shot about it being _his_ dog went home. A black-whiskered old pirate,
who was evidently their leader, cracked a smile and nodded his head.
Then they began to chatter among themselves, excitedly. Evidently they
had heard of the English expedition from their own tribes to the south.
The English had treated them well, experienced as they are in handling
natives.
“_Kami oro-ta?_” (“Your houses?”) asked the curator, next. “Gosh! boys,
I only know fourteen words of their language, but I’m working them for
all they are worth!” he exclaimed in an aside to their own party.
The pygmies grinned and nodded again, dropping their arrow points in a
more friendly manner. He was winning them fast.
“_Kema-u-uteri!_” said the old fellow, vigorously, pointing toward the
village.
“He means they’re going to give us a pig and some coconuts,” explained
the curator to his own party. “They want us to come up to the village.
I guess not! We’ll stay right here and see what next.”
He nodded his thanks for their offer; then, “_Area-ta ku!_” (“My
boat!”) he said to the pygmies, waving his hand toward the lagoon down
in the valleys. “_Uta doro-ta!_” he added, pointing to their camp site,
the words telling them that his fire would be made there.
The four nodded and grinned as the curator signified politely that they
were welcome to visit him. Then they started up the trail, with many a
backward glance of curiosity.
“Now, then, boys, it’s up to us to barricade this camp and make it as
strong for defense as we can, until we see how everything turns out,”
said the curator, energetically, after they had gone.
The site was admirably chosen. A huge prone bole lay across the front
of it, overlooking the trail, and it only needed stones cleared away
and piled on the flanks to make a veritable fort of it, with their rear
protected by the rocky ledges of the mountain. They cleared out the
inclosure and then started their fire. Presently yells and shouts and
an excited babel of voices came floating across the valley from the
village. Through the glasses they could see men, women, and children
crowding around the four hunters, and then there was an immense amount
of running around and preparations of some sort going on in the village.
“The four were not on the war path, for they carried no bamboo knives
for head hunting,” ruminated the curator. “Tapiros, I suppose. Get a
lot of wood for a big fire,” he ordered. “We want plenty of light if
they come around to-night, so we can see what we are doing.”
The noise in the village redoubled, and, as night came down and the
tents and hammocks were slung, it seemed that every man, woman, and
child in it was coming to visit them in a mob. A singing chorus of the
wild little hill men came marching toward them through the jungle paths.
“That’s bad!” exclaimed the curator, anxiously. “If there was only some
way we could show our power, without hurting them! We can’t let a mob
get to close quarters with us.”
“I think I’ve got a scheme, sir,” ventured Nicky. “There are a few
flashlights in my vest-pocket camera. Suppose I run out and explode
one in the path, about thirty yards off?”
“Well--get it ready, anyhow,” hesitated the curator. “They don’t seem
to be hostile. Dwight and Sadok will cover you, while I will step out
in front of the log and try to act like a peaceable human being.”
The pygmies came on in a crowd through the dark, torches here and there
shining through the bush. They did not seem to be sending out flanking
parties, which was reassuring, and the main body came on down the
trail. Nicky dashed out, lit the fuse of his flash, and had just gotten
back to the tree when it went off. A blinding glare lit up the scene.
It showed at least a hundred pygmies diving frantically for cover.
The whites noted with relief that the men were decorated with flowers
and carried no arms. A party bearing a pig trussed up on a pole had
suddenly set down their burden and decamped.
“They’re friendly!” cried the curator, relievedly. “I’d give a million
dollars for the word ‘friend’ in Tapiro!” Instead, he put his hand
over his heart and bowed his thanks for the pig, like any after-dinner
orator. Sadok threw a pile of grass on the fire and its flames lit up
the scene. The moment hung in the balance.
“Sing, boys!--something plaintive!--for God’s sake, sing!” barked the
curator, hastily.
On such sudden notice Nicky could think of nothing but the old campfire
ditty, “Sweet Adeline.” He poured it out, at the top of his voice,
the others chiming in on the refrain. All over the world, in lonely
campfires from the Arctic to the Equator, that plaintive song has
unburdened the hearts of hunters and explorers, as a wolf bays the
moon. It did not fail them now. Where words lacked, music got across.
That remote something in the plaintive chimes of “Adeline” that
satisfies the white hunter had reached over into the souls of this
tribe of the most ancient of all hunters. One or two old men came out,
quaking, from their hiding places, the leader of the original four one
of them.
“_Yow-nata-u; kema-kema!_” he quavered, indicating the pig.
“Thanks!” called out the curator, desperately. “Go get him, Sadok and
Baderoon. We’ve got to do the polite. I never knew music to fail with
savages yet!”
They went down and carried the pig up ceremoniously, while the curator
kept on bowing his thanks. “Set it down in front of our tree. I’ve got
another idea,” he said, as they brought the pig up. “Put another of
your flashes in front of the pig, Nicky, and touch it off.”
Nicky lit the fuse, and the curator stood over the pig, making what he
hoped were sufficiently impressive incantations over it. Presently the
flash went off, lighting up the whole jungle with its lurid glare. In
the intense darkness that followed, the pig was whisked over the log
out of sight. By the time sight returned to the eyes of the little hill
men it had disappeared.
“That ought to hold ’em for a bit!” said the curator, out of the corner
of his mouth. “They call me _Yow-nata_, ‘sun maker,’ so a miracle or
two won’t do any harm. Got any more ideas, boys?”
“Yes, I’ve got a good one!” came back Dwight. “Let’s have your flasher,
sir, and yours, Nicky. They’re both powerful. Now, then, have you got
anything to give them, sir?”
“Sure! I’ve been saving a small bag of beads for some such affair as
this,” said the curator, producing them from a pocket.
“All right. You walk out there with them, and I’ll do my stunt,”
chuckled Dwight.
“Thank the Lord, ‘bead’ is one of the words the English got,” said the
curator, starting down to the trail.
“_Upou_ [beads] _kema!_ [give]” he called out, holding out a handful
of them and waving it about. The old men crept forward warily. As they
came close to the curator, Dwight, with the flashers held on both sides
of his eyes, flashed them on. The effect was weird in the extreme. It
looked as if he had two fiery eyes, and the rays lit up the curator
and made the glass beads in his palm flash like jewels. There was an
instant dive by the hill men into the brush again.
“_Amare upou kema! Amare upou kema!_ [I give you beads! I give you
beads!] Come out, you little devils!” he called, reassuringly, while
Dwight kept the rays turned on him steadily.
It took a lot of coaxing, but finally the same old fellow ventured
forth again, trying the effect of the light on himself gingerly. He
jumped back as Dwight turned his face and swept the jungle, heads
popping out of sight like chipmunks as his “eyes” lit up the jungle.
Then the old man ventured out again as the rays returned to the
curator. Foot by foot he drew near, with many a questioning glance,
and finally the curator was able to drop a pile of beads in his hand.
He grunted with pleasure, and Baldwin signed for the other to approach.
He gave a small pile to each, and then walked back to the log.
“Switch ’em off, Dwight. You did fine!” he exclaimed. “Now we’ll go
about our affairs and let ’em watch us for the present. You keep guard,
and if any of them venture too near, just turn those eyes on them and
we’ve got ’em on the run.”
The tents were put up and candles and lanterns lit, the pygmies
watching every move from the jungle depths. The curator spent his time
trying to talk to the old men, who had gathered in the trail below
their log breastwork, and he finally attempted a few words in the hated
Papuan tongue. To his surprise they knew considerable of that, too,
and Baderoon was at once called to interpret. Between them a feast was
arranged next day in the village, and the information conveyed that the
white man would prefer that the tribe go back to their village, now, as
it was time for sleep.
At this the older men gave an order (there did not seem to be any
central head chief) and they all drifted slowly back, their voices
coming faintly out of the jungle, all talking excitedly.
“And now, boys, we’ll call it a day!” said the curator. “Looks as if
they were going to be friendly. Sadok, you stand watch until those
stars there”--indicating the Southern Cross--“come over that mountain.
Then call me.”
The camp turned in, leaving Sadok on guard by the fire.
IX
THE FIGHT AT THE CRATER
“Fill your canteens, boys!” ordered the curator, as they finished
breakfast next morning, “and stow all this pig meat we can carry, for
our aim will be to get through with this feast of the pygmies as soon
as we can and then push on south. Every man pack his kit for marching
order.”
Sadok had butchered the pig during his night watch, and he and Baderoon
each had a ham ready for slinging. The camp reveled in fresh pork
chops, and then cut slices of the forequarters for carrying in their
pemmican sacks.
Then they set out for the pygmy village, weapons still ready in case of
any treachery. All of the men of the tribe were gathered around a great
fire, and a huge feast of roast brush turkey, sago-palm bread, and yams
was set out, all ready to eat, but not a woman or a child was in sight.
“That’s all right,” reassured the curator, as the others looked around
questioningly. “The English offered the pygmies any amount of bribes
for a single photograph of a woman, but they had all been moved up on
the mountain and no amount of persuasion could get them to call one
down. It means nothing hostile to us.”
They seated themselves in the circle. The pygmy men carried no arms,
but they could see weapons stacked against the trees near by, among
them the thin, flat blades of the sinister bamboo knives used in head
hunting. The feast went on merrily, the curator working out a system
of learning pygmy words by pointing at objects and making the question
sign. Speaking mixed Papuan and pygmy, a considerable conversation was
being carried on. He managed to convey the idea that birds and insects
were exchangeable for more of the beads, and then, finally, after a
good deal of groping--
“Him want you-fellah stop prenty much time here,” explained Baderoon
out of the tangle of words and signs.
The curator shook his head and pointed southward, smiling. Instantly an
angry look shot across the faces of the older men. They shook their
heads vigorously, and some halting Papuan dialect followed.
“Him say taboo. Prenty debbil-debbil mountain thataway,” translated
Baderoon. “No good. Prenty hantus. Must go back!” He pointed north.
The curator smiled. “Yes, we will--not! We might go back and circle
around them, fellows--but, no, they’ll have scouts spying on us until
we get out of the country, and it’ll be a jungle fight all the way to
try to get past them to the south. No; we’ll have it out with them now!”
“Tell them,” he said, sternly, “that the _Yow-nata_ is not afraid of
any devil-devil, nor taboo, nor hantus.”
An angry buzz greeted Baderoon’s translation. The little black-bearded
men shook their heads violently, and some of them began to look around
for their weapons. There were at least forty in the party.
“Looks like a close-up!” muttered the curator, fumbling for his
explosive bomb. “We’ll retreat in good order to the south, boys, if
it comes to a fight. Perhaps if I show ’em this bomb it’ll take their
minds off it for the present. Good to have it handy, anyhow.”
All eyes were fixed on the shining bauble as he drew it forth. The
effect, however, was somewhat different than he had intended. A fierce
cupidity shone in the eyes of the old fellow of the trail--here was a
bead that transcended all other beads in glory!
“_Kema! Kema!_” (“Give! Give!”) he grunted, avidly, holding out his
hand for it.
The curator shook his head. “_Yow-yowri!_” (“Bewitched!”) he said,
pointing to the sun. It flashed like a little sun in his hand, but, far
from being made afraid by its mysterious reflections, the desire for
its possession gleamed fairly murderous out of the pygmies’ eyes. A
dozen hands reached out for it. Suddenly a black hand like a monkey’s
paw shot under the curator’s arm and the bauble was snatched from his
hand. The whites jumped to their feet, gathering in a close knot.
“This won’t do! Back off, boys, and get a little distance from them!”
barked the curator. They drew off, Sadok’s shield and sumpitan spear
covering their immediate retreat. But the pygmies were paying no
attention to them. They fought like wild men for the bomb, snatching
it from hand to hand, clawing and biting at one another with primal
savagery. In the midst of the snatching and grabbing a sharp hiss came
to their ears. They had broken off its primer in the struggle!
“Run, fellows, run!” yelled the curator. They did not stop to look
back. They heard the thing go off among the pygmies with a thunder
that shook the ground under them, as up the hill they tore, past the
tree houses and up the stony slopes of the mountain. Below them they
could see a great sandy crater in the center of the village, the huts
all slanting askew, while warriors were running to the coconut trees,
arming themselves hurriedly. A short distance up the hill the curator
turned and fired the air pistol with a long-range shell. The deafening
crash of its explosion rang through the jungle over the village,
and they saw little black men thrown violently about, like black
tumble-bugs, with its concussion. They waited no longer, but toiled up
the hill as fast as they could climb. Shouts below and calls in the
jungle came to their ears. There was plenty of fight left in the little
hill men, and they knew that the mountain was being surrounded and that
a jungle fight of the most difficult character lay ahead of them.
For a time they climbed steadily. The vegetation was thin and one
could see for some distance, so that the native archers could not get
up close as in the deep jungle. With Sadok and Baderoon as outliers,
they headed for the top. The mountain was another extinct volcanic
cone, and the same outcroppings of lava rock, the same belts of century
plants and aloes, were met as on the mountain back of Cassowary Camp.
Next came bare patches of huge volcanic rocks. They could look out,
here, over the sea of jungle-covered mountains, and from the curve
of the sides of their own they judged that it was a perfect cone, a
volcano of somewhat recent activity. Sadok came running in, and in his
hand was a long cane arrow. The point was blood-red, and at first they
thought he had been hit, but his actions did not indicate it.
“Littly black man close!” he breathed, heavily. “Shoot’m arrow.”
The curator took the missile and examined its head carefully. It was
made of a blood-red, six-sided crystal, thinned to a point and lustrous
and polished.
“Cinnabar, boys!” he exclaimed. “This tribe know all about Red
Mountain. That’s why they wouldn’t let us go south, and it’s why the
southern tribe at Wamberibi would not let the English go north, too! I
bet we see it when we reach this cone top!”
They pressed on swiftly, the vegetation now scattered and consisting
only of the most arid and gnarly species, all plentifully provided with
thorns.
“Look, _Orang-kaya_!” called Baderoon, hastily, pointing back down the
mountain.
Five small hill men were climbing after them on the slopes.
“Never mind them. Put out for the top, boys,” shouted the curator,
running after them. “We’ve got to get there and dig in before any
flanking parties cut us off.”
They raced up over the lava-strewn slopes. The top of the mountain was
a bare cone, with a deep, narrow crater, perhaps fifty feet in bore,
extending down into it. A faint odor of sulphur came up from its dark
depths. Around the lip was fine lava dust and small rocks. For at least
fifty yards down the slopes there was no cover of any sort.
“You and Sadok stand off those beggars, Dwight. Dig in on the rim
of the crater and pick ’em off. Here’s where we make our stand for
the present,” ordered the curator, as he and the rest of the party
ran around the crater to the south. They pawed shallow pits in the
detritus and lay down, watching the slopes below. No pygmies had come
in sight yet, but there was much that was interesting to study. Out of
the jungle clearing on the opposite mountain, beyond them to the south,
rose the smoke of a huge signal fire, and their glasses could make out
huts in the trees near it. To the east, the long wall of the Great
Precipice stretched southward, halving one side of the mountain ranges,
with the green of the lowland jungle swarming up to its base. Near its
brink was a small clearing and yet another pygmy village. It was their
country, all right!
But to the southeast rose a sight that held them all breathless. The
geological formation in the interior was dark and stratified, of basic
instead of volcanic rock, and the ragged edges of thin coal seams could
be picked out running through the jungle along bare escarpments. Before
them rose sheer a truncated cone of a mountain, separated from the
interior formations by a deep gap. Its whole upper half was bare of
jungle, and across it, in a horizontal belt, ran a vein of deep pink,
at least four hundred feet from top to bottom!
“Red Mountain!” gasped the curator, as he and Nicky stared speechless
at the fabulous wealth spread out before their eyes. “Pure
cinnabar--and Lord knows how many million tons of it! It makes that
Mexican deposit look like a thirty-cent Mex. dollar when you want to
buy a tin of white man’s tobacco with it! Well, while we’ve got time,
the most important thing in the world to do now is to locate that
mountain on the map.”
The crack of Dwight’s automatic came to their ears as the curator got
out his notebook and the mess kit with his surveyor’s compass packed
in one of its pans. Dwight and Sadok were already at work, they could
hear, and as they opened out the map page a long cane arrow came
singing over their shoulders and soared on down the slope.
“Gee! They must be getting close up on that side! Make it snappy, sir!”
said Nicky, drawing his revolver and laying it on a rock beside him.
“We’ll add about three miles to the base line, from the banyan tree to
this cone,” said the curator, imperturbably, drawing it in with his
pencil. Then he sighted Red Mountain most carefully through the compass
bars. “Distance, about seven miles in an air line, I should judge.
What do you think, Nick?”
Baderoon, to their right, gave a grunt and shot his stout bow. The
arrow soared down the slope and into a thick aloe clump on the edge of
the jungle. A little black man rose out of it and fell over backward.
“Good shot, Baderoon!” commented Nicky, admiringly. There was no better
archer, or fighter, either, than their Papuan “black boy!” Nicky
squinted across at Red Mountain, shimmering in the distance.
“Seven, or nearly eight miles, I should say,” he pronounced,
judgmatically.
An arrow sprung from a rock about seventy yards down the slope as he
spoke. It came nosing up to them and fell just in front.
Nicky sighted the spot with his Officer’s Model. “Here’s where I
scintillate!” he laughed. “This old six-gun’s at her best at long
range. Save your shells, Mr. Baldwin. I’ll get that bird!”
Another arrow soared overhead, coming from the west. Then the curator
gave a low exclamation.
“Look, Nick! There goes another signal fire, far to the south. We’ll
have all pygmy land around us in another day!”
The revolver barked at that instant, and a puff of dust flew out from
the side of the rock behind which a hill man lay concealed.
“Scared him to death, anyhow!” joked Nicky, turning to look at the new
fire.
“We’re surrounded, all right, except on the east, and we can’t hold
off a whole army of them,” said the curator. “We’ve got two impossible
things to do, as I see it--get in to Red Mountain and bring off some
specimens and then make our escape from the country.”
“Fat chance!” grunted Nicky, cheerfully, firing his revolver again.
The curator studied the prospect to the east, for there lay their
only hope of escape. The terrific geological fault that had made the
Great Precipice was nearly buried on that side by the outpourings from
their volcano when it had been active, but the lava swept down to the
precipice edge in a frightful slope, where it ended abruptly. Blue
distance beyond it told of a considerable drop; how much could not be
conjectured.
The arrows were coming more thickly, now. It seemed that at least
twenty of the little hill men lay concealed in among the bowlders below
them, and the occasional pop of Dwight’s automatic told that more of
them had come up on his side also. Only to the east was there a free
passage, but no man could live on that slope. Nicky and Baderoon were
both busy, and once in a while they would get one of the pygmies,
exposing himself recklessly in some crawl to a nearer point of vantage.
The curator borrowed Nicky’s alcohol cook kit and went down below the
rim of the crater to a little rocky ledge inside on the brink of its
deep bore. Here he set about making a mulligan for the party, for it
was now long past high noon. He shook his half-empty canteen after
filling the soup tin.
“Water running low!” he muttered, uneasily. “We’ve got to get out of
this to-night! It’s up to me to do a scout down to the precipice brink
this afternoon, sometime.”
A perfect fusillade of shots, and a yell for help from Dwight’s side,
caused him to jump to his feet hastily and rush for that side of the
crater. Putting his head cautiously over the brink, he instantly
whipped out his air gun, for a long black line of pygmies was charging
up the slope, each man behind his shield, the yellow blades of their
bamboo knives sticking up over their shoulders. Sadok’s sumpitan was
powerless against them, and Dwight was frantically shoving a fresh clip
into the butt of his automatic. Then a shell from the air gun whistled
on its way, and its explosion burst in a riving crash over the center
of the black line. Dwight opened fire and those on the right flank
began to fall back, while Sadok, no longer able to contain himself,
dashed down the slope at the survivors of the left flank. He flung
himself at them with whirling parang as bamboo knives flashed out, and
in another instant he was in the center of a whirlwind of flashing
knives. The parang-ihlang sheared through their shields like paper, for
Sadok was a star swordsman. Five to one, he was getting the best of
them, when the white flash of a keen bamboo knife cut him across the
shoulder and he fell, guarding himself with the parang in his left hand.
Dwight’s bullets flew like hail, while the curator dashed down the
slope, armed only with Sadok’s abandoned sumpitan spear. In a second
he found himself facing the shields of the two pygmy survivors, who
circled him with ready knives. They were as light as feathers, but so
keen that a single cut would sever off a head, the curator knew; also
that he was a mere dub with that spear! Standing over Sadok, he stood
them off with the spear point, while the little black men danced and
feinted around him, watching their chance. He had counted on Dwight
following him, but a quick patter of shots from the crater came to his
ears, telling that they were busy at something urgent up there, too.
Then Sadok staggered to his feet.
“Shoot, _Orang_!” he gasped, hoarsely. In a flash the curator divined
his meaning. The sumpitan held a dart! He raised it suddenly to his
lips and blew the missile full into the face of the pygmy opposite
him. The other dashed in, to be met by the flash of Sadok’s parang,
which sheared the bamboo knife aimed at the curator like a straw.
Defenseless, he turned and ran for the jungle, while the other pygmy
fell in a limp heap before him.