already aflame with the rising sun. The curator loaded his air gun and
stood up in the bow as they approached the landing. A deathlike silence
reigned throughout the jungle. The long black canoes lay hauled up in
rows, deserted, and not a sign of life appeared in the huts nor in the
glades under the coco palms.
As their bow grated on the beach, the curator took careful aim at
the largest of the huts and fired. The jungle shook with the sharp
detonation as the building was torn asunder in crackling walls
of bamboo and rattan which immediately took fire. Runnings and
scamperings in the forest--and then all was silent as the grave again.
They stepped ashore in a compact little party, the boys with ready
pistols, Sadok’s long sumpitan sweeping every glade for a mark. The
curator walked to the center of the clearing and swept the surrounding
forest with his arm.
“Pigs!” he pronounced, in the Arfak dialect, waving his arm around
comprehensively.
There were rustlings in the jungle, but no native dared show himself.
“Tell them, Baderoon, that white men are peaceful--when let alone.
Also, that the white man will not harm any chief if he will step out
and talk.”
Baderoon raised his voice, translating the curator’s message. Absolute
silence brooded in the jungle.
“Tell them,” said the curator, and his voice rang like iron, “that the
white man would be friends. But if they do not make a talk at once he
will bring down his thunders and lightnings and utterly destroy this
village, their canoes, and their coconut palms. I have spoken it.”
Baderoon translated, and at this a grizzled old sinner with a white mop
of woolly hair stepped out trembling from behind a tree.
“If the White Thunderer will only deign not to utterly destroy _us_!”
he croaked, shaking all over as Baderoon translated.
“Ye shall call your old men to tow-tow; and ye shall send runners to
every village, far and near, lest the thunders descend on them also!”
declared the curator, sternly.
“It is agreed,” said the old man, finally, with shaking voice. “Only
let the white man not harm us further! Many warriors and many canoes
come not back because of him!”
He called into the forest and three other old men came unwillingly
forth. They advanced, unarmed, to the edge of the clearing, stooping
down and pouring sand on their heads in token of abject submission, but
that was as far as they could be coaxed to come.
“It is well,” called the curator, at length, for he had no wish to risk
any undue familiarity with them. “Shoot something, Sadok. I want them
to fear you, too.”
Sadok looked around for a mark, and his eyes lit on a wandering pig
under one of the huts. He poised his sumpitan and the dart flew out of
its muzzle. The pig squealed and twitched his tail, and then went on
rooting. In another moment he sighed and laid over, dead.
A shiver and a rustling of leaves ran through the underbrush.
“Ye have seen the silent death, also,” said Baderoon, raising his voice
at the curator’s prompting. “Do not eat the pig; it is taboo.”
One of the old men took off his boars’-tusk breastplate and stepped
forward and laid it on the ground. He testified that it was a present.
At a sign from the curator Baderoon fetched it. The scientist examined
it curiously. The white tusks were laid in rows, one atop the other,
and their ends were bound with fiber network, thickly ornamented with
polished red beads. The curator started with astonishment as he looked
closely at them.
“Ask him where they get those red beads, Baderoon.”
There was some talk and waving of arms, and then Baderoon turned to the
curator. “Him get’m big mountain--down there,” he said, pointing to the
south. “Mus’ fight litty hill men for him. Prenty too-much trophy.”
“Tell him the white man is pleased, and will give a present, too.”
The curator undid his red-silk bandanna, and Baderoon bore it over
ceremoniously and laid it before the chief. The latter grinned, for
the first time, and they could see that he was dying to handle it.
He nodded at the curator with beaming eyes and made the pantomime of
rubbing noses.
“Nothing doing!” snorted the curator. “That’s where the earlier
explorers all lose out! The natives soon find out we’re ordinary,
vulnerable human beings, if you let them get too familiar. Tell him,
Baderoon, that the white man says to start his runners at once, and
never to touch another white man so long as he lives! Farewell!”
He turned to go as Baderoon translated. They walked back to the canoes
and picked out a small one, more easy to handle. Shoving off, they
paddled down the lagoon, the curator sitting silently in the stern,
for he knew that curious eyes were watching him from the jungle. A
repressed eagerness shone in his own as he still examined curiously the
boars’-tusk breastplate in his hands.
“Well--I guess that’ll hold ’em for a time--eh, boys?” he smiled,
raising his eyes from it at length when they had left the village
landing far behind. “And--I may have something important to tell you
after we reach camp!”
“Some weapon, that air pistol of yours, sir!” said Nicky, admiringly.
“How did you ever get such an idea?”
“Oh, that was just a hang-over from the Western Front,” replied the
curator. “I’ve been through any number of trench scrimmages, and I
learned that it’s not the iron casing of grenades that does the most
mischief, but the gas itself. It has far more rending power than that
cast-iron shell of the grenade. Remember our old air guns of boyhood?
Well, I sent some sketches to the factory and had them make me this
pistol on the same lines. These light nickel shells of T. N. T. turned
out to be as good as heavy grenades when I tested them. All that is
needed is something to throw them with accuracy, so I had this gun made
and a lot of shells, timed for eighty, fifty, and thirty yards--which
is about as close as you can be to them with any safety. That’s all
there is to it. Beats the old dynamite stick that they used to use on
the savages of the South Seas all hollow, I’ll say!”
They passed the floating wreckage of the night before as he spoke, and
everyone set to work picking up paddles, spears, and arrows, the latter
sticking up out of water, point down, like buoys. Then the curator
made a grab and hauled aboard a floating shield. It was of the same
long, oval type that the war party had carried the day before, and he
examined the red paint in the carving minutely with his magnifying
glass.
“It’s the same mineral we found in Aru, Dwight,” he declared, after a
close scrutiny. “Wait till we get to camp; I’ve got a fine young idea
hatching.”
That was all they could get out of him, but the paddles swept on more
tirelessly than ever, for both boys were consumed with curiosity over
the new mineral.
At length they came to their own headland, with the frowning ramparts
of the mountains looming back of them endlessly to the south. Here was
the mouth of their creek, and up it they drove the canoe under the
green arches of the jungle. After a time it came out at the old coral
bank, and the abandoned sail proa showed up ahead, its bow still on the
little beach. Sadok and Baderoon jumped ashore and set about getting
their fire started, while the boys dove for their provision sacks, for
they had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours and were famished.
But the curator could not wait. He cut off a sliver from the red
mineral paint in the shield scrolls and scraped a portion of it into
a small test tube which he got out of his mess kit. Filling it with a
little water, he went over to Nicky’s alcohol flame and brought it to
a boil. Then he opened a tiny bottle of acid and dropped a tear of it
into the test tube.
“Gad! boys!” he whooped. “What do you think of _that_?” he cried,
holding up the tube, now filled with a cloudy yellow precipitate.
“Remember that red stone we got in the channels of Aru, Dwight? Well,
this is the same mineral, _cinnabar_, red oxide of mercury, boys! If
there’s a mountain of it, as these natives tell us, back in the hills,
we’ve _got_ to find it, for, once it is reported, it will change the
whole history of this part of New Guinea. The stuff is worth its weight
in gold!”
“Three cheers for Exploration!” mumbled Nicky, his mouth stuffed with
food. “Have some, Professor!”
VII
CASSOWARY CAMP
“Baderoon, how call-him that place chief-fellah get red paint?” asked
the curator, turning to Baderoon from the test tube in his hand.
“Red Mountain!” said Baderoon, promptly.
“Good Lord!” ejaculated the curator. “There can’t be a whole mountain
of cinnabar, you know! Why, you could buy out the United States
Treasury with it! Might be a stratum of it--but, no; ‘_Red_’ Mountain!
If there’s enough of the ore in sight to give it that name, it’s
something we’ve got to see and report. Everything else is insignificant
compared to this, boys!” he exulted. “I discovered a mountain once, in
Mexico, near the top of which was a thick vein of cinnabar. Some day
they’ll run a railroad in there and get it out, it’s so valuable. But a
whole mountain of it, and right handy to the sea! Why, man, it’ll make
Holland the queen of the world again! Think how the world’s mercury
is hoarded, for making fulminate, for every primer and every shell
fuse that is shot!” he went on, excitedly. “Think of the explosives
possible, with unlimited supplies of mercury. T. N. T. isn’t in it,
compared with some of the fulminates! The Japs won the Russian war with
their new camphor shell, but their supply of camphor is limited. Some
day there will be a big war over Red Mountain, take it from me!”
“’Ray for Exploration!” crowed Dwight. “Come on, Mr. Baldwin; here’s
some nice wallaby steak!”
The curator grinned as he came back to earth and bit into the succulent
meat. “Just the same, boys, we’re going to see that mountain, or die
in the attempt. The only thing that worries me is how to handle the
pygmies. It’s right in their country, and we’ll have to wade through
them to get there. They were peaceable enough with the English
expedition, but that was only because they were afraid to start
anything. They’re always at war with the Papuans, and there’s a sort
of no-man’s land between the jungle and the foothills which cannot be
crossed by either side without a fight. However, the first thing for
us to do is to jerk the rest of this wallaby meat and each man carry
along a bag of pemmican made of it.”
They erected a pole jerky frame that afternoon, and started a small
drying fire under it, with long strips of the meat hanging in rows
from the poles. Under the hot tropical sun the drying process went on
apace, and soon the strips had become hard sticks of meat, greasy to
the touch, hard and fibrous as wood. Steadily, also, the collections
grew larger, box after box being filled with Dwight’s insects,
Nicky’s reptiles, and the curator’s birds, while their big tin of
bird skins was filled up and sealed. This main collection was to be
a representative one of the whole region, after which only the rarer
specimens need be sought for. On the third day the crate of collections
boxes was cached, well hidden in a coral cave dug in the thickets.
Meanwhile Sadok set about replenishing his supply of poisoned arrows,
as his quiver of them had run low. He cut a quantity of the long thorns
of the sago palm, and near the bottom of each he lashed a little cone
of the corklike bark, so that it would just fit in the bore of the
sumpitan, which was about three eighths of an inch in diameter. For
poisoning the points he had a supply of the gummy juice of the upas
tree, brought from Borneo and carefully kept in a small bamboo bottle
which hung on his belt.
Sadok was grouched. A faint but noisesome odor came from somewhere in
the jungle, where his three heads were drying, but here, look you, had
been two fights with the Outanatas since, and never a head for his
personal collection! He was comforted, however, by the curator telling
him that the upas vine, or some other representative of the strychnine
family, grew in New Guinea, also, and that there would be plenty of
ructions before he ever saw Borneo again.
Their stay at this camp had given them not only a fair idea of the
general features of the country, but of the weather as well. Under the
west monsoon, its daily changes were as regular as clockwork. A fine
cool dawn, followed by several hours of misty and clearing weather when
it was good to be up and doing; then the heat of midday, when even
the jungle people knew enough to take a siesta; and then, about four
o’clock, a tropical thunderstorm of the utmost violence, lasting until
eight at night, when the sky cleared off. They soon learned to plan
their day according to these weather changes, and at length the party
broke camp for the long trek into the mountains. They followed much the
same trail as before, to the table-lands along the mountain flank, and
stopped for lunch on the pebbly site of their capture by the war party
of the Outanatas of the week before.
But with what different feelings now! Then the fear of the unknown, the
dread of meeting cannibal savages who would surely regard them as but
strangers to be killed and eaten at sight. Now a feeling of confidence
replaced all that. They had established the superiority of the white
man in all that region, the respect in the native mind that is based
only on superior force. Not even a native runner had dared show his
face since that punitive expedition of the curator’s. They even felt
confident to hunt singly, not too far from the main party. While the
others were settling down for the noonday siesta in the heat of midday,
Dwight spied a flash of brilliant orange in the greens of the jungle
across the creek, and set out alone after the bird, shotgun in hand.
The orange spot flew off into the jungle as he drew near it, but Dwight
had caught a glimpse of black-velvet plumage, and that flaming fire of
orange on the throat, which made him tingle all over with the thrill
that it _might_ be the exceedingly rare six-shafted bird of paradise!
He followed on through the jungle, his eyes fixed on that small dot of
black perched far ahead, high in the tree tops. Moving as cautiously as
he could, he worked through the festooned creepers and the huge boles
of giant jungle trees toward his prize. But to his chagrin, it flew off
again, just as he was about to try the spiteful little twenty-gauge at
long range.
The boy’s eyes followed the bird avidly. To bring back a six-shafter!
Why, all this expedition had been for just such a prize as this!
Nothing is known of this bird save what can be conjectured from the
few skins now in the world’s museums. To add one more to that meager
collection, each specimen with who knows what story of adventure and
privation behind it, seemed to Dwight a corking enterprise. Using all
the woodcraft he possessed, he worked silently through the jungle.
Experience had taught him to look ahead for a place to plant each
footstep, not only to be sure that one did not step on a snake, but
also to insure the foot coming down in position to fire instantly.
With gun muzzle up, he advanced carefully, praying earnestly that his
quarry might linger just a few minutes more.
Again the paradise bird fluttered off, and this time Dwight had but
a line on where he had gone, for the last glimpse of him disappeared
through the jungle, far off through the tree trunks. He groaned with
disappointment, but he was not the boy to give up while there was a
ghost of a chance left. Fixing on a tall Erythrina as the last tree
past which the bird had soared, he set out as fast as possible. In
perhaps half an hour he reached the tree, and, taking the range, set
out again, his eyes scrutinizing the leafy foliage of the jungle roof.
He had about begun to lose hope now, and, moreover, to realize that he
was totally lost in the jungle, far from his companions, when a flutter
of wings some distance ahead showed him his siren bird, flitting about
and feeding on clusters of blue tropical berries that hung in the
foliage of a high tree top that loomed up ahead.
Dwight heaved a sigh of relief. The bird would surely stay there,
feeding, and he had plenty of time for a careful stalk. He wormed
through the jungle, and at last arrived where an aim could be had, at
not more than forty yards. Raising the gun carefully, he fired, and
down came his prize, at last!
It was with a sort of breathless wonder that Dwight looked over the
six-shafted bird of paradise as he lifted it gently out of the dense
undergrowth in which it had fallen. _Why_ did nature lavish such
abundant beauty on a bird destined never to be seen by eyes that could
appreciate it? Human eyes, that is, for, of course, the bird would
be forever a delight to the eyes of that dull-colored little mate of
his whose protection demanded something less gorgeously visible. It
made him feel how insignificant is man in nature’s world. Man, the
animal, as exhibited by the naked savages who inhabited this forest
was Nature’s own child; assuredly this bird was not so decorated
to please him! Man, the intellectual, civilized man, could feel a
thrill of rapture over this creature of Nature’s, admire its intense
golden-orange throat scales, its rich, velvety, purple-black plumage,
its crown of vivid emerald and topaz colors, with the long wire-haired
plumes springing back like a coronet from its head; but Nature cared
nothing for intellectual man and his mind, which was not of her doing,
and she certainly did not make this bird for him! In fact, we are each
one of us two people, Dwight philosophized, amusing himself with these
fancies as he examined the paradise bird in his hand--man the animal,
the creature of Nature, living very like the animals themselves and
dependent on her, like them; and man, the intellectual, a creature
of a power that is above Nature, the Being from whom sprang art,
religion, philosophy, science, all the things that are above Nature and
essentially antagonistic to her. But in the end Nature always has her
revenge, for her jungles reclaim proud cities, as in India and Central
America, or her deserts isolate them, as Athens and the Parthenon, or
her sands bury them, like Egypt and the Sphinx.
“All that sermon from one small tropical bird!” laughed Dwight to
himself, carelessly, as his thoughts came back to earth again. “Nature
may be irreconcilably hostile to us--but, where am I now, and how am I
going to get out? That’s the real question for _this_ man!”
He had no idea how or where his wanderings in pursuit of the paradise
bird had taken him. All that was certain was that he had not crossed
the creek again, and that he was somewhere east of it. He laid a course
west with the compass, and set out, confident that he would sooner or
later strike the stream.
But Nature proceeded to show him how utterly insignificant to her
is man. The first indication of it was a large plop of her tropical
rain which fell on his helmet. Dwight looked up, surprised to see the
sky overcast and the thunders of the daily afternoon tropical storm
muttering in the mountains. He must have been several hours following
this six-shafter! He hurried on back toward the creek, stumbling
through the jungle and striving to stifle panicky impulses to run.
It was essential to keep his head, and to pick out landmark trees,
methodically, ahead on his course, for you cannot steer yourself like
a ship with the compass in the jungle. He forced his attention upon
this, ignoring the raindrops, the steady patter of which kept up in the
tree tops. The wetted undergrowth soon soaked his thin khaki. He now
bitterly regretted setting out without his pack. Just a moment to have
shouldered it would have been enough, but he had been too eager, too
afraid to lose sight of his precious prize.
A distant roar of wind, and an angry cannonade of thunder came from the
west, setting the jungle to rocking and tossing overhead, while birds
flew wildly through the tree tops, croaking and screeching harshly.
Dwight stopped and listened to it. He was trembling all over with the
wet cold, and sharp chills were running through him. Now or never was
the time for a signal, for no sound would carry far after the rain
came. He raised his gun, fired both barrels, and listened with all his
ears.
No answer, save the roar of the rain, sounding louder and louder and
coming nearer and nearer. He looked about for the largest tree near him
and ran for it. The branches of wind-lashed forest were now parting
overhead, and out of the dark gray came vivid flashes of lightning
which filled the jungle with winking light. The long ropes of creepers
which climbed up to the branches of his tree from the jungle floor
swung solemnly in the wind, and Dwight crept under them and huddled
close against the trunk, cowering in the buttresses of the great roots.
Then came the rain, in furious white sheets that filled the forest
with a flying haze. It soaked him instantly to the skin, while peal
after peal of thunder went off like cannon shots. An ungovernable
terror seized the boy--the fury of the wind-driven rain, the
loneliness, the crashing and riving of limbs and branches--and he
lifted up his voice in one last, despairing yell with every ounce of
lung power that he possessed.
There was no answer--save a low, sibilant hiss, which sounded through
the lowering gloom, close at hand, whispering sharp and clear in his
ears above the noise of the storm! Dwight, startled with a shiver of
fright, looked up, to perceive that one of the great vines overhead
was _not_ a creeper, but a huge python, lowering himself steadily, his
neck crooked, and his head drawn back to strike at him! His gun flashed
to shoulder, and both barrels went off blindly as the boy’s nerves
collapsed with the shock of horror and he sank down in a shivering
heap. He had a dim feeling of yards and yards of snake tumbling down
through the vines beside him, but he seemed not to care about it at
all, for it was comfortable down here between these roots ... if he
could only find a place for his head....
When he came to it was pitch dark and the storm had gone on. A
scampering of jungle rats made off through the black as Dwight moved
his cramped limbs wearily, to find them aching all over and his face
hot and flushed with fever, while violent chills kept running upward
through his body.
He peered about him, bewildered; then conscious ideas began to pelt in
upon him.
“F-f-fire! Quick-ick as I can m-make one!” he chattered to himself,
fumbling for his pocket flasher. Its small but brilliant light lit up
the jungle, causing many an outcry of night birds and a scurrying over
the forest floor of land crabs and small marsupials. It also revealed
the tumbled heap of the python lying beside him, its neck shot in two
and parts of its reticulated length already gnawed by rodents. He
glanced at it casually; to get wood that would burn was the real worry
now! the jungle was black as a pocket, and a wan mist hung through
it. After one flash of the light on those miasmas, drifting like pale
death through the trees, Dwight hurriedly got out his medicine kit and
swallowed some quinine. Then he sought kindlings in the underbrush,
breaking twigs here and there, but they were all sodden and moldy. He
felt sick all over and burning with fever, and he wanted to lie down
again and sleep forever; but it was most imperative to stay alive, so
he started off through the jungle in search of firewood, stumbling
westward by compass, until a great tangle of vines ahead of him told of
a prone dead tree.