he drove forward through the tangle of jungle growth. He ran out on a
great prone trunk and peered into the moving bushes. They were going
by, grunting and squealing with mixed terror and anger--five of them,
and two great big fellows, with long, wicked ivory tushes curling
around their snouts. Dwight raised the twenty-bore, followed along back
of the shoulder of the nearest, and fired. Instantly a bawl of pain
and rage went up as the boar stopped, whirling about a broken foreleg
and looking about him red eyed with rage. The rest went thundering on,
and a boom from the curator’s gun rang through the jungle. Dwight’s
boar spied him and came hitching toward him on three legs, grunting his
rage. The boy had opened his gun to slip in another shell, so eager was
he to have plenty of shots. In an electric shock of realization, he saw
that he had not time to do anything of the sort. Hastily snapping it
shut, he drew a wavering bead and fired again. The ball hit somewhere
in the shoulder and glanced off, but it put the boar in a frightful
rage. He charged the log with a red glare in his eyes and leaped up,
his tusks sweeping the upper surface of it. Dwight leaped off and
reloaded frantically in the brief breathing space left him. With a leap
like a deer, the boar went over the trunk, while Dwight fired both
barrels full into his head at six feet, and then turned and dashed into
the jungle. A great vine caught under his armpits as the boy crashed
into it, and it laid him sprawling in the thick bush growth. He wormed
through it desperately, and reloaded, wondering all the time why he had
not been gored and trampled to death. His heart pounded so that its
rapid beats were audible as he opened his mouth to breathe. Then he
realized that the boar had not followed, and, plucking up courage, he
stole back to look.
There lay the boar, threshing feebly about beside the log, his life
slowly ebbing away. Dwight watched him, afraid to come nearer, scarce
daring to hope that he had won. A final convulsion, and the boar seemed
to go to sleep as he gave a last little sigh and stretched his great
head out on the jungle.
“Whoops! I’ve got him!” yelled Dwight, stepping nearer to prod at the
carcass with his gun barrels.
“Had a fat time with him, too, judging by the noise!” laughed the
curator’s voice. “I got one, too--nice pig.”
Dwight remembered that the curator had fired but one shot--coolly
and carefully placed, no doubt, but he was not ashamed. He had done
well, for his first try! Nicky had not fired at all, for the rest of
the drove had swerved and crossed the creek in a splash at the two
gunshots. He and the curator came over to look at his trophy.
“Ought to cut out those and wear them in your nose, to be really
fashionable in New Guinea, Dwight!” laughed Nicky, pointing to the
razor-sharp tushes. “I was just coming over to lend a hand to help the
curator up a tree when he fired, and the rest of the family beat it
across the creek. Out o’ luck, as usual!” he grinned, cheerfully.
After a time Sadok and Baderoon came up and set about butchering the
two pigs. The bacon flitches and hams from them were cured over a smoke
rack during the next two days, while the party dined on fresh liver,
and, later, pork chops, after the game had hung for a day.
On the third morning the whole party left camp with two days’
provisions, to make a first exploration of the table-lands back in
the mountains. They steered across the jungle by compass, Sadok and
Baderoon clearing the way with their parangs. Then the ground began to
rise, and slowly they worked up from the wild profusion of equatorial
jungle into the more arid growths of the mountain side. The going
became easier, as on all high ground, and the nature of the wild life
and vegetation began to change. New insects and birds became numerous,
and their progress was slow because nearly all of them were wanted for
the collections, and the curator knew from long experience that the
time to take a specimen was when you saw him, for you might not get
another.
By midafternoon they had reached the plateaus near the notch in the
mountains, and here they encountered their brook again. But what a
different stream from the smooth, deep, jungly creek flowing silently
down below through overhanging arches of vines and creepers! Here its
bed was wide and pebbly as any northern stream, the creek following
the deepest parts, with dry bars of pebbles scoured clean by former
freshets. Wild trees of the coffee and Euphorbia families, thorns, and
acacias dotted the stream banks. It was hot up here, but dry, and
a pleasant place to live in. The curator was examining the pebbles
eagerly, to get some idea of the rock formations of the mountains,
when Sadok whistled softly and pointed upstream. A party of tall black
natives was threading through the forest, and their leaders were
already splashing across the stream bed! They stopped instantly as they
spied the khaki helmets of the explorers, and more warriors joined
them. It was a war party, as they could tell by the white-streaked
faces, the weapons they carried, and the white breastplates of boars’
tusks that they had seen in museums before.
“Outanatas,” said the curator, quietly, as their party drew together
for support. “We’ll stand right here and watch what they do.”
The tall, slender, mop-haired savages splashed through the creek, about
twenty-five of them in the party, and they were armed with spears,
bows, and clubs. Each man had a shield on his left arm, made of some
tough wood, carved in red and white scrolls. They shouted and yelled
at the curator’s party as they bunched together on the strand of the
creek, and then came running swiftly down the pebbly drift, their long
skinny legs shining with white amulets of sea shells.
“Holler, ‘Friends!’ at them, Baderoon-boy,” said the curator as they
came nearer, hesitating and staring at the white men.
“_Muana komia!_” cried Baderoon, dropping his bow and shield in sign of
amity.
The natives yelled. Whether it was friendly or derisive they could
not tell. Then they formed in an irregular line and began a war dance
toward the party.
“They’re showing off, I think,” declared the curator. “If they meant
war, every man jack of them would have melted into the jungle and be
shooting at us by now. Still, we’d better be on our guard.”
He dug into a flap pocket of his belt and took out a trench grenade,
while the boys loosened their revolver flaps cautiously, their shotguns
hanging loosely in their arms. Sadok reached for his parang, but the
curator stopped him.
“Not yet, Sadok; we can’t make the first hostile move. I’ll give an
order if I think they’re getting dangerous.”
The natives came on, yelling and dancing. Most of them wore long white
boars’ tusks through the nose and curving up around their cheeks,
giving them a singularly fierce aspect. Some had white shell combs
dangling low over their foreheads, and nearly all wore a collection of
white shell rings hanging in their ears. They brandished their spears
and clubs as they advanced and retreated, going through the pantomime
of mimic warfare. They made diabolical faces and thrust out red tongues
at the explorers as they came closer, but whether it was war or peace
even Baderoon could not tell them.
The boys watched the war dance, striving to quiet the shivers of
apprehension that _would_ persist in rising. It was harder to bear
there than any amount of fighting, and they had much preferred standing
off any number of natives well hidden in the bush.
At about fifteen yards off, the line of natives had worked themselves
into furious action, stabbing with their spears at the air, the rows of
hideous shields dancing like evil genii from some other world. As more
of them spread out on each flank, a guttural shout came from one of the
tallest.
“Shoot, _Orang_!” shrieked Baderoon, but he was too late! From behind
each native’s shield swung a black arm holding a short stick of bamboo.
They swept forward like flails, and instantly the air was filled with
blinding fine sand and ash dust. It closed their eyes with the acrid,
cutting particles, and involuntarily their arms went up to shield their
faces, while guns went off aimlessly. Sadok flashed out his parang in
the cloud, and the curator jumped back to throw his bomb, but there
was no room to use it. The natives closed in on them in a whirlwind
of grabbing, skinny arms. Dwight saw stars as a club descended on his
helmet, and everything went white before him. He was dimly conscious of
a last impression of Sadok standing off three of them with his parang,
and the curator buffeting his way through the shields toward him with
bare fists, when his senses left him....
When he came to he was lying on the ground with his arms tightly
bound behind him. Nicky and the curator were sitting up, also tied,
and beyond them was Sadok, his head covered with blood where they had
clubbed him. An occasional suppressed groan came from Baderoon; only
themselves could understand the agony he was enduring, with his wounded
arm ruthlessly trussed up like their own.
The Outanatas were chattering and arguing around them. Finally a long
rope was brought and the captives tied together, a loop of it in a
single knot around each of their necks, so that any attempt to escape
would bring it tight. Then they were all dragged to their feet and
formed in a line, with a double file of natives on each side, and the
party set off through the jungle.
The way led back through the same trail the natives had come up on,
the jungle path working gradually down toward the lagoon. The boys did
little talking, for it seemed to make their captors angry, but they
had plenty of time to think as they marched along. Dwight noted that
the curator still carried his queer pistol, and their own were in the
holsters yet, for the natives had dropped the flaps in disgust at the
first sight of steel. Their shotguns were being carried by a couple
of natives, each holding it with a wad of moss in his hand to protect
it from the touch of steel, against which they had a taboo. Sadok’s
sumpitan, with its spear blade lashed to its muzzle like a spear, they
could understand, and his parang and Nicky’s were in the hands of their
captors. They evidently respected these as real weapons of war, as they
also did Baderoon’s bows and arrows and both the shields, for these
were being carried along as trophies.
[Illustration: THE WAY LED BACK THROUGH THE SAME TRAIL THE NATIVES HAD
COME UP ON, THE JUNGLE PATH WORKING GRADUALLY DOWNWARD TO THE LAGOON]
By nightfall the trail pitched suddenly downward toward the lagoon, and
the warriors raised their voices in an exulting chant. It was answered
by the deep boom of war drums, and presently they came down to a native
village on the shore of the lagoon. The mangroves had been cleared away
here, and on the beach were some twenty long black canoes, hauled up,
their high carved prows looming darkly against the glassy surface of
the waters, greenish orange in the dying hues of twilight.
The huts of the village were of bamboo, arched up from ground to ground
over a stout ridge pole, and thatched with palm attap. An excited crowd
of native men gathered around their party, while the warriors went on
singing and dancing, telling in vigorous pantomime the story of their
capture. There seemed to be no central chief, but some of the older and
more powerful warriors at length came to some sort of agreement, and
they were all thrust into an empty hut, the men who had captured their
weapons claiming the duty of being guards.
The explorers sat watchful on the clean sand floor of the hut, with
their guards standing in the doorway. A great fire was started out in
front, and they could see even the women and children, now, venturing
from the huts. Log after log was piled on the fire, and then pairs of
natives passed the door, carrying between them huge, rounded stones.
One after another these were laid on the fire, and gradually they
became red hot underneath, while the upper surfaces were smooth and
sooty in the licking flames.
“Prenty bad!” whispered Baderoon in the curator’s ear. “Fire dance!
Make you-fellah hopp’m on rock till he cook you’ foots. Den dey
_kai-kai_ dat foots. Leg, he stop, ’til next time. All _kai-kai_ some
day.”
It was time to act! The curator shifted his trick ring with his thumb
and opened the catch when it came inside his palm. His fingers closed
around his right wrist and sought the binding of twisted pandanus leaf.
A steady scratch-scratching of the little blade in the ring on the leaf
fiber went on, while their guards looked out the door, watching the
preparations.
VI
THE CURATOR’S AIR PISTOL
The flickering red lights from the dying flames of the fire lit up the
walls of the hut as the curator sat, free, with his hands still behind
him, considering what to do next. The fiery glow of embers under the
hot stones urged him to speedy action, for already the tom-toms of
trumpet-shaped Papuan war drums and the whang of stringed instruments
had struck up. The natives were yelling for the first prisoner to be
brought out. He did not propose that their party should go on stumps
for the rest of their lives.
He reached carefully for the hunting knife in his belt, and, leaning up
against Baderoon, his arm slipped behind him and cut his thongs. Then
the knife was passed on, and Baderoon freed Sadok. The three silently
arose and crept toward the guards leaning out the door. Fingers moved
stealthily for their necks, while the boys watched them tensely. With
a sudden pounce, both guards were seized and dragged within the hut
without a sound. Sadok was strong as a gorilla, and his man soon ceased
to struggle. The curator and Baderoon had more trouble with theirs, for
the black had only one good arm, but the guard was finally subdued,
gagged, and tied after a silent tussle in which all three joined. Then
the boys were freed, and Sadok jumped for his sumpitan, parang, and
kriss, which leaned up against the walls of the hut.
“This way--quick now!” hissed the curator, pointing to the blank rear
wall of the hut. Sadok ripped a door in it with his kriss, while the
curator drew his pistol, inserted a small metal cylinder in its breech,
and shoved down hard with the muzzle of the weapon on an abandoned
shield of the guards. A crinkly noise like a spring came from within
it, and he smiled grimly and replaced the pistol in its holster. Then
they all crept out through the back wall into the dark jungle, Baderoon
helping himself liberally to weapons as he left.
Dwight, tingling with excitement, automatic in hand, crawled along on
all-fours behind the curator, who followed Sadok, and so they worked
steadily toward the beach over the thick, soft duff. At length the
last of the line of canoes, close to the boundary of mangroves, rose up
ahead, and, one by one, they crawled around both sides of it, keeping
below the gunwale out of sight. The lurid glow of the fire was behind
them, and, silhouetted against it were circles of mop-haired savages,
singing in unison with the beat of the drums, the warriors dancing
around the fire.
Quietly they rose and lifted the bow of the long boat. Her stern was
afloat and she gave easily, but it took their combined strength to
shove her out. At last she floated, and they all got in, Sadok giving
her a last artful shove that sent her silently around the end of the
mangroves and out of sight. They groped for paddles, dipped them
noiselessly, and stole along, close to shore, not even a ripple coming
from her prow. The noise behind them grew gradually more indistinct,
until the rhythmical dub-dub of the drums alone reached them.
“Whoosh!” sighed Nicky, at last, and it seemed he had been holding his
breath for a week. “Some getaway! But it’s about time those beggars
went for their lunch, though!” he observed, facetiously, while his
powerful shoulders swept the paddle easily. “‘My--word!’ as Bentham
would say, but I don’t fancy being fried on stones for these heathen!
I’ve contributed too many blankets and things to missionary boxes--and
I want my money back!” he laughed.
“Quiet!” ordered the curator, sternly. “This show isn’t over yet, and
there may be scouts along shore. We’ve got to make time!”
They bent to the paddles, driving the heavy canoe along down the shore
of the lagoon. Fifteen tense minutes passed, while black palm fronds
and ragged banana leaves swept by overhead past the stars. They had put
nearly a mile between them and the landing when--
“Hist!” called the curator, stopping his paddle suddenly.
A riot of excited yells came faintly through the jungle.
“They’re wise! Hep, boys! _hep!_” They drove the canoe along as fast
as she could be made to go. She needed at least ten paddlers to get
any real speed out of her, and the boys realized that there would be
more doings this night! A clearer burst of sounds told that the natives
had come down to the beach and discovered their missing canoe. Then
torches glared out over the black, glassy water, and presently a fleet
of canoes set out, each with a blazing brand flaming on its prow. Some
of them set out across the lagoon, others went upstream, and eight
started down the shore, moving abreast and covering the water far out.
Nothing could escape them!
“Make for the open, Sadok!” called the curator over his shoulder to the
Dyak, who was stern paddle. “We haven’t a chance here, but we might get
by them out beyond the last one out there.”
They drove the canoe out on the broad bosom of the lagoon, the lights
from the eight flares streaming across the water to them in long red
pencils, and it seemed incredible that they were not seen already. The
curator, however, knew better the actual range of a flare visible from
the eyes of a man in the boat with it, for he had tried it before,
jacking deer. The lights came steadily on, yells and whoops blaring
over the waters. The canoes soon passed them, in a long, straggly line
between them and the shore.
They stopped their own boat and watched their pursuers.
“Gee! it’s a clean escape!” exulted Dwight, “and we’re bows on, so it’s
impossible to see us--” The enthusiasm in his voice trailed off as they
all paused, holding their breaths, to watch the flare on the nearest
canoe. It seemed to be parting in two and the second light grew to a
long flame. Then it suddenly rose in a high, curving arc as a flaming
javelin went up like a rocket. A weird glare lit up the water far and
wide.
“Clever stunt! Those savages are sure resourceful, I’ll say!” admired
the curator. “We’re _it_, all right!”
A babel of yells arose from the nearest canoe as he spoke, and her
light began to move out toward them, the flashes of her paddles
winking like swiftly waving bars of light. The other canoes changed
course likewise, and the whole pack fanned out in a sort of V, with
the nearest canoe leading. A second flaming javelin soared into the
night and lit up the waters. Diabolical war whoops burst out from all
the canoes this time, and amid exulting yells a few long-range, roving
arrows fell into the lagoon around them.
“Don’t anybody shoot, except Sadok, until I say the word!” gritted the
curator, “and I want you boys to call me eighty yards as near as you
can judge it when that canoe comes that near!”
Arrows from the nearest boat now began to whistle overhead and fall
into the bay with a sharp _chrrp!_ like quenching hot iron.
“Eighty yards, I think, sir,” whispered Dwight a few moments later as
he peered over the gunwale.
“Just about,” muttered the curator, aiming his pistol carefully over
braced knees. A sharp _kjkrrr!_ came from the weapon as he pulled
trigger. A tiny spark swept in a flat trajectory over to the canoe,
and then, like detonation of thunder close at hand, came a stunning
report and the white, blinding glare of the explosion of a shell. The
flash gave them one tremendous, significant glimpse of flying splinters
and the cannibal canoe doubling up like a broken stick--and then came
pitchy, inky darkness, followed by the shouts of the savages swimming
in the water and the roar of a wave rolling swiftly toward them which
rocked their canoe to her beam ends.
“Gad! I hate to shoot up these beggars, even if they are cannibals bent
on dining off us!” exclaimed the curator, reloading. “Hope they’re
mostly scared to death! This second shell ought to do it.”
He steadied the pistol on his knees and aimed at the second canoe,
swooping down on them, the cannibals yelling and discharging flights of
arrows into the night. Again the blinding white flash and the terrific
report. The curator had aimed it so as not to hit the canoe directly,
and they saw a wave rise in front of her which engulfed the canoe and
put her crew powerless in the water.
But the others came right on, regardless. “Paddle, boys! Make it quick
and snappy! They’re closing in on us! Once more ought to knock the
fight out of them!” He reloaded hurriedly and fired at the third canoe,
the shell exploding in midair right over it. The shouts from five
canoefuls of bloodthirsty cannibals surrounding them, foaming up the
water with their furious paddles, filled the night with pandemonium.
Their situation looked desperate now, for the Outanatas seemed
determined upon their recapture and they had lost some of their fear of
the curator’s shells.
“Fire, boys! for all you’re worth--I’ll give you light!” he yelled,
whipping out his flashlight. “Hold it, Baderoon!” he ordered, as the
rays from its parabolic reflector shot over the water.
The automatics began to bark, while the negro crouched behind the
gunwales, shivering with fear, yet holding the light steadily on two
war canoes bunched close together. The curator aimed a short-range
shell right over them, hoping to founder the remaining canoes. The
fearful concussion of the T. N. T. knocked their own party sprawling,
and, where there had been two canoes, now there was a boiling geyser
of water in which they rose like tossed logs, their crews tumbling
headlong through the white glare. It proved too much for the remaining
three canoes. The flashlight showed them turning tail and paddling away
in frantic haste.
“Travel, Nigger, Travel!--that’s what T. N. T. means!” whooped the
curator. “Paddle, boys, after ’em--_hard_! I’m going to put the fear of
God into these people!”
He aimed the air gun at a high arc, and the shell whistled on its
way. High over the three canoes it exploded, with the strength of
giant-powder fireworks. Under its glare they could see the paddlers
knocked hurtling with the concussion.
Baderoon laughed uproariously. “_Yow-yowri!_ Prenty debbil-debbil,
_Orang-kaya!_ Make’m thunder--_Boom! Boom!_”
“Threw a good scare into ’em! That’s the ticket!” grinned the curator.
“They’ll swim ashore pretty well gentled, I’m thinking!--Keep after
’em, boys, as hard as you can make her go! They’re gaining on us!”
He raised the air gun to its utmost elevation and the tiny streak of
fire of the fuse rose in a high arc. It fell into the bay ahead of the
three canoes, and there was a muffled thud which blew the whole bottom
out of the bay. A white avalanche of water came roaring toward the
three canoes and their bows rose dizzily and then the sterns flipped
high in the air. A babel of yells and shouts told of one canoe upset,
and then they steadied their own to meet the onrushing wave. It rocked
giddily, like a bark canoe in a boiling rapids, and water slapped over
her sides in a deluge, but her deep keel held her upright.
“Bail, Dwight--and you, too, Baderoon!” ordered the curator. “Nicky,
you and Sadok keep on paddling. Don’t kill yourselves, as we’re out of
range of them now. I’m going up to that village and lay down the law to
that whole tribe! They’ll let white men alone, after that.”
They followed slowly in the wake of the two fleeing canoes, and finally
lay floating idly about a mile out in front of the village. The
canoes that had gone across the lagoon and those from upstream had now
returned, as they could see by the assembling flares at the landing.
Howlings and constant booming of drums came over the water. They dozed
on the thwarts, letting the canoe drift and waiting for dawn. The noise
on shore kept up throughout the night, but, after an interminable wait,
a faint paling in the east, which swiftly grew to daylight over the
calm waters of the lagoon, set them to paddling slowly toward the shore
again.