at the Chinamen were in great fear of an attack by the
Dayaks, which they daily expected. Leaving Song at half-past five the
next morning, we arrived at Kapit about ten a.m. and put up at the
fort, which was a large one. A long, narrow platform from the top of
the fort led to a larger platform on which, overlooking the river,
there was a large cannon which could be turned round so as to cover
all the approaches from the river in case there was an attack on the
fort. We learned that the day before we arrived at Kapit, Mingo, the
Portuguese in charge of the fort, had captured the worst ringleader of
the head-hunters in the bazaar at Kapit, and small parties of loyal
Dayaks were at once sent off to the homes of the other head-hunters
with strict injunctions to bring back the guilty ones, and, failing
persuasion and threats, to attack them. [11] In most cases they were
successful, and I saw many of the prisoners brought in, together with
some of the heads of their victims.

The next morning Hose suddenly called out to me that if I wished
to inspect the heads I would find them hanging up under the cannon
platform by the river, and he sent a Dayak to undo the wrappings
of native cloth and mats in which they were done up. They were a
sickening sight, and all the horrors of head-hunting were brought
before me with vivid and startling reality far more than could have
been done by any writer, and I pictured those same heads full of life
only a few days before, and then suddenly a rush from the outside
amid the unprepared Punans in their rude huts in the depths of the
forest, a woman's scream of terror, followed by the sickening sound of
hacking blows from the sharp Dayak "parangs," and the Dayak war-cry,
"Hoo-hah! hoo-hah!" ringing through the night air, as every single
Punan man, woman and child, who has not had time to escape, is cut
down in cold blood. When all are dead, the proud Dayaks, proceed to
hack off the heads of their victims and bind them round with rattan
strings with which to carry them, and then, returning in triumph,
are hailed with shouts of delight by their envious fellow-villagers,
for this means wives, a Dayak maiden thinking as much of heads as a
white girl would of jewellery. The old Dayak who undid the wrappings
pretended to be horrified, but I felt sure that the old hypocrite
wished that he owned them himself.

Only seven of the heads had been brought in, and two of them were
heads of women, and althoug