One day a few of us were ashore and the ship's carpenter was nailing the boards on a tripod signal. He had a pair of nippers which he used to bite off the ends of the nails. A group of husky Moros, clad in G strings and knives, stood by, fascinated by the nippers. Finally the carpenter passed the instrument to one of them and motioned him to try it. The native failed. The carpenter then took back the nippers, put it to his mouth, and pulled out a false tooth on a plate. He calmly passed this around the staring Moros and then, as nonchalantly, replaced it in his jaw. The natives looked on him as a miracle worker and gave us no more trouble after that.
One day a boat put out from shore and came up alongside the Frolic. The rowers called up to ask for the medico to come ashore. They made me understand that one of the sultan's soldiers had been shot the night before. These Moros had rifles and plenty of ammunition which they had smuggled in from near-by Borneo. When they weren't knifing at us, they would have a little scrap among themselves. I strapped on my revolver, took a couple of men, and went ashore. A guard was waiting for me on the beach and escorted me to a nipa shack. There I found a couple of Moros well armed, two or three women, and, on a pile of dirty mats, my patient. He had been shot through the arm and the chest and was in bad shape.
It was obvious that while the natives had sent for the white medico, they were suspicious of me and what I might do. To allay their suspicions, I unbuttoned my holster and laid the gun aside. I then gave the man a hypodermic, which caused him to twitch. There was a threatening movement and mutter in the group behind me. I imagined I could feel the prick of a bolo at the back of my neck.
I probably would have felt it if my patient had shown a bad reaction to the hypodermic and the surgery I had to do; but he was a husky savage, in spite of his filth, and stood the treatment successfully. I dressed the wound, gave instructions for his care,
