n the boat, he walked off toward a clump of
bamboos growing near the spot where they had made their camp.

The first thing he did was to cut down five or six of the largest of
these canes, some of them being several inches in diameter, directing
Murtagh to drag them off, and deposit them close to the durion-tree.

As soon as he had felled what he deemed a sufficient number, he returned
to the spot where the Irishman had deposited them, and commenced
chopping them into pieces of about eighteen inches in length. In this
the ship-carpenter, by reason of his calling, was able to give him
efficient aid; and the ground was soon strewed with disjointed bamboos.
Each of the pieces was then split into two, and sharply pointed at one
end, so as to resemble a peg designed for being driven into the ground.
But it was not into the ground Saloo intended driving them, as will be
presently seen.

While Murtagh was engaged in splitting and sharpening the sections of
bamboo, the Malay went off once more into the woods, and soon came back
again, bearing in his arms what looked like a quantity of rough
packing-cord. The freshly-cut ends of it, however, with their greenish
colour and running sap, told it to be some species of creeping-plant--
one of the parasites, or epiphytes, that abound everywhere in the
forests of Borneo, as in those of all tropical countries, and render the
trade of the ropemaker altogether superfluous.

Throwing down his bundle of creepers, Saloo now took up one of the
pointed pegs, and, standing by the trunk of the durion, drove it into
the soft sapwood, a little above the height of his own head. The axe,
which was a light one, and had a flat hammer-shaped head, served him for
a mallet.

As soon as the first peg had been driven to the depth of several inches,
he threw aside the axe, and laid hold of the stake with both hands.
Then drawing his feet from the ground, so that all his weight came upon
the peg, he tried whether it would sustain him without yielding. It
did, and he was satisfied.

His next movement was another excursion into the forest, where he found
some bamboo stems of a slenderer kind than those already cut, but quite
as tall. Having selected three or four of these, he chopped them down,
and dragged them up to the durion. Then taking one, he set it upright
on its butt-end, parallel to the trunk of the tree, and at such a
distance from it as to strike near the outer extremity of the peg
alre