapids to have the natives build a sort of little houseboat, with regular sleeping bunks and chairs and a table, a nipa roof high enough so that Martin could get up and walk around under it, and a kind of porch where he could set up his camera and take pictures in decent comfort as he moved back down the river.