Meanwhile their confidence increased, and they began to barter with their visitors, exchanging their ornaments, and even their weapons, for beads, mirrors, and cloth. They were very inquisitive about the strange objects which they saw in the boat, and, although they handled everything freely, did not attempt to steal. One of them took up a loaded pistol, but laid it down at once when the owner said it was tapu, or forbidden. Unfortunately, a misunderstanding then took place, which destroyed all the amicable feeling which had been established. “While all this was going on, they kept drawing the boat--unperceived, as they thought--toward the beach, which determined us to return, as our stock of presents was exhausted, and there seemed no probability of our inducing any of them to go on board with us. Shortly before this, Mr. Boers had ornamented a Papuan with a string of beads, who, on receiving it, joined two of his countrymen that were standing a little distance off with the arms that had been laid aside, but which they had been gradually getting together again--a proceeding we had observed, but, trusting in the mutual confidence that had been established, we did not much heed it. “At the moment in which we were setting off the boat to return on board, this man fixed an arrow in his bow, and took aim at Mr. Boers, who was sitting in the fore part of the boat, on which the latter turned aside to take up his gun, but before he could do so he received the arrow in his left thigh, which knocked him over, shouting, ‘Fire! fire! I am hit!’ as he fell. The order was scarcely given before every one had hold of his arms (which, as before stated, were kept at hand), and a general discharge put the natives to flight, swimming and diving like ducks. “Before they took to flight, however, they discharged several more arrows at our people, one of which struck Mr. Hagenholtz in the right knee, another hit a sailor in the leg, while a third pierced a sailor’s hat and remained sticking in it; and lastly, a Javanese had the handkerchief shot off his head, but without receiving any personal injury.” Three of the natives were severely wounded, if not killed, in this unfortunate affair, which evidently arose, as Mr. Earle points out, from misunderstanding, and not from deliberate treachery. Seeing the boats being pulled toward the ships while four of their companions were on board, they probably thought that they were being carried off as captives, as has so often been done along their coast by the slavers. They could not be expected to understand the difference between one white man and another, and evidently mistook the Dutch sailors for slavers, who had come for the purpose of inveigling them into the ships, where they could not be rescued.