JUNGLE AND STREAM
OR
THE ADVENTURES OF TWO BOYS IN SIAM
BY
GEO. MANVILLE FENN
AUTHOR OF
"IN HONOUR'S CAUSE," "CORMORANT CRAG"
"FIRST IN THE FIELD," ETC.
DEAN & SON, LTD.
6 LA BELLA SAUVAGE, LUDGATE HILL,
LONDON, E.C.4
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
CONTENTS
I. SIXTY YEARS AGO
II. THE JUNGLE HUNTER
III. SREE'S PRISONER
IV. FISHING WITH A WORM
V. THE DOCTOR'S POST-MORTEM
VI. MAKING PLANS
VII. THE BRINK OF A VOLCANO
VIII. A PROWL BY WATER
IX. NATURALISTS' TREASURES
X. WHAT HARRY HEARD
XI. THE NAGA'S BITE
XII. SUL THE ELEPHANT
XIII. THEIR FIRST TIGER
XIV. A YOUNG SAVAGE
XV. FOR THE JUNGLE, HO!
XVI. THE HOUSE-BOAT
XVII. JUNGLE SIGHTS AND SOUNDS
XVIII. ELEPHANTS AT HOME
XIX. A NIGHT ALARM
XX. A DREARY RETURN
XXI. A HIDING-PLACE
XXII. DARING PLANS
XXIII. THE SPEAR HARVEST
XXIV. THE HELP SEEKER
XXV. A DESPERATE VENTURE
XXVI. FOR LIFE
XXVII. THE POWDER MINE
XXVIII. SAVING THE STORES
XXIX. THE DOCTOR KEPT BUSY
XXX. LIKE A BAD SHILLING
XXXI. COMING HOME TO ROOST
XXXII. IN THE NICK OF TIME
XXXIII. WHAT FOLLOWED
[Illustration: "Then there was a roar like a peal of thunder."]
CHAPTER I
SIXTY YEARS AGO
"Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling!" was sung in a good,
clear, boyish tenor, and then the singer stopped, to say
impatiently,--
"What nonsense it is! My head seems stuffed full of Scotch
songs,--'Wee bit sangs,' as the doctor calls them. Seems funny that so
many Scotch people should come out here to the East. I suppose it's
because the Irish all go to the West, that they may get as far apart
as they can, so that there may not be a fight. I say, though, I want
my breakfast."
The speaker, to wit Harry Kenyon, sauntered up to the verandah of the
bungalow and looked in at the window of the cool, shaded room, where a
man-servant in white drill jacket and trousers was giving the
finishing touches to the table.
"Breakfast ready, Mike?"
"Yes, sir; coffee's boiled, curry's made."
"Curry again?"
"Yes, Master Harry; curry again. That heathen of a cook don't believe
a meal's complete without curry and rice."
"But I thought we were going to have fried fish this morning."
"So did I, sir. I told him plainly enough; but he won't understand,
and he's curried the lot."
"How tiresome!"
"I should like to curry his hide, Master Harry, but it's
leather-coloured already. Never mind; there's some fresh potted meat."
"Bother potted meat! I'm sick of potted meat. Look here, next time I
bring home any fresh fish you go into the kitchen and cook them
yourself."
"What, me go and meddle there! Look here, Master Harry, I'll go with
you fishing, and wade into that sticky red mud if you want me to; or
I'll go with you shooting or collecting, and get my eyes scratched out
in the jungle, and risk being clawed by tigers, or stung by snakes, or
squeedged flat by an elephant's neat little foot; but I'm not going to
interfere with old Ng's pots and pans. Why, he'd put some poison in my
vittles."
"Nonsense!"
"He would, sir, sure as I stand here. He looks wonderful gentle and
smiling, with that Chinese face of his; but I know he can bite."
"Poor old Ng; he's as harmless as his name. N. G.--Ng."
"Name? I don't call that a name, Master Harry. Fag end of a pig's
grunt; that's about what that is."
"Here, I want my breakfast. Isn't father nearly dressed?"
"No, sir; he hasn't begun to shave yet, and he won't be down for
another quarter of an hour."
"Call me when he comes," said the lad, and he went off down the garden
again, towards the river which flowed swiftly at the bottom, where the
bamboo landing-stage had been made, with its high-peaked attap, or
palm-leaf roof. It was all bamboo. Big canes were driven into the mud
for supports, others for pillars and beams, and the floor was of
smaller ones, split and laid close together, and then bound in their
places with long lengths of the rotan cane which grew so plentifully
in the jungle, running up the great forest trees, and after reaching
the top, going on growing till it swung down by the yard, and waited
till the wind blew it into the next tree, where it held on by its
thorns, and went on growing to any length.
The garden was beautiful in its wildness, the trees having been left
for shade; and John Kenyon, the East India merchant, who had settled
far up one of the rivers of Siam ten years before, after the death of
his wife, had found out from long experience that he who tries to make
an English garden in a tropical country has worry for crops, while he
who encourages the native growths makes his home a place of beauty.
So Harry Kenyon sauntered down, keeping out of the hot rays of the
early morning sun--hot enough, though it was only six, for people rise
early in the East--and made his way to the bamboo platform beneath
which the river, here about a hundred yards wide, looked like a stream
whose waters had been transformed into a decoction of coffee and
chicory, with the milk left out, or, as Harry once said, muddy soup.
The creepers, crowded with many-coloured blossoms, hung down from the
trees and ran over the roof, forming, with the dry palm-leaves,
nesting and hiding places for plenty of natural history objects from
the neighbouring jungle. Birds nested there, and rats and snakes came
birds'-nesting, while lizards of various kinds, from the little active
fly-catchers to the great shrieking tokay, found that roof an
admirable resting-place.
There were sundry rustlings overhead as Harry stepped on to the
slippery, squeaking, yielding bamboos; but use is second nature, and
ten years in such company, without reckoning the inhabitants of the
jungle, had made the boy so familiar with many of these things that he
looked upon them with a calm contempt.
As a matter of course he would have swarmed up a tree fast enough at
the sight of a tiger or elephant in either of the forest tracks, or,
to use Mike's expression, have made himself scarce if he had
encountered a cobra, or seen one of the great boas swaying to and fro
from the gigantic limb of a tree. Even at the moment of stepping upon
the covered-in summerhouse-like landing-stage, with its fishing-rods
laid up overhead in the bamboo rafters, he shrank a little, and then
angrily bared his teeth as he stood gazing down at the water a dozen
yards away.
"You beast!" he hissed. "Oh, if you'd only stay there while I fetched
a gun! Oh, yes, it's all very well to wink one eye at me; I'd make you
wink both."
It seemed odd that the lad should address himself like that to a piece
of rugged, gnarled tree-trunk floating slowly down the flashing river;
but, as aforesaid, Harry Kenyon had been up the country in Siam ever
since he was quite a little fellow, and had been accustomed to have
the wild creatures of the forest for pets and companions. Where boys
at home had had cats or dogs, Harry had more than once petted a tiger
cub; lizards had been as common with him as white mice with English
lads. Then he had kept squirrels, snakes, monkeys, and birds to any
extent. Moreover, he had once contrived to keep alive, until it became
wild instead of tame a hideous-looking creature which lived in a
fenced-in patch of sand with half a sugar hogshead sunk level with the
ground, provided with a central heap formed of an old tree-root, and
filled up with water. This creature strangely resembled the efts or
newts so common in some ponds, but magnified many times, so that there
was no cause for surprise that the boy should speak as he did to the
tree-trunk, for his experienced eyes had seen at a glance that this
was no half-rotten stem torn out from the bank by the flooded river.
He had recognised the two horny prominences over the eyes, and their
furtive, ugly gleam, so that he was not at all surprised when one end
of the trunk moved slowly, in a wavy fashion, and the object began to
part the water.
"Yes, I thought you'd soon go," said Harry. "Stop a minute, though."
He stepped gently back into the garden and snatched up a piece of
stone about as big as two fists, from a heap of rockwork, stole back
to the bamboo floor till he could just see over the edge, keeping his
movements hidden, and launched out the heavy piece of spar with so
good an aim that, after curving through the air just above the surface
of the water, it fell with a dull thud right in the centre of the
trunk.
The effect was instantaneous. A long muzzle with gaping jaws rose out
of the water for a moment, there was a tremendous wallowing which made
the water foam, and then a great serrated tail rose several feet above
the surface, quivered in a wavy way, delivered a sounding slap on the
top of the water, and disappeared.
"I thought that would make you wag your tail, old gentleman. What a
whopper! Nearly twenty feet long, and as thick as thick. Pull a man
in? Why, it would pull in a young elephant. Oh, how I do hate crocs!"
The boy stood watching the surface for some minutes, but there was no
sign of the huge reptile reappearing.
"Gone down," muttered the boy. "Suppose, though, he has swum
underneath here, and is waiting to dash out and grab me by the legs.
Ugh!" he added, with a shudder, "it does seem such a horrible death,
only I suppose the poor people these creatures catch don't feel any
more when once they're under the water. Wonder whether they do.
Shouldn't like to try."
His thoughts made him peer down through an opening between the warped
bamboos, at where the river glided beneath his feet; but all was
perfectly quiet there, and he glanced up at the fishing-rods.
"Be no use to try now," he said; "the brute would scare every fish
away, and I've got no bait, and--oh, I say, how badly I do want my
breakfast! Is father going to lie in bed all day?"
Evidently not, for the minute after a cheery voice cried, "Now, Harry,
lad, breakfast!"