"You were so precious proud of your ornitho superbo, or whatever you
call it, that you seemed to fancy yourself head cock discoverer and
chief boss of the expedition," cried Panton one morning, as he returned
in a great hurry, after being out for some hours with Smith and Wriggs.
Oliver, who, helped by Drew, was busily packing layers of dried bird
skins in a case, looked up laughingly.
"What is it?" he cried. "What have you found--diamonds?"
"Oh, no, nothing of that kind. Come on and see."
"In five minutes I shall be done. Then we'll come. But what is it?"
"Wait till you get there," responded Panton, wincing slightly, for he
had just felt a sting in his newly-healed wound.
"All right," said Oliver. "Now, Drew, another layer of paper, then this
lot of skins, and we'll fasten the lid down."
"Why not leave it unfastened till your other lot are dry?"
"Because if I do, the ants will make short work of them. In with the
rest, lightly. Now the lid."
This was clapped on, a good solid deal lid made by the ship's carpenter,
with holes bored and screws in them, all ready, and as soon as it was
on, Oliver, with his sleeves rolled up and the muscles working beneath
his clear white skin, attacked the screws, and soon had them all tightly
in their places. Then a rope was made fast, the word given to those on
deck, and the chest was run up in no time.
Five minutes later Oliver was equipped in light flannel jacket and sun
helmet, his gun over his shoulder and all ready fur action.
"Going for a stroll?" said Mr Rimmer, as they stepped down from the
deck to where he was superintending the planking of the lugger, whose
framework had been slid down on a kind of cradle, where it now stood
parallel with the brig, it having been found advisable to get her down
from the deck for several reasons, notably her rapidly increasing weight
and her being so much in the way.
"But suppose the enemy comes and finds her alongside? They might burn
her."
"They'd burn or bake us if we kept her up here," said the mate, shortly,
"for we should not have room to move."
So there it was, down alongside, rapidly approaching completion, the men
having toiled away with a will, feeling how necessary it was to have a
way open for escape, and working so well that most of them soon began to
grow into respectable shipyard labourers, one or two, under the guidance
of the ship's carpenter, promising to develop soon into builders.
The mate was very busy with a caulking hammer in one hand, a wedge in
the other, driving tar-soaked oakum between the planks so as to make a
water-tight seam, and as the young men came up he wiped his steamy brow
with his arm, and looked at all with good-humoured satisfaction.
"Yes, we're going to inspect a discovery I have made," said Panton,
importantly. "Like to join us?"
"Well, I should like," replied the mate, "and I think I--no: resolution
for ever. Not a step will I take till I've got the _Little Planet_
finished. She's rough, but I believe she'll go."
"When you get her to the sea."
"Ye-es," said Mr Rimmer, with a comically perplexed look in his bluff
English countenance, "when we get her to the sea. You don't think
she'll stick fast, do you, Mr Lane?"
"Well, I hope not," said Oliver, "but when I get thinking about how big
you are making her, I can't help having doubts."
"Doubts?" said the mate, sadly, as if he had plenty of his own.
"Yes--no," cried Oliver, "I will not have any. We will get her down to
the sea somehow. Englishmen have done bigger things than that."
"And will again, eh, sir?" cried the mate. "Come, that's encouraging.
You've done me no end of good, sir, that you have. There, off with you,
and get back to dinner in good time. Crowned pigeon for dinner, and
fish."
He attacked the side of the lugger with redoubled energy, his strokes
following the party for far enough as they trudged on due south to an
opening in the forest not yet visited by either Drew or Lane, and the
latter, as he saw the abundance of tempting specimens, exclaimed,--
"I say, what have we been about not to visit this spot before?"
"Had too many other good spots to visit, I suppose," said Drew; "but, my
word! look at the orchids here."
"Bah! That's nothing to what you will see, eh, Smith?"
"Yes, sir, they'll stare a bit when they gets farder on. Me and Billy's
been thinking as we should like to retire from business and build
ourselves houses there to live in, speshly Billy."
"Speak the truth, mate, you was the worst," grumbled Wriggs.
"You was just as bad about it, Billy. Didn't you say as it would be
grand to have a house to live in, with b'iling water laid on at your
front door?"
"Nay, that I didn't, Tommy. How could I when there warn't no front door
and no house built?"
"You are so partickler to a word, mate. It was something of that kind."
"Nay, Tommy."
"Why, it was, and you says you'd want a missus, on'y you didn't know as
how a white missus'd care to come and live out in a place where there
warn't no pumps, and you couldn't abide to have one as was black."
"Well!" exclaimed Wriggs indignantly, "of all the 'orrid yarns! Why, it
were him, gents, as said all that. Now, speak the truth, Tommy, warn't
it you?"
"Now you comes to talk about it that way, Billy, I begin to think as it
were; but it don't matter, let's say it was both on us."
"How much farther is it to the wonder?" asked Oliver.
"About a mile," replied Panton. "There, curb your impetuosity and don't
be jealous when you get there."
"Jealous! Rubbish! Look, Drew!" cried Oliver, as a huge moth as big
across the wings as a dinner plate flapped gently along the shadowy way
beneath the trees, now nearly invisible, now plainly seen threading its
way through patches which looked like showers of silver rain. "Who can
be jealous of another's luck when he is overwhelmed with luck of his
own?"
"Hi! Stop! None of that!" cried Panton, catching Oliver by the arm, as
he snatched off his sun helmet and was dashing forward through the
forest.
"What's the matter?"
"That's what I want to know. Are you mad to go dashing off, hat in
hand, after a butterfly here in this dangerous place, as if you were a
boy out on a Surrey Common?"
"Bother! It isn't a butterfly."
"What is it, then?"
"The grandest Atlas moth I ever saw."
"I don't care, you're not going to make yourself raging hot running
after that. I want you to come and see my find."
Oliver stood looking after the shadowy moth as it went on in and out
among the trunks of the trees till it reached a tunnel-like opening,
full of sunshine. Up this, after pausing for a moment or two, balanced
upon its level outstretched wings, it seemed to float on a current of
air and was gone.
"You've made me miss a glorious prize," said Oliver sadly.
"Not I. You couldn't have caught it, my boy. Come along."
Oliver resigned himself to his fate, but gazed longingly at several
birds dimly seen on high among the leaves, and whose presence would have
passed unnoticed if it had not been for their piping cries or screams.
But he soon after took a boyish mischievous satisfaction in joining
Panton in checking Drew every time he made a point at some botanical
treasure.
"No, no," cried Oliver, "if there is to be no animal, I say no
vegetable."
"Because it's all mineral. There, be patient," said Panton. "We
haven't much farther to go, eh, Smith?"
"No, sir, on'y a little bit now. Either o' you gents think o' bringing
a bit o' candle or a lantern?"
"Candle?" cried Panton in dismay. "No."
"What, didn't yer think o' that rubub and magneshy stuff, sir?"
"The magnesium wire? Yes, I brought that."
"Well, that's something, sir, but we do want candles."
"And we must have some. Here, Smith, you must go back," cried Panton.
"Right, sir, on'y shouldn't I be useful to you when we gets there?"
"Of course, very: but we can't do without a light."
"No, sir, that we can't. How many shall you want?"
"Ask for half-a-dozen," said Panton, "and be as smart as you can."
"Half-a-dozen, sir," said Smith, "that all?"
"Yes, be off!"
"But Billy Wriggs's got more'n that tucked inside his jersey, if they
ain't melted away. Air they, Billy?"
"No," said that gentleman, thrusting his hand inside his blue knitted
garment. "The wicks is all right, and they're gettin' a bit soft, but
there's nothing else amiss."
"Well done, Smith," cried Oliver, who by this time pretty well knew his
man. "You thought we should want some, then?"
"Course I did, sir. We ain't got cat's eyes, and we can't see like them
speckydillo chaps as we hear going about in the woods o' nights. So I
thought we'd bring some dips, and if we didn't want 'em we could only
bring 'em back again."
By this time they were ascending a rugged slope, and painfully climbing
in and out among huge rocks, whose structure told of their being
portions of some lava eruption. Water trickled here and there, overhung
by mosses of loose habit and of a dazzling green. Tree ferns arched
over the way with their lace-work fronds, and here and there clumps of
trees towered up, showing that it must have been many generations since
fire had devastated this part of the island, and the huge masses of lava
had been formed in a long, river-like mass, to be afterwards broken up
and piled by some convulsion in the fragments amongst which they
clambered.
"Wonderful! Wonderful!" cried Oliver.
"Grand!" exclaimed Drew. "Look at the Nepenthes," and he pointed to the
curiously metamorphosed leaves of the climbers around, each forming a
pitcher half full of water.
"I want to know how you discovered it," said Oliver.
"Oh, you must ask these fellows," replied Panton.
"It were Billy Wriggs, sir, goin' after a bird I'd shot in that
robuschus way of his'n, and when I follered him and see what a place it
were I was obliged to come on."
"Why, we must be getting up toward an old crater," cried Oliver. "There
has been a volcanic eruption here."
"Then just be a bit patient," said Panton, laughing. "Only up as high
as that ridge," he continued, panting, "and then we're close at hand."
It was hot and toilsome work, but the party were in so lovely a natural
garden that the toil was forgotten. For the trees of great growth were
farther apart up here, leaving room for the sunshine to penetrate, with
the result that the undergrowth was glorious, and the rocky dells and
precipices magnificent.
"Straight away. Up to the top here," cried Panton. "Come along."
He was foremost, and had reached a tremendous piled-up wall of masses of
mossy stone, whose crevices formed a gorgeous rockery of flowers and
greenery, wonderful to behold, almost perpendicular, but so full of
inequalities that offered such excellent foot and hand hold that there
was very little difficulty in the ascent. He began at once seizing
creeper and root, and was about half way up, when there was a snarling
yell, and a great cat-like creature sprang out of a dark crevice,
bounded upward and was gone, while Panton, startled into loosening his
hold as the brute brushed by him, came scrambling and falling down, till
he was checked by his friends.
"Hurt?" cried Oliver, excitedly.
"Hurt!" was the reply, in an angry tone, "just see if you can come down
twenty or thirty feet without hurting yourself."
"But no bones broken?" said Drew.
"How should I know? Oh, hang it, how I've hurt my poor shoulder again."
Irritation, more than injury, was evidently the result of the fall, for
as he knelt down to bathe a cut upon one of his hands, Panton
exclaimed,--
"One of you might have shot the brute. Only let me catch a glimpse of
him again."
"There wasn't time," said Oliver. "But don't you think we had better
give up the excursion for to-day?"
"No, I don't," cried Panton. "Think I've taken all this trouble for
nothing," and, rising to his feet again, he took his gun from where he
had stood it, and began to climb once more in and out among the pendent
vines and creepers till he was at the top, and the others followed, but
did not reach his side without being bitten and stung over and over
again by the ants and winged insects which swarmed.
"There, what do you say to that?" cried Panton, forgetting his injuries
and pointing downward.
His companions were too much entranced to speak, but stood there gazing
at as lovely a scene as ever met the eyes of man.
For there below them, in a cup-like depression, lay a nearly circular
lake of the purest and stillest water, in whose mirror-like surface were
reflected the rocky sides, verdant with beautiful growth, the towering
trees and spire-like needles which ran up for hundreds of feet, here and
there crumbled into every imaginable form, but clothed by nature with
wondrous growth wherever plant could find room to root in the slowly
decaying rock.
"Glorious, glorious!" exclaimed Drew, in a subdued voice, as if tones
ought to be hushed in that lovely scene, for fear they should all awaken
and find it had been some dream.
Panton gazed from one to the other, forgetful of his fall, and with a
look of triumph in his smiling eyes, while Oliver let himself sink down
upon the nearest stone, rested his chin upon his hand, and gazed at the
scene as if he could never drink his fill.
As for the two sailors, they exchanged a solemn wink and then stood
waiting with a calm look of satisfaction as much as to say: "We did all
this; you'd never have known of it if it had not been for us."
"Come, lads," cried Panton at last, "we must be getting on. You see now
how it is there is so much clear water trickling down below. What a
magnificent reservoir!"
"It seems almost too beautiful," sighed Oliver, rising unwillingly.
"Who could expect a place like this with a burning mountain only a few
miles to the north?"
"And think," added Panton, "that this is the crater of an old volcano
that once belched out these stones and poured fire and fluid lava down
the slope we have just climbed."
"It almost seems impossible," said Drew. "The place is so luxuriantly
fertile. Are you sure you are right?"
"Sure," said Panton, "as that we stand here. Look for yourselves at the
perfectly formed crater filled with water now as it was once filled with
seething molten matter. Look yonder, straight across there where the
wall is broken down as it was perhaps thousands of years ago by the
weight of the boiling rock which flowed out. Look, you can see for
yourselves, even at this distance, the head of the river of stone. Chip
any of these blocks, and you have lava and tufa. That block you sat on
is a weather-worn mass of silvery pumice inside, I'm sure, though
outside it is all black and crumbling where it is not covered with
moss."
"But for such luxuriance of growth here all must have been barren
stone."
"Barren till it disintegrated in the course of time, and, by the action
of the sun, rain, and air, became transformed into the most fertile of
soil. Why, Lane, you ought to know these things. Look there, how every
root is at work breaking up the rock to which it clings, and in whose
crevices the plants and trees take root, grow to maturity, die, and add
their decaying matter to the soil, which is ever growing deeper and more
rich."
"Hear, hear," growled Wriggs in a low tone, and Panton frowned, but
smiled directly after as he saw the sailor's intent looks.
"Well, do you understand, Wriggs?" he cried.
"Not quite exactly, sir," said the man. "Some on it, sir; and it makes
me and my mate feel that it's grand like to know as much as you gents
do."
"Ay, ay," cried Smith, taking off his hat and waving it about as he
spoke. "Billy Wriggs is right, sir. It is grand to find you gents with
all your bags o' tricks ready for everything: Mr Drew with his piles o'
blottin'-paper to suck all the joost outer the leaves and flowers, and
Mr Lane here, with his stuff as keeps the skins looking as good as if
they were alive, and, last o' hall, you with your hammer--ay, that's
it!--and your myklescrope and bottle o' stuff as you puts on a bit o'
stone to make it fizzle and tell yer what kind it is. It's fine, sir,
it's fine, and it makes us two think what a couple o' stoopid, common
sailors we are, don't it, Billy?"
"Ay, Tommy, it do, but yer see we had to go as boys afore the mast, and
never had no chances o' turning out scholards."
"But you turned out a couple of first class sailors," said Oliver
warmly, "and as good and faithful helpmates as travellers could wish to
have at their backs. We couldn't have succeeded without you."
"So long, sir, as their legs don't want to run away with 'em, eh,
messmate?" said Smith with a comical look at Wriggs.
"Ay, they was a bit weak and wankle that day," said Wriggs, chuckling.
"Never mind about that, my lads," cried Panton, who had been busy
breaking off a bit of the stone on which Oliver had sat--a very dark
time-stained blackish-brown, almost covered with some form of growth,
but the fresh fracture was soft glittering, and of a silvery grey, as
pure and clear as when it was thrown out of the crater as so much
vesicular cindery scum.
"Yes," said Drew, examining the fragment. "You are right. Well, I say
thank you for bringing us up to see this glorious place."
"And I too, as heartily," said Oliver. "We must come up here regularly
for the next month at least; why, there are specimens enough here to
satisfy us all."
"Quite," said Drew, "and I propose we begin collecting to-day."
"And I second you," said Lane.
"And I form the opposition," cried Panton. "Do you suppose I made all
that fuss to bring you only to see this old crater?"
"Isn't it enough?" said Oliver.
"No," cried Panton excitedly. "This is nothing to the wonders I have to
show. Now, then, this way. Come on."