THE BOY EXPLORERS IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA
[Illustration]
[Illustration: [See page 205
ALL THE GENEROUS INSTINCTS OF YOUTH ROSE UP IN HIM AT THE SIGHT, AND
WITHOUT THINKING FURTHER HE RAISED HIS PISTOL AND FIRED AT THE NEAREST
PYGMY]
_THE BOY EXPLORERS SERIES_
THE BOY EXPLORERS
IN
DARKEST NEW GUINEA
BY
WARREN H. MILLER
_With Illustrations by_
FRANK SPRADLING
[Illustration]
HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE BOY EXPLORERS IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA
Copyright, 1921, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. ARU 1
II. INTO THE JUNGLE 22
III. PIRATE VISITATIONS 42
IV. NICKY ENCOUNTERS A DEATH ADDER 65
V. THE OUTANATAS 83
VI. THE CURATOR’S AIR PISTOL 98
VII. CASSOWARY CAMP 116
VIII. PYGMY LAND 136
IX. THE FIGHT AT THE CRATER 160
X. CINNABAR MOUNTAIN 177
XI. THE FLIGHT TO THE COAST 198
XII. THE ESCAPE TO ARU 219
ILLUSTRATIONS
ALL THE GENEROUS INSTINCTS OF YOUTH ROSE UP
IN HIM AT THE SIGHT, AND WITHOUT THINKING
FURTHER HE RAISED HIS PISTOL AND FIRED
AT THE NEAREST PYGMY _Frontispiece_
THE WAY LED BACK THROUGH THE SAME TRAIL
THE NATIVES HAD COME UP ON, THE JUNGLE
PATH WORKING GRADUALLY DOWNWARD TO
THE LAGOON _Facing p._ 96
THEN A SHIVER WENT THROUGH THE BIRD, ITS
EYES FLUTTERED CLOSED, AND THE GRIP OF
ITS BILL LOOSENED, WHILE THE BOY TUGGED
HIMSELF FREE ” 132
THE PISTOLS BARKED IN UNISON WITH THE HIGH-PITCHED
YELL THAT THE MAN LET OUT ” 226
THE BOY EXPLORERS IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA
THE BOY EXPLORERS IN DARKEST NEW GUINEA
I
ARU
“Land ho! fellows--yonder to the east. Can you make it out?”
The two youths beside the tall man who had spoken shaded their eyes
from the tropical glare and searched the cloud banks on the horizon of
the blue Banda Sea.
“I think I see it, sir,” said Dwight. “Part of those clouds seem to
have faint white lines in them.”
“I see it!” exclaimed Nicky, peering through his glasses. “It’s
developing out like a camera plate--high, jungly mountains that seem
to be floating in the clouds. I see dark spaces now, with streaks of
sunlight edging the outlines of the hills. Hurrah for Aru!”
“That’s not Aru; that’s Ke’,” returned the man. “Aru is too low and
flat to be seen yet. It lies to the east of Ke’. Our bungalow is on
Kobror, the southernmost of the Aru Islands; we ought to pass the port
of Dobbo in a few hours.”
The three white men were standing before a small palm-thatched deck
house which was their home on the Malay proa _Kuching_. Curator Baldwin
of the National Museum was their leader. He was a tall, rangy giant of
a man, his sinewy frame clad in tropical khaki, with the inevitable
puttees of the East accentuating the muscular leanness of his long
legs. One placed him easily--mining engineer or leader of a scientific
field party, captain of his team in college days, most likely, that
commanding sort of man to whom exploration in dangerous out-of-the-way
places is all in the day’s work.
And the choleric blue eyes that looked a man in the eye from under his
pith helmet, the sunburnt face with its gray mustache and firm chin,
warned the casual stranger that here was the last man in the world to
trifle with.
The two youths beside him were scarcely less noteworthy. Their
resolute, weather-tanned young faces bespoke the hardy outdoorsmen, of
the same breed, but younger, as the curator. Dwight was tall and spare,
with a keen hatchet face and merry gray-green eyes that twinkled at one
when he talked, yet they could grow hard and cold as ice in time of
peril. Nicky was stout; habitually good-humored, habitually chuckling
over the least joke, and always finding one and making himself the
butt of it on every occasion. They were a great team; always “joshing”
each other, always differing on every conceivable subject, yet devoted
to each other and to the curator, whom they adored as an athlete and
admired as a scientist. For two years they had been his assistants on
expeditions in Africa and in British Guiana. He had picked them for
this trip because of their tried and proven resourcefulness in facing
conditions as they found them in wild lands. As unlike, physically,
as two boys could be, they were alike in one thing--their sturdy
independence of character. Original in everything they did, they copied
no one, neither in their outdoor equipment nor in their ways of living
when in the jungle.
The Malay proa on which the party was sailing bore the house flag of
the museum floating from the end of her seventy-foot foreyard. In
these days of interisland steamers you will not see so many of her
type, once the most common craft of the Banda Sea. Her sails were huge
mats of palm-fiber; her masts tripods of bamboo; and her body, built
on Ke’ by the greatest boat builders of the Malay Archipelago, was of
hewn logs, doweled together along their edges and secured by ribs of
teak bent in and lashed with rattan to projections on her planks. There
was not an iron nail or a spike in her anywhere, but the curator had
chartered her for the museum’s field expeditions among the islands as
the best ship for the purpose, for her crew of Javanese and Bugis cost
but their rations of rice and fish, with a small wage, and she could
sail anywhere and be repaired at any island with native palm and rattan.
Over the smooth rollers of the Banda Sea she bowled southward on the
east monsoon, steadily rising the low hills of Aru to the east. By
midafternoon she had come off Dobbo, the principal pearl port of the
Aru Islands, and the captain altered her course slightly, heading for
the coast of Kobror, the wildest of the two great mainlands of Aru.
Out of the coral reefs that surround the harbor of Dobbo put forth a
long, black canoe. Her crew of naked blacks foamed up the water in
spats of spray with their paddles, singing and shouting as they came.
Up in her high carved prow sat a white man, dressed in the cottons of
the equatorial tropics, with a Japanese-bowl hat sheltering his head
from the sun. He rose and waved them a greeting as his canoe drew near.
“Proa ahoy! I say, are you there, Baldwin?” he shouted. “I’m going on
to Kobror with you.”
“Hello, Bentham! That’s fine, old man! Come right aboard and we’ll have
tiffin.... Did you get my letter? These mail steamers only touch Aru
about once in a dog’s age, they tell me. How are you, old new-chum?”
greeted the curator, grasping Bentham’s hand as the canoe shot
alongside and her crew of mop-haired Papuans leaped aboard to mingle
with their own crew.
“How am I, dea-rr man? My word! Rippin’! Yes, I got your letter,
doncherknow. Have a bungalow for you; I fancy it’s more or less done
in, but it’s out in the jungle, as you wanted,” he replied, shaking
hands heartily.
“It was mighty good of you, Bentham!” thanked the curator. “We’ll fix
it up and make it our headquarters while down here. We’re stopping on
Kobror a day or so after paradise birds.”
He turned to introduce Dwight and Nicky, who had been studying Bentham
curiously. The bold, independent swagger of the Australian was written
in every line of his sunburnt face. He was the representative of the
Aru pearl company, the curator had told them, sole white man in a whole
group of islands peopled by native black savages.
They led the pearl trader to their house on deck, where the Javanese
cook served tiffin. It was a cozy little retreat, about ten feet square
by perhaps six high, and was built of bamboo arches thatched with
palm-leaf attap. Its floor was raised some six inches above the wet
deck by springy bamboo poles laid side by side, and the thatch walls
were lined with fragrant sandalwood boxes, which also served for bunks.
Bentham was pathetically glad to see them, eager to talk and talk of
the war and the world’s doings, with all the pensive loneliness of a
white man condemned to months and months of existence with no other
associates than Papuan natives and Chinese traders. The curator and
the boys filled him up with news to his heart’s content. Just to hear
their voices in the good old mother tongue once more, to feel their
keen minds sympathetic with his own, was pleasure enough, and Bentham
basked luxuriantly in it.
“Where to next, after Kobror, Baldwin?” he asked, after a pause in the
flow of news.
“Dutch New Guinea,” puffed the curator. “That’s our main drive this
time. Our proa sails for there in a day or so.”
“Dutch New Guinea!” The trader’s face grew suddenly grave. “My word,
man! Have you read Captain Rawling’s report of the British expedition
up the Mimika? Or about the Dutchman, Lorentz’s, dash to peak
Wilhelmina in the Snow Mountains? He’s the only one who has got to
them, so far.”
“Sure! We’re familiar with all that. But I can say this to you,
Bentham, you being an Australian: the trouble with the British, and
with the Dutch, too, is that they can’t get away from the _safari_
idea. Get me? Every one of their expeditions failed because of it.
Your Englishman must have his tub and his champagne, his big tents
and heavy camp furniture, his tinned sweetmeats and what not, and it
takes an army of porters to carry it all. He learned the _safari_ idea
in Africa; but it won’t work in New Guinea, because you can neither
move a _safari_ through the jungle nor live off the country with it.
The British were a year and a half on the Mimika, and they never got
within forty miles of the Snow Mountains. It took them five weeks to
cut a _safari_ trail three miles long. All that country, from the
Great Precipice to the sea, is a flat, dense jungle, with the rivers
running through it so swiftly that they are impossible to ascend. They
contented themselves with plane-table surveys made from a clearing in
the jungle, and before long their army of porters died like flies of
beriberi.
“We are going to try the American idea,” he continued, “going
light--‘pigging it,’ the British call it--but it gets you somewhere.
We’ll take our own light, concentrated foods along, and live off the
country on wallabys and wild pig for fresh meat. There’ll be plenty for
us.”
“But, man dea-rr--the danger!” objected Bentham. “These Aru niggers,
here, had the fear of God dynamited into them some forty years ago, and
they’ll jolly well never touch a white man again! But it’s different
in Dutch New Guinea. They’re cannibals and head hunters, and most
of them have never even seen a white man. The English territory is
somewhat policed, but, my word! the Dutch have only two small posts
six hundred miles apart on the whole west coast! You’ve heard of the
Tugeri head hunters? Many a time our soldiers have chased them over
the border--where they stay, to raid us again whenever they feel
like it--as jolly a bunch of cannibals as ever cut a throat. And the
pygmies of the mountains! My word! Your little party would be massacred
the first step ashore. What could you do against fifty of them, or a
hundred?”
“Oh--we’ll manage!” twinkled the curator, mysteriously.
“Man dea-rr, it’s foolhardiness! Here, let me give you some dynamite
sticks, anyway. It’s plain suicide to go ashore without it. Our
expedition, with its army of porters, was all right--but you!”
“Say, Bentham, there’s been a war, you know!” laughed the curator, “and
I was in it--lieutenant of a trench-bombing detail. Dynamite is old
stuff, now. I’ve brought a few grenades along, if we have any trouble.”
“You’ll need ’em for those blighters!” exclaimed Bentham. “So you were
in France, eh?” The regret in his own tones told how keenly it galled
him to have been stuck down here out of it all. The talk went back to
the war again, of which he could never get enough.
“Yes, we’re going to try a new tack in a new way,” said the curator,
when they got back to the expedition again. “We’re going to land in
that long lagoon at the head of Dorgo Bay. No white men have ever been
in that way. The mountains come right close to shore there, and we
can get on high ground right off and avoid that swampy jungle. Then,
southward along the ridges above the Great Precipice for ours, and
we’ll see what we’ll see.”
“Well!” said Bentham, shaking his head, “good luck to you! But the
pygmies or the Outanatas will get you sure! You’ll have to wade through
dynamite the whole way!”
“Oh, we’re not exactly unprepared, you know,” demurred the curator. He
showed him a curious pistol that the boys had often speculated over. It
looked like a foreign automatic, only its barrel was a mere shell of
steel, like a shotgun, and it had no hammer or firing mechanism.
“I had this made. Sort of shell thrower, you know. It’s rather
effective at moderate ranges--shoots T. N. T. shells. It pays to look
ahead in these expeditions and try to meet conditions as you imagine
them likely to turn out. Force, and plenty of it, is the only thing the
savage really understands, so we’re fixed to defend ourselves if we
have to.”
Bentham looked relieved. “But suppose you get captured and tied up?” he
questioned. “Those beggars will eat you, sure--like you all the better
if you are white.”
“I’ve been tied up before. Mundurucus, up the Orinoco. But I didn’t
_stay_ tied long.”
He twirled a ring on his right hand with his thumb as the others looked
at him questioningly.
“Picked this up from an old _guru_ up in the Himalayas. Came out of
some Indian palace, most likely. I bet it’s got a history!” He pressed
the monogram of the ring with his thumb tip as they watched. It was all
done with one hand, but out of its base a tiny, two-edged steel knife
stuck up from the base of the monogram. “You twist your wrist, with
that ring knife inside, you see, and you’d be surprised to see how easy
it is to cut a thong around your wrists with it,” he exclaimed.
Shouts on deck interrupted the boys’ exclamations of astonishment and
brought them running out of the cabin. The mainland of Kobror lay
off not a mile to windward. The crew were tacking ship, and all was
shouting and confusion.
“I guess we’d better get our outfits ready, boys,” said the curator.
“Call Sadok and Baderoon, so we can muster the party and see that they
have everything.”
Presently Dwight returned, followed by Sadok and Baderoon. The former
was a hill Dyak, the “star” bird hunter of their party. He came up,
completely armed, with his long sumpitan, or blowgun, of Borneo in
hand, and on his left arm was a conical shield of bamboo. A steel
parang-ihlang hung at his belt, and over his shoulder was suspended
the bamboo quiver of darts for the blowgun. His muscular brown arms
and shoulders glistened in the sunlight which glinted on the gold and
silver threads of his gorgeous chawat and the dull jewels that studded
his jacket.
“What have you got for a sleeping rig in the jungle, Sadok?” inquired
the curator as the Dyak stood waiting inspection.
Sadok turned him around, exposing the tightly rolled cadjan, or native
mat, hung on his back. Unrolled, it would be about four feet square,
and it was house, blanket, mattress, and umbrella in one to him, for
one corner of it was sewed into a pocket, so that he could wear the
thing over his head when it rained.
“You’ll do, Sadok. Mr. Bentham, here, will assign you some black boys
to carry up our stuff when we land. You’ll take charge of them.”
“A’right, Orang-kaya!” grinned Sadok, and went forward among the crew
again.
“Baderoon next!” called the curator. “What you-fellah got to take ’long
beach?”
Baderoon burst into boisterous Papuan merriment and did a handspring
on deck. All he owned in the world was the long bow in his hand and a
string about his middle, with a quiver of arrows dangling from it. His
dress hardly needed taking off at night. There was a brass ring around
one arm, with some tufts of human hair ornamenting it, whose owner had
been eaten long ago--details obscure if you asked Baderoon!--and there
was a three-pronged comb stuck into the long frizzles of his mop of
hair. Then, he wore a small tin mirror hanging by a string from his
nose, and when Baderoon had put on that prized possession he had said
the last word in dandyism!
“Here, Baderoon-fellah, catch’m blanket!” said the curator, tossing him
a spare one. “And mind you don’t wear it about your neck, the way the
Wanderobos did when the English forbade them to come into town without
a blanket to cover their nakedness!”
Baderoon exploded in a gust of merriment and tied the blanket
decorously about his waist. At a sign of dismissal he went forward to
rejoin Sadok. The proa was now tacking in through the coral reefs. A
fleet of black canoes came out from the village on shore to meet her.
The paddlers scrambled aboard and immediately surrounded the white men,
pointing and gesticulating with unslaked Papuan curiosity. Their long
noses hooked at them like parrots’ beaks as they cackled boisterously,
fingering freely and unabashed the clothing and equipment of the whites.
In a final reach the proa ran hard aground on the white sand beach, and
everyone prepared to jump ashore over her bow.
“So long, for the present, Baldwin,” said Bentham, shaking hands.
“I’ve got some pearl business to attend to here with the chief, and I
sha’n’t see you again. These rotters will carry up your luggage as your
man directs. Send for me if you need anything.”
He nodded cordially and was off into the village of Wamba, which
straggled along the shore under lines of coco palms. They landed and
went up its one street, followed by a long line of black porters,
each with a single article balanced on his head. The veranda of their
bungalow peeped out of the jungle on a low hillside at the end of the
street. Bamboos hovered over it thickly, their nodding willow-leaved
foliage almost hiding its thatched roof from view. Here all their
outfit was set down and the curator began settling like an old
campaigner.
The boys sat out on the veranda, looking down on the main street of
Wamba with the keenest interest. The tall peaked gables of the thatch
houses lined both sides of the sandy road. Each house was made of
long bamboo poles, laid up A-shaped like a wedge tent and lashed with
rattan at their tops. Every foot of the street seemed covered with
busy people, for everybody’s business was being transacted out in the
main road, in everyone’s way. There were mop-headed Papuan natives,
strolling around with bundles of sugar cane over their shoulders;
Javanese sailors in their conical straw hats, buying parrots from
turbaned Mohammedan Bugis; Chinese merchants buying sago bread from
more naked natives, who carried it by a yoke and two slings like a
pair of Dutch pails; more Javanese, repairing a proa plank with native
adzes; and a constant stream of Aru hunters and fishermen, coming in
with fowl, trepang, mother-of-pearl shells, birds, and coconut shells
in baskets. For domestic pets there were pigs, kangaroos, goats, tame
bobos (pelicans), and parrots everywhere, wandering at will about the
street or swinging from a perch under the thatch porches.
Then a native hunter came wandering by, with a spotted cuscus, or
native opossum, hanging by its tail, and him the curator snared,
to buy the specimen from him and engage the man for a guide to the
_blakangtana_, the jungle hinterland, next day.
Tiring of the noisy scene at length, Dwight went inside and lay down
on a cool rattan lounge, leaving Nicky to help sort collection boxes
with the curator. After reading awhile, he lay down the book with a
sigh of content and looked idly up into the thatch that was thickly
woven through the poles of their roof. Indolently gazing, he noticed a
dark mass overhead, seemingly buried in the thatch. Examining it more
carefully, he could see yellow and black marks, and concluded that it
must be a tortoise shell that some one had left there. But the thing
still fascinated him, and every little while he would look up at it
again, while the others went on with the business of settling the
house. Then a slight rustle in the thatch attracted him, and, gazing up
at it steadily again, it suddenly resolved itself into a large snake,
compactly coiled up in a kind of knot! Dwight’s jaw dropped as he
detected the head and its bright eyes in the very center of the folds.
“Good Lord, fellows!” he called out, jumping to his feet, “here’s a boa
constrictor, a python!--up in our roof!”
The curator jumped up the steps of the veranda in a bound. “Where! Show
me him!” he demanded.
“Right up there!” laughed Dwight, quivering with excitement. “And
making himself at home just as nice as nice!”
Sadok started to draw his parang, but the curator stopped him.
“Wait!” he commanded. “We don’t want to spoil his skin.”
Baderoon came running in. “Me kill’m! Me catch’m tailie! Me kill plenty
snake on Bouru!” he yelled, begging the curator for permission to show
them.
The latter smiled quietly. “Clear out, boys--and watch the fun!” he
said, picking up the lamp off the table and sweeping a lot of small
things out of the way. “Ever see a native kill a python? I guess the
house will stand it! Go get’m Baderoon-fellah!”
Baderoon jumped for the rafters, and there was a violent commotion in
the thatch as he dropped down with the tip of the boa’s tail in both
hands. He and Sadok tugged away at it, soon ripping down about ten feet
of the writhing coils, while the others ran laughing for the door. The
commotion inside increased, and then there was a heavy thump and the
crash of chairs and tables upset and flying about, and then Baderoon
emerged, running down the steps with about thirty feet of snake behind
him, twisting and lashing with its thick coils. The python swept
everything with him and made a last stand with its neck hooked about
a veranda post, while the boys yelled and catcalled with glee. Then
Baderoon tore him loose and, running fast, flew with him toward the
jungle, where, stopping suddenly, he snapped the snake’s long body like
a whiplash and smashed his head against a tree.
“Whee!” yelled Nicky, delightedly, from the veranda. “Me for the next
one! Gee! I’d like to try that stunt!”
But the python was not nearly dead yet, and he started to squirm off
into the cane. Baderoon was on him like a flash, and, grabbing the
tail, he snapped him against the tree again. Nicky, prancing down
from the veranda, dashed in and fumbled at the writhing coils, to try
it himself; but with a quick twist the powerful tail fastened itself
around his ankle, and a huge, thick loop of the snake rose and curled
itself tight around his waist. The boy gasped, crushed breathless, and
it looked serious for a time as Dwight and the curator rushed down to
the rescue, but suddenly there was a bright flash of steel, and Sadok’s
parang met the next loop coming down over the boy’s head and clove it
nearly in two.
“Me sorry, Orang-kaya,” said Sadok, as the snake collapsed and Nicky
squirmed free of the aimless coils. “Me spoil’m specimen?”
“You did just right, Sadok!” said the curator, heartily. “He could have
crushed Nicky to death, even in his last throes--”
“Him plenty debbil-debbil!” interrupted Baderoon, coming up from
freeing Nicky. “White boy nebber, _nebber_ let snake-fellah catch’m
first! Mus’ run with him-a tailie--fast!” he explained, earnestly.
“Well,” said the curator, after the Fat One had been guyed to
everybody’s satisfaction, “le’s go in for a look-see. Perhaps some more
interesting creatures are camping out in our bungalow!”
They explored every nook and cranny of the hut, dislodging a few
kangaroo mice, which were captured and added to the collections after
hilarious chases, but no larger visitors were found, and no poisonous
snakes, rare throughout the archipelago, were discovered. The curator
set the lamp on a table out on the veranda, after supper, and they
sat around it, collecting the rare moths and beetles attracted by its
light. As a nightcap, the brilliant and wonderful clear-winged moth
came fluttering in, and the curator snatched at it avidly with his net.
“_Cocytia d’urviller!_” he gasped, taking the gorgeous prize from the
net. “Boys, we are in luck! There are not five of these in all the
museums of America! I guess that will be about all for to-night!”
The party turned in, and long before dawn were awakened by the native
hunter at the veranda steps. Gulping some hot coffee and downing a
rasher of bacon and eggs, they slung on their knapsacks, grabbed their
guns, and followed him to the boat for a trip to the mainland in the
mighty jungles of Aru, where dwelt the great bird of paradise.
II
INTO THE JUNGLE
The jungle of the mainland of Aru came down to the very water’s edge. A
narrow strip of sandy beach, lined with nodding palms, was strewn with
fallen trees, bare and sun dried, and whole colonies of hermit crabs
on the beach told of the teeming life of tropical nature pushed to
the very verge of the sea. Their party landed from the village key of
old coral growth, and stepped ashore at the end of a native path that
was a mere tunnel through the undergrowth. Never had they seen palms
in such profusion or so tall and magnificent, the bare trunks rising
through lesser growths a hundred feet high, where the great fronds of
leaves spread green umbrellas far overhead. The tree ferns, their first
in this Papuan land, rose feathery and beautiful, with stems thirty
feet high, above which shot up the lacy fronds, giant replicas of our
northern hot-house varieties. The ubiquitous banana was everywhere,
growing wild in the forest, generally in the open glades of pandanus
palms, whose scraggly trees twisted high in the misty air, with spikes
of leaves like century plants at their branch tips. And every now and
then, through the dim vistas of vine and creeper, they could note a
dense thicket where a giant fig tree grew, surrounded by its own forest
of aërial root shoots a hundred feet in diameter.
Down on the jungle floor scuttled millions of silent hermit crabs, or
great orange-and-red land crabs popped down their holes. One had but
to look an instant to realize that the jungle was alive with lizards,
black, green, and gray, all motionless on limb or root, staring at
the explorers with bright beady eyes--to flash into a green streak of
movement at the first motion to catch them.
It was early, with the faint light of dawn hardly penetrating the green
depths all about them as they went silently along in single file,
listening to the chorus of bird life in the tree tops. The shrill
scream of lories and parakeets, the hoarse cry of the tree pigeons,
and the incessant chirrup of smaller birds awoke the jungle with the
voices of the bird world. Then the sun shot up in a flaming fire into
the pale tropical heavens, and its rays lit up the glades, showing huge
yellow-and-black spiders on thick ropy webs swung in every open spot,
and gorgeous butterflies in metallic blues and greens sailing through
the sunlit vistas, causing many a stop and chase.
A cry rang startlingly through the tree tops. “Wawk! Wawk! Wawk!--Wok,
wok wok!” it said, remarkably like the caw of our northern crow.
The curator stopped and listened, his hand to ear to locate the
direction of the sound. “The great bird of paradise, boys!” he
exclaimed, exultingly.
“Why, it sounds exactly like a crow flying through our home woods!”
cried Dwight.
“Sure! It’s the tropical crow. They all belong to the crow family, only
this is what Nature can do with the crow when you give her plenty of
heat and sunlight!” retorted the curator. “There he goes again, off to
the left!”
“Him go-stop sacaléli tree,” put in Sadok, who had been listening,
fumbling at the cover of his dart quiver.
“Yes? The sacaléli, the plumage dance,” agreed the curator. “They meet
in some large tree, where the males dance and show off their plumes
before the females. Baderoon, ask’m hunter-fellah if we go catch’m
sacaléli tree, all right,” he said, turning to the negro.
There were a few grunts between the Papuan and the Aru hunter, who
nodded stolidly and led on. The party quickened their pace as the
path led upward through the hills. Then Sadok stopped and raised his
long ironwood sumpitan. It poised for an instant, pointing up into a
wide-branched bamboo clump, and, before their eyes could pick out the
mark, came the soft plop! of the dart as it left the sumpitan like a
streak of light. Followed the fall of a reddish bird, tumbling down
through the leaves, and Baderoon dashed into the thicket to retrieve
it. He brought back a jewel of fluttering fire in his hands. Of an
intense metallic red, its throat was of deep orange, and from under the
wings jutted out two little fronds of gray aigrettes tipped with broad
bands of lustrous metallic green.
“The king bird of paradise!” cried the curator, holding the feathered
beauty in his hands and examining it admiringly. “Great business,
Sadok! What a wonderful bird!”
“Rare, too, isn’t it?” asked Dwight.
“You’re dead right it is! We’ll be lucky if we get two of them this
expedition!” said the curator.
Just then Nicky, who had come back from a foray with his hands full
of lizards and crabs, had a flash of inspiration. “Put him on a twig,
quick!” he yelled. “I’ll get a colored photo of him!”
“Good idea, kid!” smiled the curator. “That will be something new.”
The bird was alive yet, only partly paralyzed by the poison, and his
eyes were bright and open, and the little tufts on his breast still
erect. He sat quietly on a twig in the sunlight, while Nicky set up a
folding steel tripod and took three color plates as fast as he could
change holders.
“That’ll be about worth the whole trip to me!” he cried. “Wait till the
director of the Museum sees that print, eh, Mr. Baldwin?” he chuckled.
The curator grinned indulgently. He loved Nick’s intense enthusiasms,
particularly when they led to something of scientific value. Sadok
wrapped the prize carefully in a cone of pandanus leaf and they started
out again. After about an hour’s travel they came to a high plateau
where the creepers and hanging vines were less abundant and one could
see for some distance under the forest floor. A grove of tall tree
trunks loomed up ahead, with bare, scant-leaved branches. Each had a
sort of leaf hut, built far up in the fork.
They skirted the grove, silently, the curator explaining how the native
hunters secured paradise birds by lying in wait for them under the
hut, aiming with a blunt-headed arrow at the males during the dance.
Their own hunter paid no attention to the grove, but led on for a
mile farther across the plateau. Then he stopped and pointed up into
the trees. Here was a similar grove, but much smaller, and buried
far deeper in the jungle. Evidently it was his own secret hunting
ground. Grunting a few words to Baderoon, he undid the belt of woven
fiber about his waist and made a loop of it around the tree. Then,
alternately walking up it and shifting the belt, he ascended the bare
trunk to the leaf screen built in its fork, and disappeared.
“Him stop, go-shoot’m goby-goby,” explained Baderoon in a stage
whisper. “We-fellah go-hide and catch’m spec’men when he drop.”
They all sought hiding places in the underbrush and waited. After a
time came a distant, “Wawk! Wawk! Wawk!” answered by another bird
farther off in the jungle, and then by still another. Like a flock of
crows calling to the assembly, the boys could hear the paradise birds
gathering. Then, like a flash of shimmering light, a great golden bird,
eighteen inches long, came dropping down from over the tree tops. He
lit in the tree farthest off from the hunter’s, preened himself awhile,
and then lifted up his voice in the call of his kind. An answering cry
heralded the approach of another one, and soon he too dropped down and
joined the other.
“That’s bad--they’re gathering in the wrong tree,” whispered Nicky to
Dwight, who lay by his side.
“Wait,” cautioned his chum. “We can shoot and get a few, if worse comes
to worst. I’d far rather get a nest or an egg. There’s not one in any
museum in the world, the curator tells me. Look--there’s a female!”
Nicky looked up to see a dull, coffee-colored bird perch down quietly
on a near-by branch. The two males at once began to ruffle and preen
their long golden plumes. Peering through his glasses, Dwight could
even see the pale-blue beak, the delicate straw yellow of head and
neck, and the rich, scaly feathers of metallic emerald green on the
throat. From under the wings came the long two-foot plumes of intense
glossy orange-brown color, and they ruffled and spread in the breeze as
the male bird shook them for the admiration of the female. A glorified
crow, a crow raised to the most unimaginable hues of bottled sunlight
and all the vivid splendor of the tropics, was the great bird of
paradise! As Dwight looked, he began to dance, hopping up and down on
the limb, each motion spreading the glorious plumes and letting them
fall like down. His rival was dancing also, and three more males and
another female joined them.
Dwight crawled over to the curator, who was watching the whole
performance avidly through his glasses.
“Our native hunter’s out of luck, sir!” he muttered. “He’ll never be
able to hit them from his tree, and if he misses one the whole flock
will fly off. What’ll we do--shoot?”
“Presently,” whispered the curator. “Go get Nicky, and we’ll each pick
a bird and fire. They may fly over to the hunter’s tree yet, but I can
see that they’re all as suspicious as our own crows. The tree they are
in seems to suit them all right.”
Another male flew in as he spoke, and the whole tree top was filled
with hopping, flashing flames of golden color, a sight in itself that
was worth traveling many miles to see. Dwight soon returned, with Nicky
crawling behind him, and the three lay and watched the birds, far
overhead.
“Well, boys, I guess we’d better fire,” said the curator, at length.
“That native may try to shoot from his tree and spoil the whole thing.
Dwight, you pick a female, and Nicky and I will each get one of the
males, and then we’ll do what we can with the other barrel.”
They raised their guns and were about to shoot, when one of the male
birds silently loosed his hold and came tumbling down!
“Wait! Sadok!” whispered the curator, restraining them energetically.
“I’d quite forgotten about him and his sumpitan!” Another bird fell.
Somewhere, deep in the jungle, that silent, deadly blowgun in Sadok’s
hands was bringing them down. At long intervals two more birds fell,
and then there was a slight _tock!_ in the branches and they could see
through the glasses the short dart sticking in the bark. The other
birds raised alarmed cries at it and prepared to fly.
“Now!” cried the curator. “Get a couple of females!” The guns barked
as the startled birds took wing, while two dull-colored hen birds and
another male came tumbling down. Then they all rushed over to pick up
the specimens.
The native hunter came dropping hurriedly down out of his tree, gave
them one wild look of terror, and bolted incontinently into the forest,
shrieking an unintelligible gibberish as he ran. Baderoon burst into a
yell of laughter and tumbled on the ground with merriment.
“Now _what_ in the dickens ails _him_?” grinned the curator, looking
after the flying native from the bird in his hand. “Call him back,
Baderoon.”
“Taboo! _Yow-yowri!_ Bewitched! Debbil-debbil!” gasped Baderoon from
the ground. “Him see plenty debbil-debbil! Bird, he go-dead--no see
um arrow, no hear gun! Him no come back!” he cackled, squirming in an
agony of mirth.
“Get up, fool! Go catch’m!” ordered the curator, sternly, kicking
the helpless negro to his feet. Baderoon ran off, still howling with
delight.
“He’ll never catch that coon in ten thousand years!” chuckled Nicky.
“Sadok’s blowgun scared all the hair off his head. But--how are we
going to get out of the jungle without him, though?”
“We’ll camp right here,” declared the curator. “It’s always home
wherever we are, and there’s lots to do.”
“All right, and, as I have no camp to make, I’m going to find a nest or
an egg if it takes all day!” declared Nicky. “I haven’t really begun to
study this jungle yet, you know!”
“Not a bad idea,” agreed the curator, heartily. “Take Sadok along with
you, so that you’ll turn up sometime,” he laughed. “Dwight and I will
make camp and skin out the birds.”
The grove was an excellent one to camp in, clear and open under the
great trees, and Dwight started his camp at once. Their system was an
original and elastic one, each man for himself, each one eating or
sleeping when and where he pleased. They had long ago discarded the
old-fashioned camp where one man cooked for the crowd and all had to be
in at mealtimes. Such a system was too rigid and conventional for such
diverse tastes and occupations as these three.
Dwight opened his pack and unlimbered his steel pickax, driving down
into the lava rock with its point to make holes for tent pegs and clear
out rocks on his sleeping site. He chose a spot covered with small
bushes like huckleberries, filled with a windfall of dried leaves. Here
he spread out his sleeping bag, and over it went a light tent fly, on a
rope stretched over two forked stakes. From the rope he hung a mosquito
screen, with a small ring of cane cut in the jungle and bent into a
hoop a foot in diameter, so as to hold the net gauze clear of his
face. This hoop was tied inside the square of net about a foot below
the central peak from which it hung, and the folds of the net draped
over the head of the bag. Dwight’s sleeping bag was waterproof and
insectproof, so that, with the net hung over his face and the fly over
that, forming a sun and rain shade, he was well protected from insects
and wet weather on very little weight--about five pounds all told for
tent and bedding.
In front of his camp the lad built a small stone fireplace, with a
row of his little food sacks hung handy around it on cross poles.
He set about making a batter of flour, corn meal, dried egg powder,
dried milk, and baking powder, and soon had cooked himself a pile
of flapjacks. With the body of a paradise bird grilling on a forked
stick, and a tin of tea steeping on the hearth, he was as well fed and
comfortable as anywhere else in the world. After lunch he seized his
pickax and went collecting for insects and beetles in the forest, the
sharp pick point digging and prying into the bark of prone trees, where
many a new form of jewel-bodied tropical beetle came to his collection
box.
The curator had silently melted into the jungle, whence soon appeared
the brown glint of sunlight from the tent fly spread over his hammock.
A great bag of netting enveloped the latter, and it could be drawn in
tight by a string after he had gotten inside. A handful of rockahominy
washed down with a drink from his canteen and a bite of grilled bird
satisfied him for lunch. After skinning out the paradise birds and
hanging them in a row from a line stretched between two trees to keep
them from the ants, he disappeared into the jungle on his favorite
occupation of studying bird life.
Dwight found a bewildering world of new entomology awaiting him. His
pickax, net, and magnifying glass were busy every moment, and the
boy quivered with excitement, rushing hither and yon through the
jungle, now after a leaf-winged butterfly, which would disappear with
maddening legerdemain; now stooping to watch a fight between two male
_Brenthidæ_, long armored beetles with fighting jaws at the end of a
slender proboscis like a spear; now urged to frantic pursuit of the
rare horned deer fly. The mystery of the leaf-winged butterfly was
solved when he had examined a bush on which it lit more closely. One
of the leaves turned out to be the creature itself, with wings folded,
motionless on the stem, the under surface of its wings so closely
resembling the leaves that only the closest scrutiny could detect the
difference.
By late afternoon he returned to camp by compass, his box full of new
and wonderful insects.
“Look at the day’s plunder, Mr. Baldwin!” cried the youth,
enthusiastically. He drew out the cork slabs from his carrying tin,
covered with the heterogenous collection impaled on pins.
“These horned flies are a real find!” exclaimed the curator,
interestedly, after examining the butterflies and beetles. “They go
to prove a great scientific fact--first propounded as a theory by Mr.
Wallace, the English naturalist--that Aru was once part of New Guinea.
Those little flies can be explained in no other way. Common in New
Guinea, it would be impossible for them to travel the hundred and
fifty miles from the New Guinea coast to Aru. To-morrow, if Nicky does
not come back, we’ll go on a trip to see another curious phenomenon,
the salt-water channels that divide the islands of Aru. They are true
rivers, yet have no flow other than the tide at their mouths. How do
you explain that, Dwight?”
The boy confessed that he could not. “Come to think of it, sir, these
are the only islands in the world that _have_ such channels,” he cried
out over the novelty of it.
As Nicky did not put in an appearance that night, they set out next
morning northward, leaving Baderoon to skin out birds in camp. The
curator did not worry over Nicky. In his rucksack the lad had carried
his odd nightgear, of an old bathing suit with the armholes sewed up to
pull over his bed, a pair of extra socks to cover his arms and another
for his feet. So dressing up to go to bed, Nicky would turn in on a
leaf patch, secure from insects and snakes, and, with Sadok to guide
him, would be abundantly able to care for himself.
After several hours’ travel to the north the going became more rocky
and the vegetation sparse and thorny. Soon open skyline appeared ahead,
and then they came upon the rocky cliffs of basic limestone that border
the south bank of the river Majkor, which separates the Aru mainlands
of Maykor and Kobror. The north bank was high jungle, and up and down
its reaches it was a true river, a deep, narrow channel winding through
the jungle as far as the eye could reach. Yet its waters were salt.
“That’s really wonderful, sir!” cried Dwight, enthusiastically, when he
had grasped the full significance of it. “Lots of small islands like
England, for instance, have rivers; but they are true rivers, rising in
the mountains somewhere. Others have salt straits dividing them from
the mainland, like Staten Island, at home. This channel can’t be a
fissure, for it winds and turns just like a river. What is Wallace’s
theory, Mr. Baldwin?” he asked, giving it up.
“The true one, I think,” replied the curator. “The west coast of Aru is
deep water; the east, a shallow pearl sea, clear over to New Guinea.
That sea was undoubtedly formed by gradual subsidence of the sea
bottom. It is only three hundred feet deep; so that would not take long
for geology to accomplish. The coast of New Jersey is rising two feet
a century. At no very distant date, then, New Guinea and Aru were one
big continent, with all the sea between lowlands--very like those that
extend now back from the coast to the Great Precipice over where we are
soon going. The rivers, then, like the Outanata and the Mimika, must
have flowed through those lowlands, and these channels of Aru were part
of them, emptying into the sea on the west coast of Aru. Can’t you see
how important this little trip of ours is, now? This river can tell us
something of the mineralogy of the unexplored interior of New Guinea!
And without our ever going there, for that matter!”
“Sure it can--if we had a long line and a grappling hook to dredge
with!” said Dwight, practically.
“We have the former!” smiled the curator, producing out of his rucksack
a hank of strong green Banks line, “and we’ll make a grappling.”
Near by grew a tree of the Erythina family, its profuse scarlet
blossoms a grand note of color against the gray cliffs. Thousands of
swallows swooped about the latter, and the curator eyed them absorbedly.
“Eh?” he exclaimed. “Dwight, you cut a length from that Erythina, with
a whorl of branches at one end, and make a grappling, while I go on a
look-see.”
Dwight drew his pickax and fashioned a wooden grappling hook with its
keen hatchet blade. When he got through the curator had returned from
the cliffs, bearing a gelatinous bird nest.
“Here is the edible bird nest of China!” he exclaimed. “I heard that
they got them on Aru, as well as in the cliff caves of Borneo. These
banks must be the Aru collecting ground. Ever eat one?”
“No!” shuddered Dwight.
“Not half bad. We’ll have this one for dessert, to-day. And now le’s
see that grappling.”
He bound on the end of the cod line, and they found a dead trunk which
would form a tolerable raft. Dropping the grappling, with a heavy stone
lashed to it, they waited for a short drift, paying out line, and then
began to haul. It soon struck something solid. Pulling it in, a great
frond of fan coral came to the surface, and attached to its roots was
the stone it grew on. The curator cleaned it and examined its structure
avidly.
“First news of New Guinea!” he chuckled. “This stone formed part of
the river drift, long ago. It is--_slate_!” he barked, joyously. “And
here is a small bit of fossil on one surface. See it? That means coal
measures! It confirms my idea that an island three hundred miles wide
and fourteen hundred miles long _can’t_ be all volcanic, or all coral!
There _must_ be stratified, geological formations in the interior, coal
measures, iron ore--all that civilization needs. Try again!”
The next two casts brought up sea ferns, with more chunks of limestone
and slate, but the third gave them a yellowish, heavy stone, sandy and
streaked with brown.
“Ore! Iron ore!” yelled the curator, before even the mud was washed
off it. “Regular li’l’ scientific expedition of our own, eh, Dwight!”
The boy took the next cast. He brought up a heavy, reddish stone that
the curator examined with the greatest interest. “That’s cinnabar, red
oxide of mercury, unless I miss my guess. It _may_ be red iron ore, but
seems too crystalline for that. We’ll keep this, Dwight, until I can
get back to the bungalow and make some chemical tests.”
“Is it valuable?” asked the boy, curiously.
“Very!” replied the curator, abstractedly. He was off on one of his
mental explorations--explorer’s dreams for the future welfare of the
world that come to him who opens up new territory for mankind. His
very silence awakened a strange presentment of wonders to come in the
boy’s mind. Gee! it was great to delve into the world’s secrets, where
no white man had ever been before! He longed for the time for the New
Guinea trip to come. A few days more on Aru, and then--into a wild and
dangerous country, in search of new discoveries that might prove of the
greatest value to the civilized world. It was wonderful to be part of
this expedition!
III
PIRATE VISITATIONS
Meanwhile Nicky and Sadok had been exploring into the untracked jungle
to the southward. The low hills of Aru grew more rocky, and the rank
jungle gave way to sparse open growth, with rocky soil and wild grass
swales here and there. It was hot, out here in the sun, and their
canteens were in frequent use. Presently a wild brush turkey jumped
from cover and ran cackling and gobbling through the bush growth. He
went like a deer, as Nicky whipped out the Officer’s Colt and fired on
the run. At the same time Sadok’s sumpitan coughed and its dart flashed
across the grass tops.
“Doubled!” shouted Nicky, as the turkey tumbled and lay kicking
stiffly. They ran out to retrieve it. Only the dart of the sumpitan
stuck in its side.
“Missed, by hookey!” laughed Nicky at himself. “Judged by Dyak
standards, I’m a mere swine, I suppose. Eh, Sadok? Say, what poison
are you using now?” he exclaimed suddenly. “That turkey fell over like
a shot. The upas-tree stuff takes some time--three hours for a man,
they tell me.”
Sadok held up the little pot of bamboo for him to smell. “Upas _vine,
Orang-kichil_” (little chief), he explained. “Him different tree. Red
bark. Ver’ quick!”
“Smells like strychnia to me,” said the boy, wonderingly. “Beats all
how nature has provided a specimen of that family of trees all over the
tropics throughout the world. India, the nux vomica; South America, the
wourali; here, some new one that I don’t know. I’ll ask the curator
some day.”