Tubam’s appearance was not prepossessing. He was old, shrunken, and wrinkled. His black hair, untouched with white, hung in oily corkscrew ringlets from under his little Kayan crown of plaited straw. Three lines of tattoo simulated a beard round his chin. He had plucked out his eyebrows and eyelashes, and his eyes looked like two little slits framed in pink lids, the pupils being almost invisible. One day he made a speech. He said he felt anxious about our going up the rapids with the river in its present state. Only that morning he had seen on its surface flecks of foam from the great cataracts miles away, borne past his house just above the Fort. “It would not matter much to Rajah Ranee, or to Tuan Muda, if either of them was drowned,” he said, but it mattered much to him. “Think of the shame,” he went on, “which would fall on me and my tribe if such a thing were to happen in our river.” Then he got excited, clenched his fists, his thumbs pointing in the direction of the river. “And I forbid you to go, for are you not my grandmother, and as old as the world?” These words of his would have clinched the argument with his own people, for they elicited nods and murmurs of approbation from Salleh and other members of his tribe. Salleh was second in importance in the village, and had offered to steer our boat on the occasion of our journey up the rapids. He was the most skilful steersman in the district, and he now confessed that he did not like the job unless the water were in a better condition. But the Sea Dyaks were persistent. They insisted on having the last word, and Hovering Hawk (a title given him by his tribe on account of his exploits in war) came up to me, picking his steps across the room, and moving his legs with high, birdlike action. He squatted himself by me, sniffed, cleared his throat once or twice, and whispered, “Don’t mind what Tubam says; he knows nothing about it. He talks too much, his mouth is very large, and he is a bumptious fellow!” Seeing that the Dyaks and the Tanjongs were of different opinions, I asked Hovering Hawk news of his wife and family, and a vexed subject was dropped. Then Hovering Hawk, purring with contentment, imagining he had got the best of the argument, unfastened a small basket hanging at his side and emptied its contents on to a piece of rather dirty white calico he laid on the floor for the purpose. Bits of betel-nut, shreds of tobacco, a little brass box filled with lime, and a piece of sirih leaf fell out one after the other. He smeared the leaf over with lime, collected the other ingredients together, wrapped them in the leaf, and, with this large pill swelling one side of his face, sat contentedly at my feet for the remainder of the interview.