frame livid and limp. His rattan shield and bow were borne by Sadok,
but from his wrist still dangled a long war club captured by him during
the fight. It was of stout ironwood, with a head made of a thick disk
of a stone like jade. The club was ornamented with rows of boars’ tusks
dangling from its handle, alternating with tufts of human hair, and
a stout strap held it to the wrist at its handle. Dwight remembered
having a glimpse of Baderoon crashing valiantly through the pirate
swarm with it, after his arrows were all shot away.
The curator put some brandy to Baderoon’s lips and the “boy” revived.
The first thing he felt for was the tin mirror in his nose. Finding
this still there, he sank back with a sigh of relief.
“There! That’s fine!” encouraged the curator, holding up the Papuan’s
woolly head. “You-fellah come good-fellah soon, Baderoon! He’s got
quite a rap on the roof and he’s lost a lot of blood from that arrow
wound where it got torn out during the scrimmage. Get me my first-aid,
quick. He feels a lot better, now that he knows his charm is all
right!” he chuckled.
Baderoon opened his eyes and an irresistible grin cracked his thick
lips.
“No _kai-kai_ [eat] me-fellah! _Orang-kaya_ him go _Boom!--Boom!_--All
stop!” he grinned weakly, snapping all his fingers to imitate the
explosion.
“All right, boy,” beamed the curator. “You-fellah stop, quiet! Will
plenty debbil-debbil your arm,” he warned, producing the antiseptics.
He shot the iodine into the open wound, while Baderoon set his teeth
obediently, enduring the pain as best he could. Then his master wrapped
on the gauze and bandages and hung the arm in a sling, and they all
went out, leaving the native resting easily on a bench, afraid to touch
his bandages under fear of the _orang-kaya’s_ displeasure.
The proa was bowling along up the lagoon, sailing farther and farther
in behind the Charles Louis Mountains as they looked about them. A
large river flowed in up at the head of the lagoon, they knew, but
the curator had decided to take the first creek mouth that looked
uninhabited on the mountain shore. Not a sign of a village or even a
canoe had they seen, so dense are the mangrove swamps. Finally a dent
in them, at the end of a long valley between two of the mountains, came
in sight. A careful search of the trees around it with the glasses
revealed no more native scouts. The curator judged that they had gotten
up to sparsely inhabited country, and the proa was nosed into a little
bay with the swift, clear water of the creek running into it. With
slack sheet she laid her prow into the mouth of it, the shores slipping
by close at hand.
He gave the order to go ashore, and, shouldering their packs, Nicky and
Dwight leaped into the jungle, followed by Sadok with a huge crate of
empty collection boxes on his back. Baderoon jumped next, able to walk
now, and carrying nothing but his bow and shield, a borrowed quiver
of arrows, and his captured war club. Then the curator turned to the
_jurugan_.
“Come back here in three weeks, Captain,” he said. “We’ll be here
waiting for you--or dead. Good-by, all! Nice fight, wasn’t it!” A
flash of grins swept the crew’s faces as he seized his light double
shotgun and jumped for the bank. The proa backed off and soon her sails
filled and she stood down the lagoon, bound for Aru.
“Well, boys, we’re on our own!” said the curator, cheerfully, joining
the rest of the party. “I reckon we can stay alive for three weeks in
this country! And we ought to have something to tell about when we get
back here. _Paradisea superba_, the superb bird of paradise, is what we
particularly want; also an accurate report on the mineralogy of this
region.”
They picked their way up over clinking bits of old broken coral, aiming
for the high ground above the source of the stream. Skirting along this
for some distance, they soon found that it was a small, flat table-land
of some ancient coral growth, back of which was the real jungle. The
sparse soil was grown with stunted seaside palms and various species of
ironwood and lignum-vitæ. Through it the stream cut on its way from the
interior. The curator had about decided to establish camp here until
the region could be investigated before going farther, when a cry from
Nicky aroused them. It came from farther upstream.
“This way, fellows!” it called; “here’s something interesting!”
They followed the call, to pitch down the coral bank to a small beach
by the stream-side, clear of mangroves. An abandoned outrigger sail
canoe lay hauled up on the shore. The coral flat had protected it from
the moist jungle rot, but its weatherbeaten planks showed that it had
been there for several years.
“A crocodile slipped into the water as I came down here, and
found--this,” announced Nicky. “It looks like a Ceram or Salwatty boat
to me. See the single mast and the two bamboo outriggers.”
She was about twenty-five feet long, with a bamboo platform overhanging
the body of the canoe on each side astern, its outer edges guarded
with stout bamboo rails. The body was of flat, hewn planks, built up
on a wide keel hollowed from a single log. The New Guinea boats were
all made of one or more log canoes, hollowed out of a single log, they
knew; this canoe came from Ke’ or Ceram, but of its history there was
not a trace. The sail, of woven cotton, still lay wrapped around its
yards. Two lengths of bamboo, about twenty feet long and six inches
thick, formed the floating outriggers, which were lashed to bow-shaped
hardwood spars notched across the gunwales. All her rattan lashings
were in as good shape as the day she was made.
An involuntary shiver of apprehension went over the party. Others had
come--and never returned!
“Some poor devils ventured in here after paradise birds and got eaten,
I presume,” said the curator. “It’s a cinch they never got back! We’ll
adopt her. We may need her some day! Here’s good water and dry ground,
fellows! Let’s camp here and collect within easy distance until we
know the lay of the land. And we’ll all keep together for the present,
boys,” he ordered, meaningly.
The parangs got busy, and soon a space was cleared in the underbrush
where the two tent flys of the boys and the curator’s hammock could
be swung. Sadok disappeared into the jungle, whence the sound of
his chopper soon came, and presently he returned to camp, bearing a
long green pole of bamboo across his shoulders. This he notched with
footsteps cut above each joint, and the pole was then laid upright in
the fork of a small ironwood tree. Up it the curator climbed, to look
out over the country.
“That was some look-see, boys!” he announced, coming down from the
pole. “The mountains lie right near us, to the right, with a strip of
deep jungle, about half a mile wide, beginning just beyond this table
of coral land. We’ll have to go through it with compass and parang.
This stream comes down from a notch in the mountains, with some high
grass plateaus shelving out from their sides. It’s a great country, and
I doubt if anyone finds us for a time yet. I did not see a sign of a
hut or a village. It’s safe to collect anywhere on this coral ground, I
think. And there are thunderheads coming over the mountains to the west
right now, so make your tents secure for the night and cook whatever
you’re going to before the rain comes.”
Nicky did not care to eat just then, so he set out on an exploring
trip. For some distance he poked along, slowly, above the course of the
stream, starting at every rustle of big land crabs scuttling for their
holes in the underbrush. The growth of tangled ironwoods was so thick
that he had to hack with his parang to get even through the thinnest
vistas. He moved slowly along, the thrill of being alone in an unknown
land peopled with savage cannibals putting his nerves on edge. He
recalled stories of how the Outanatas did not eat a man whole, like
the South Sea Islanders, but had a playful way of cutting off a leg
and binding up the stump, saving the man for further feasts while they
ate the leg before his eyes; and how, last year, six Javanese had been
suddenly decapitated by the Tugeri, just inside the barbed wire of the
Dutch fort at Merauke, and how--
_Brrrrumm!_--right behind him! It might have been the grunt of a wild
boar: it might have been--anything! Nicky jumped, whirling in the
air, electrified with fear, and landed on his feet with gun cocked
and staring eyes. Nothing whatever was visible. The dense brush was
as silent and inscrutable as the Sphinx. Trying to quiet his pounding
heart, the boy began to turn cautiously around, when--_Brrrruuumm!_
right behind him again! He whirled about, angry this time, looking with
all his eyes for something to shoot at.
_Brruum!--Brrumm!_ The sound seemed to come from overhead, and,
looking up, Nicky saw a large air plant, its blatant flowers in showy
profusion--and hovering in front of them was a large tropical humming
bird!
The revulsion was too great! The boy threw back his head and yelled
with hysterical laughter.
“Frightened to death by a humming bird!” he whooped. “_Yow-yowri!_
Well, it’s time I shoved along and accomplished something!”
He pushed his way through the thickets, defiantly now, hoping that
something _would_ turn up worth shooting at. Presently he came to a
little open glade grown up with saw grass, with a small pond in the
center of it. As he burst through the thicket two animals rose up out
of the grass across the pond and went jumping off, sailing over the
yellow field in long leaps that carried them twenty feet to the bound.
Nicky did not have to be told that they were wallabys, the New Guinea
species of kangaroo. He whipped out his long-barreled Officer’s Model
and poised its fine sights on the rearmost wallaby. He had learned
through long practice that his revolver was as good as a rifle at any
range up to seventy-five yards, if well handled, and he depended on it
for all big game. As the gun barked, the wallaby pitched down, rolling
over and over like a rabbit in the saw grass, its long hind legs
kicking convulsively. The other wallaby soared in a frantic series of
hops, and reached the jungle before the wavering sights of the revolver
could be steadied on it.
Nicky started to dash through the grass around the pond after his
prize, but the sudden soar of a small animal like a flying squirrel,
but much larger, brought him to a full stop. It had left the topmost
branches of a tall thorn tree on the edge of the jungle and had
volplaned downward in a long flight across the opening. Nicky’s ready
shotgun sprang to shoulder and he covered it in full flight and pulled
trigger. The creature fell into the grass as he blew the smoke from his
barrel and slipped in another shell. A single step forward developed
more life, for a large green grasshopper like a katydid sprang from its
depths, made a short flight, and lit near by. It had a peculiar shield
like a leaf curved backward over its head. Nicky whipped off his helmet
to capture it, for he recognized the great shielded grasshopper of New
Guinea and he knew that Dwight would want it.
He crept forward stealthily, when his eye was attracted by the bright
flash of orange and black where a medium-sized bird was hopping
from branch to branch in the thicket to his right. One glance at the
quantity of long feathers of an intense orange hue that adorned its
neck told him that it was the rare paradise oriole, closely allied
to the true paradise birds and a specimen of the utmost value to the
curator.
Nicky raised his gun, embarrassed at all these sudden riches of natural
history that surrounded him. It occurred to him that this little pond
bore all the aspects of the African water hole, in that it attracted
wild life as a sort of center, and that he could spend a long time
right here without beginning to exhaust its possibilities. As the gun
barked the bird fell tumbling through the thicket and the boy reloaded,
wondering what new marvel would develop at his very next step. Then the
grasshopper claimed his attention. It had made another short flight.
This time the helmet scooped him in. He paused a moment to wonder over
the remarkable camouflage that nature had provided for this insect, for
the shield resembled a green leaf so closely that a passing hornet or
bird, which were its chief enemies, would be completely deceived.
In lieu of a better place to put it, Nicky pinned it on his helmet and
then resolutely trailed through the grass to find the small flying
creature that he had shot, unmindful of the quantities of insects that
he had stirred up, the very number and diversity of which would have
driven Dwight into a frenzy.
“Must tell the old scout about this!” muttered the boy. “He’d camp
here a week! Ought to be something in my line, too, around this water.
Heigho! What in the dickens is this?” he exclaimed, picking up the
animal. It _looked_ like an opossum, but it had broad furry membranes
extending from fore to hind leg exactly like our own flying squirrel.
“Flying opossum, by ginger!” cried the boy, for he had of course read
up on all the natural history of New Guinea that is known. He examined
the curious creature with all the sensations of the true naturalist.
It is a far different thing to read of these examples of nature’s
marvelous diversity, than to actually handle and examine the creatures
themselves. Like all but two of New Guinea’s mammals, this was a
marsupial, a reminder of that far time when all of Papua, Australia,
and the adjacent islands connected by the shallow sea was one vast
continent, entirely separated from Asia by deep sea. _Why_ did this
continent evolve marsupials in every form of animal life, even the bear
and the wolf? Here was the counterpart of our flying squirrel, with the
same protective capacity to fly, but a marsupial and by structure most
closely allied to the opossums. It was surely a brave conundrum!
He retrieved the paradise oriole and started out to the pond again, but
a sharp hiss in the grass stopped him like an electric shock. A black
and mottled snake rose threateningly, with steely tongue quivering from
its mouth. Nicky recoiled, shielding his eyes with his arm, for he
had recognized with a shock of loathing fear the dreaded death adder
of Papua, which can spit poison with considerable accuracy for more
than six feet. He backed off rapidly, watching the snake narrowly,
for he knew that it would attack with great swiftness, blinding his
eyes before striking. Then his shotgun sprang to shoulder as the snake
moved toward him through the grass, and he pulled trigger as its
horned head appeared for an instant over the tubes. Out of the mist of
smoke and the confusion of the recoil Nicky had time to realize but
one thing--that head was still weaving toward him with the speed of
an express train! It would not do to aim the gun again and so expose
his eyes. He turned to fly, dropping his gun and tugging frantically
at his parang. As it flashed from its wooden sheath he made a swift
backhand slash with it, urged by the imminent horror of the snake being
close behind him. He felt the parang’s blade cut bone, and at the same
instant something soft and wet struck the back of his neck and a hot,
irritating pain seared his flesh. Putting up his hand as he ran, he
found his fingers covered with a pale yellow fluid that burnt where
it touched. Nicky stopped at the thicket and faced about. A violent
thrashing of coils in the grass behind him, now flashing up the white
belly, now the mottled back, told him that he had beheaded the adder.
He went back cautiously, for he appreciated now that the borders of
that pond would be alive with snakes. He got to water finally, and
began washing strenuously. The pain still kept up, however, and he
could feel a large blister raising on the skin of his neck.
“I must get back to camp quickly, where the curator can paint me with
iodine!” he muttered to himself. “What would happen if I should faint
here in the jungle!”
He found the head of the death adder and wrapped it in his handkerchief
and tied it to his belt. The body was about eight feet long. Dragging
it over to the thicket, he hung it on a bush and then skirted around,
keeping a sharp watch at his feet, and finally came out to the body of
the wallaby.
It was very like the great gray kangaroo of Australia, but much smaller
and reddish in color. He swung it over his shoulder and retraced his
steps to the thicket. Tying the long body of the adder to his belt,
he pushed for camp. He felt dizzy and weak, and sick at the stomach,
and his neck burnt like a fire. Staggering on, he sought the thinnest
openings in the brush and so unconsciously retraced his steps; but
the briers tore at him and his burden with maddening tenacity and he
steadily grew weaker and weaker. At last the welcome sound of voices
and chopping came to his ears, and with a last burst of endurance he
drove through the thickets and fell forward limply, just over the edge
of their clearing.
The curator dropped his microscope and notebook and ran over, followed
by Dwight, who had heard his startled exclamation.
“Man, animal, or reptile?” giggled Dwight, looking down at the odd
huddle of wallaby, snake, and boy that was Nicky.
“Cut it, and call Sadok and Baderoon! Quick!” snapped the curator,
sharply. “Something has happened to him. Nothing is ever trivial in
this jungle, Dwight!” He pulled off the wallaby as he spoke, and his
eyes fell at once on the red scar on the back of Nicky’s neck. He
examined it carefully, but no sign of fangs was visible.
“Go get the medicine kit!” he barked, as Dwight left on the run.
Baderoon came up, and his eyes opened as they lit on the body of the
snake.
“_Koikoim meten!_” he gasped, horror-stricken. “Me go find’m taboo for
him--quick! Boy him die!” He dashed off into the jungle. Sadok bent
over, shaking his head. The snake was unfamiliar to him and he could do
nothing. Dwight returned with the medicine kit and the curator painted
the spot with iodine, but it seemed to have no effect. Nicky was in a
kind of swoon, from which all efforts, even brandy, failed to arouse
him. Faces lengthened as the minutes went by with no improvement.
Finally Baderoon emerged from the jungle, carrying a spray of some kind
of plant.
“Me find’m taboo!” He grinned cheerfully. He crushed the weed in his
hands and rubbed the juice on the spot, kneading it in and crooning
a wild Papuan chant the while. After some five minutes of it, which
seemed like five weeks to the white men looking on, Nicky opened his
eyes.
“Gee! I could--write a--fine story--about this!” he sighed, weakly.
“I’ve been conscious all the time,” he went on, more strongly as
Baderoon kept up his vigorous kneading, “but for the life of me I could
not move anything. Seemed to be kind of paralyzed. Baderoon--you’re a
brick!” he cried, grasping the mop-haired Papuan’s horny hand.
“_Orang-kichil_ [little chief] all right? Me make’m _koikoim_
debbil-debbil!” he grinned, kneading steadily and applying more of the
pale-green plant juice.
Nicky told them all about it as he steadily grew stronger, and finally
he sat up and undid the handkerchief holding the snake’s head. “It’s a
fine specimen, all right, though!” he maintained, stoutly. “Baderoon,
you fix’m koikoim’s--isn’t it?--koikoim’s head, and we’ll save the
whole of him for mounting. Me for a sleep for a thousand years!”
They got Nicky tucked away for the night and his tent fly secured
down strongly like a wedge tent, for great plashes of raindrops were
beginning to fall and the rolling thunder came nearer and nearer down
the mountains. Then came the roar of the rain, and bright, vivid
flashes of lightning rent the twilight.
Sadok and Baderoon moved their mats under the curator’s hammock fly,
while rain drove in sheets through the tropical night. It was furious
while it lasted, but by eight o’clock the storm had died to distant
mutterings far back in the interior, and a pitch blackness ensued. Then
the stars came out, and in the moist, steaming stillness the camp went
off to sleep for their first night in the New Guinea jungle.
V
THE OUTANATAS
For the next few days the water hole became a star collecting ground
for the entire expedition. Nicky was laid up a day in camp, recovering
from the effects of the death adder’s poison, but he soon came to haunt
the pond, for it and the stream that flowed past their camp were his
main reliance for abundance of reptilian life.
“Here’s where we make the main collection, fellows,” said the curator,
as he and Sadok came back to their temporary headquarters loaded
with curious hook-billed Macrorhina kingfishers, magnificent crowned
pigeons, Manucodia starlings of brilliant hues of plumage, blue
flycatcher wrens, and many other species of the abundant bird life of
New Guinea.
“We’ll fill the main collection crates with a representative collection
in all four divisions of natural history. That will leave us free to
concentrate on the rarer varieties during the exploration trip,” he
continued. “I vote we have a pig hunt to-morrow. Baderoon tells me he
has discovered plentiful rootings down in that mass of high jungle that
separates us from the mountain chain. We ought to lay in some fresh
meat and cure some bacon before starting into the interior.”
“Me for the hogfest!” crowed Nicky. “I’ve about nailed every lizard,
tree frog, and snakelet in this vicinity. What ammunition shall we use,
sir?”
“For wild boar I’m inclined to the solid ounce ball in a twelve-gauge
shotgun,” grinned the curator. “It’s the only thing that will stop ’em
at close range. Beats a high-power rifle all hollow, for it knocks ’em
down to stay. I brought along some shells loaded with three-quarter
ounce ball for our twenty-gauges, and we’ll serve ’em out to-morrow.”
On the next day the pig hunt was started. The wild pig of New Guinea,
_Sus papuana_, is in several respects peculiar to himself. Armed with
those long tusks that the natives use for nose ornaments and breast
shields, he is wild, long legged, and speedy as a deer. He has the
typical Asiatic screw tail, in place of the long straight one of the
wild boar of Europe, but is almost hairless and provided with thick
horny shoulder plates under the skin that will turn almost any bullet.
Like all pigs, he fights well when cornered, is very tenacious of life,
and attacks with a slashing charge of his tusks, attempting to upset
a man with his momentum and then turn and rend out his ribs with a
powerful stroke of the long, sharp tushes.
Baderoon and Sadok disappeared into the jungle to get above their
feeding ground and act as beaters, while the curator and the boys took
up vantage points a short distance back from the creek in the swampy
bottoms.
Dwight soon found himself alone under the tall foliage, with vines and
creepers crisscrossing in front of him and dense undergrowth, making
it impossible to see thirty feet away, all around him. Great, slippery
roots buttressed out from the tree trunks, crawling over the muddy soil
like alligator backs. Nicky and the curator were farther on down the
creek, both as silent as the grave, for it was essential to make no
noise. Dwight realized that he had been given the post of honor this
time, and that it would be he who would bear the brunt of the charge.
In spite of himself he found himself shivering with excitement,
opening his gun to peer at the shells, setting the safety on and off,
and otherwise betraying symptoms that looked very like fear. He had
never hunted wild boar before, and he found himself wishing that he had
a bayonet or a spear or something to defend himself at close quarters.
As it was, he would have to depend entirely on steady nerves and a
well-placed bullet.
Then, far up the jungle, he heard the distant noises of the infernal
din that Sadok and Baderoon were making, yelling and beating with their
spears on their shields. It was followed presently by faint squeals,
and later he could hear the grunts, it seemed, of a whole drove of
wild boars. They were coming like the wind, the undergrowth crackling
under their hoofs, vines tearing and ripping and carrying away bush
growth, and then the jungle floor fairly shook, as if locomotives were
thundering down on him.
A swishing and waving in the undergrowth showed him that they would
pass him about thirty yards off, between him and the creek. Dwight
sternly repressed an impulse to hang back and let them go by. To see
clearly to shoot, he would have to run forward and plant himself nearly
in their path.