They were received by the king on the stern deck of a very large prau or native vessel[30] (about 70 feet long).
This prau contained a band of musicians and eight old men who were chiefs.
They seem to have made little scruple of behaving like pirates towards any Malay prau which could not offer much resistance.
Camphor is obtained there, and the island is so large that it can be circumnavigated by a prau only in three months’ time.
Capturing a prau and three Moros near the former village, they are guided to Borneo.
He made us enter his prau and seat ourselves near him.
On the following day, July nine, the king of that island sent a very beautiful prau to us, whose bow and stern were worked in gold.
Then pursuing our course, we captured a prau laden with cocoanuts on its way to Burne.
On December 13th I went on board a prau bound for the Aru Islands, a journey which will be described in the latter part of this work.
He had a coffee estate at Bontyne, and a small prau which traded to the Eastern islands near New Guinea, for mother-of-pearl and tortoiseshell.
Captain Read ordered his men to take aboard all the nuts, and as much of the oil as he thought convenient, and then cut a hole in the bottom of the prau and turned her loose, keeping the men prisoners.
She was a prau with four men in her, belonging to Achin, whither she was bound.
Then they saw, too, and began to back water and turn, all pulling different ways and yelling: "Prau hantu!
It was plain they meant to wait and see whether the hantu prau went out with the ebb or not; and as it was then flood, and dusk, they couldn't see before morning.
So I was busy,--but managed to dismast the hantu prau and wrap it up in matting, so that it went aboard with the plunder.
Mark, peering out from among the trees; and as he looked it was to see one prau clear of the point, and another coming slowly out into view.
This shot was wider than the last, and it was followed by one from the other prauwhich went farther away still.
We was all half dozing in the boat when we heared a shot, and saw a prau alongside of the old Chicken, and another running up fast, and then there were more firing went on.
While the prau swept slowly in, the sun beat down with terrible force, and there was not a breath of wind to cool the burning air.
Suddenly a low hoarse cry was uttered by all on board, for as the prau was borne toward them it must have caught upon the summit of some rock hidden by the wave, and that check was sufficient.
The prau had by this time been rowed to its station, and from the stir on deck it was now evident that the brass swivel-gun was being loaded and preparations made to send a volley of missiles tearing through the stern windows.
As that cry arose the prau turned right over and disappeared completely from view, while at that moment there was another of the tremendous explosions from the mountain, succeeded by instantaneous darkness.
Those were perilous moments; for as the prau drew near it seemed impossible for its occupants to pass without seeing the gig lying little more than a few yards away.
I've tried to keep in the course by which the prau came when it passed us, but the darkness is so deceptive that we might as well be blind.
The prau was not fifty yards away now, and seemed to be glowing as if red-hot in the glare shed by the golden cloud above the mountain.
The captain's glass revealed one to be the pirate prau with all sails set, for a wind had come up with the dawn.
A little farther on a bevy of women and children were bathing in the tepid waters of the river, while a man in an unpainted prau was keeping watch for a possible crocodile.
A third prau followed in the wake of the other two, and all three were lost in the blackness of the overhanging cliffs.
He could swim and box, and had once gone with his father to the seaports on New Year's Day at Singapore, and his own prau had won the short-distance race.
When the moon was full he returned in his shining prau before the walls of Malacca, He brought from Ophir, of gold more than enough; of the pearls of Ceylon he brought a chupah full to the brim.
Toward night Busuk was put in a rattan chair and carried by the young men, while Mamat and the girls walked by her side, a mile away, where her husband's big cadjang-covered prau lay moored.
She went out into the straits in the big prau that floated the star and crescent of Johore over its stern, to look at the fishing-stakes, and was nearly wrecked by a great water-spout that burst within a few feet of them.
The sailors sent up a hearty American cheer and a tiger, as they saw the prau come to a standstill.
Then he spoke, and the sound of his voice reached far out to the most distant prau that lay becalmed within the shadow of casuarina-shaded Puli.
The prau had sighted us and was bearing down in full pursuit; we soon could distinguish its wide-spreading, rakish sails almost touching the water as it sped on.
The homeless king knelt in the bottom of the prau and prayed for strength, and then took up the oars and pulled silently toward the ocean.
There was that prau lying so still swathed in her shroud of sewn palm-leaves--she too had her indispensable man.
Moored between the square blocks a seagoing Malay prau floated half hidden under the arch of masonry, with her spars lowered down, without a sound of life on board, and covered from stem to stern with a ridge of palm-leaf mats.
It paid for a fast prau which, commanded by Jaffir, sailed into unfrequented bays and up unexplored rivers, carrying secret messages, important news, generous bribes.
No Illanun prau had passed down that coast for years.
I have promised to Tuan Lingard twenty men and a prau to make war in Wajo.
I must say, Tom, the prau is the best craft of the kind I have ever seen.
Now it is in my mind that a prau coming from amongst the southern islands, if steered cunningly in the free set of the current, would approach the bows of this, our brig, drifting silently as a shape without a substance.
Next morning, when a breeze sprang up soon after sunrise, the brig and the prau left the bay together.
The calm surface of the bay reflected the glorious night sky, and the brig with the prau riding astern seemed to be suspended amongst the stars in a peace that was almost unearthly in the perfection of its unstirring silence.
The end of a stout line was thrown on board, and that night the white man's brig and the brown man's prau swung together to the same anchor.
A sunken way had been dug from the edge of the surf to a long low building a hundred yards back; within it lay the prau doubtless, ready to be launched.
The prau glided quicker and quicker amidst a roaring tumult.
On the morrow early the prau was to start, dropping down stream.
Chiefs climbed aboard the prau and mustered, with tossing feathers, brandishing their arms, shouting and singing, on its deck.
The prau sped like a flash, but half full of water.
The crew of the prau chattered and disputed at the top of their shrill voices as case after case was brought in, dripping, and examined.
The sun was halfway down the sky already, and coming in sight in the opening of the bay we saw a prau manned by many paddlers.
They beat the gong, and turned the head of the prau into the bay.
It leaped three times; and three times with the eyes of my mind I saw in the gloom within the enclosed space of the prau a woman with streaming hair going away from her land and her people.
I've a little prau canoe down here at the steps--if we can reach it.
Give the fellow a wisp of silk and some brass bracelets or mango seeds, or such, and he would squat by the wayside or in the shade of a hut or the cabin flares of a native prau and proceed to work miracles.
The preparations for the trip ashore were made hurriedly, while the prau waited at the ladder and the natives traded more fruit and fish, with some fresh meat.
Hold that prau down there and we'll get our stuff together and go ashore in her.
They took both trading goods and money with them, in order to make payments to the natives, and when they stepped down into the prau and the Malays shoved off, the boys led the crew in three hearty cheers.
There was no sign of any prau bringing back Jerry Smith, and the other three men who had landed were not in sight.
Out flashed the long Malay sweeps, and with final shouts ringing over the water, the prau swiftly moved off toward the river mouth.
At this Jerry suggested that one of the Malays had possibly stolen up while theirprau was waiting alongside for the captain, the day before, and had stolen what he could find.
It was the sail of the prau that had caught the sunlight and stood out, distinct with its gay tint, on the dark red of the cape.
Then the prau bore up to the southward: the light went out of the sail, and all at once the vessel itself disappeared, vanishing in the shadow of the steep headland that looked on, patient and lonely, watching over the empty sea.
When we came up with his prau in the grey morning, he stood aft shouting to his men and fired this gun at us once.
He came with Omar and Aissa in a small prau loaded with green cocoanuts, and claimed the ownership of both vessel and cargo.
There were rumours of a missing trading praubelonging to Menado, but they were vague and remained mysterious.
The prau hauled up on the mud-bank, at the junction of the two branches of the Pantai, rotted in the rain, warped in the sun, fell to pieces and gradually vanished into the smoke of household fires of the settlement.
Helped by the girl with the steadfast heart, Babalatchi carried Omar on board the light prau and succeeded in escaping, but with very few companions only.
The advantage derived from the oars is, that in the tropical seas very light winds and calms are of common occurrence, during either of which the prau can easily overtake an ordinary sailing-ship.
But they place more dependence upon their broad paddle-bladed oars and skilled oarsmen, each prau having from thirty to forty rowers, and some very large ones a much greater number.
On Sunday afternoon, December fifteen, the king of Bachian and his brother came in a prau with three tiers of rowers at each side.
Thus did they go quite to the prau where they presented everything to the king who was sitting upon the carpet under a red and yellow canopy.
I've heard of the Rajah of Dongala giving him fifty dollars' worth of trade goods and paying his passage in a prau only to get rid of him.
He owned a Malay prau and called himself The Nakhoda, as one would say: The Captain.
My prau was brought into a small creek, where it could securely rest in the mud at low water, and part of a house was given me in which T could stay for a while.
We could only keep up our jib, which was almost blown to rags, but by careful handling it kept us before the wind, and the prau behaved very well.
Five men had engaged to work at the prau till finished, and then go with me to Mysol, Waigiou, and Ternate.
Canoes and boats of various sizes were drawn up on the beach and one or two idlers, with a few children and a dog, gazed at our prau as we came to an anchor.
I HAD left the old pilot at Waigiou to take care of my house and to get the prau into sailing order--to caulk her bottom, and to look after the upper works, thatch, and ringing.
Hitherto it had usually been calm at night, but on this occasion we had a strong westerly squall with rain, which turned our prau broadside, and obliged us to anchor.
My first voyage in a prau being thus satisfactorily terminated, I must, before taking leave of it for some months, bear testimony to the merits of the queer old-world vessel.
A small prauarrived which had been attacked by pirates and had a man wounded.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "prau" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
