“land ho! fellows—yonder to the east. can you make it out?”
the two youths beside the tall man who had spoken shaded their eyes from the tropical glare and searched the cloud banks on the horizon of the blue banda sea.
“i think i see it, sir,” said dwight. “part of those clouds seem to have faint white lines in them.”
“i see it!” exclaimed nicky, peering through his glasses. “it’s developing out like a camera plate—high, jungly mountains that seem to be floating in the clouds. i see dark spaces now, with streaks of sunlight edging the outlines of the hills. hurrah for aru!”
“that’s not aru; that’s ke’,” returned the[2] man. “aru is too low and flat to be seen yet. it lies to the east of ke’. our bungalow is on kobror, the southernmost of the aru islands; we ought to pass the port of dobbo in a few hours.”
the three white men were standing before a small palm-thatched deck house which was their home on the malay proa kuching. curator baldwin of the national museum was their leader. he was a tall, rangy giant of a man, his sinewy frame clad in tropical khaki, with the inevitable puttees of the east accentuating the muscular leanness of his long legs. one placed him easily—mining engineer or leader of a scientific field party, captain of his team in college days, most likely, that commanding sort of man to whom exploration in dangerous out-of-the-way places is all in the day’s work.
and the choleric blue eyes that looked a man in the eye from under his pith helmet, the sunburnt face with its gray mustache and firm chin, warned the casual stranger that here was the last man in the world to trifle with.
the two youths beside him were scarcely less noteworthy. their resolute, weather-tanned young faces bespoke the hardy outdoorsmen,[3] of the same breed, but younger, as the curator. dwight was tall and spare, with a keen hatchet face and merry gray-green eyes that twinkled at one when he talked, yet they could grow hard and cold as ice in time of peril. nicky was stout; habitually good-humored, habitually chuckling over the least joke, and always finding one and making himself the butt of it on every occasion. they were a great team; always “joshing” each other, always differing on every conceivable subject, yet devoted to each other and to the curator, whom they adored as an athlete and admired as a scientist. for two years they had been his assistants on expeditions in africa and in british guiana. he had picked them for this trip because of their tried and proven resourcefulness in facing conditions as they found them in wild lands. as unlike, physically, as two boys could be, they were alike in one thing—their sturdy independence of character. original in everything they did, they copied no one, neither in their outdoor equipment nor in their ways of living when in the jungle.
the malay proa on which the party was sailing bore the house flag of the museum floating from the end of her seventy-foot foreyard.[4] in these days of interisland steamers you will not see so many of her type, once the most common craft of the banda sea. her sails were huge mats of palm-fiber; her masts tripods of bamboo; and her body, built on ke’ by the greatest boat builders of the malay archipelago, was of hewn logs, doweled together along their edges and secured by ribs of teak bent in and lashed with rattan to projections on her planks. there was not an iron nail or a spike in her anywhere, but the curator had chartered her for the museum’s field expeditions among the islands as the best ship for the purpose, for her crew of javanese and bugis cost but their rations of rice and fish, with a small wage, and she could sail anywhere and be repaired at any island with native palm and rattan.
over the smooth rollers of the banda sea she bowled southward on the east monsoon, steadily rising the low hills of aru to the east. by midafternoon she had come off dobbo, the principal pearl port of the aru islands, and the captain altered her course slightly, heading for the coast of kobror, the wildest of the two great mainlands of aru.
out of the coral reefs that surround the harbor of dobbo put forth a long, black canoe.[5] her crew of naked blacks foamed up the water in spats of spray with their paddles, singing and shouting as they came. up in her high carved prow sat a white man, dressed in the cottons of the equatorial tropics, with a japanese-bowl hat sheltering his head from the sun. he rose and waved them a greeting as his canoe drew near.
“proa ahoy! i say, are you there, baldwin?” he shouted. “i’m going on to kobror with you.”
“hello, bentham! that’s fine, old man! come right aboard and we’ll have tiffin.... did you get my letter? these mail steamers only touch aru about once in a dog’s age, they tell me. how are you, old new-chum?” greeted the curator, grasping bentham’s hand as the canoe shot alongside and her crew of mop-haired papuans leaped aboard to mingle with their own crew.
“how am i, dea-rr man? my word! rippin’! yes, i got your letter, doncherknow. have a bungalow for you; i fancy it’s more or less done in, but it’s out in the jungle, as you wanted,” he replied, shaking hands heartily.
“it was mighty good of you, bentham!” thanked the curator. “we’ll fix it up and make it our headquarters while down here.[6] we’re stopping on kobror a day or so after paradise birds.”
he turned to introduce dwight and nicky, who had been studying bentham curiously. the bold, independent swagger of the australian was written in every line of his sunburnt face. he was the representative of the aru pearl company, the curator had told them, sole white man in a whole group of islands peopled by native black savages.
they led the pearl trader to their house on deck, where the javanese cook served tiffin. it was a cozy little retreat, about ten feet square by perhaps six high, and was built of bamboo arches thatched with palm-leaf attap. its floor was raised some six inches above the wet deck by springy bamboo poles laid side by side, and the thatch walls were lined with fragrant sandalwood boxes, which also served for bunks.
bentham was pathetically glad to see them, eager to talk and talk of the war and the world’s doings, with all the pensive loneliness of a white man condemned to months and months of existence with no other associates than papuan natives and chinese traders. the curator and the boys filled him up with news to his heart’s content. just to hear[7] their voices in the good old mother tongue once more, to feel their keen minds sympathetic with his own, was pleasure enough, and bentham basked luxuriantly in it.
“where to next, after kobror, baldwin?” he asked, after a pause in the flow of news.
“dutch new guinea,” puffed the curator. “that’s our main drive this time. our proa sails for there in a day or so.”
“dutch new guinea!” the trader’s face grew suddenly grave. “my word, man! have you read captain rawling’s report of the british expedition up the mimika? or about the dutchman, lorentz’s, dash to peak wilhelmina in the snow mountains? he’s the only one who has got to them, so far.”
“sure! we’re familiar with all that. but i can say this to you, bentham, you being an australian: the trouble with the british, and with the dutch, too, is that they can’t get away from the safari idea. get me? every one of their expeditions failed because of it. your englishman must have his tub and his champagne, his big tents and heavy camp furniture, his tinned sweetmeats and what not, and it takes an army of porters to carry it all. he learned the safari idea in[8] africa; but it won’t work in new guinea, because you can neither move a safari through the jungle nor live off the country with it. the british were a year and a half on the mimika, and they never got within forty miles of the snow mountains. it took them five weeks to cut a safari trail three miles long. all that country, from the great precipice to the sea, is a flat, dense jungle, with the rivers running through it so swiftly that they are impossible to ascend. they contented themselves with plane-table surveys made from a clearing in the jungle, and before long their army of porters died like flies of beriberi.
“we are going to try the american idea,” he continued, “going light—‘pigging it,’ the british call it—but it gets you somewhere. we’ll take our own light, concentrated foods along, and live off the country on wallabys and wild pig for fresh meat. there’ll be plenty for us.”
“but, man dea-rr—the danger!” objected bentham. “these aru niggers, here, had the fear of god dynamited into them some forty years ago, and they’ll jolly well never touch a white man again! but it’s different in dutch new guinea. they’re cannibals[9] and head hunters, and most of them have never even seen a white man. the english territory is somewhat policed, but, my word! the dutch have only two small posts six hundred miles apart on the whole west coast! you’ve heard of the tugeri head hunters? many a time our soldiers have chased them over the border—where they stay, to raid us again whenever they feel like it—as jolly a bunch of cannibals as ever cut a throat. and the pygmies of the mountains! my word! your little party would be massacred the first step ashore. what could you do against fifty of them, or a hundred?”
“oh—we’ll manage!” twinkled the curator, mysteriously.
“man dea-rr, it’s foolhardiness! here, let me give you some dynamite sticks, anyway. it’s plain suicide to go ashore without it. our expedition, with its army of porters, was all right—but you!”
“say, bentham, there’s been a war, you know!” laughed the curator, “and i was in it—lieutenant of a trench-bombing detail. dynamite is old stuff, now. i’ve brought a few grenades along, if we have any trouble.”
“you’ll need ’em for those blighters!”[10] exclaimed bentham. “so you were in france, eh?” the regret in his own tones told how keenly it galled him to have been stuck down here out of it all. the talk went back to the war again, of which he could never get enough.
“yes, we’re going to try a new tack in a new way,” said the curator, when they got back to the expedition again. “we’re going to land in that long lagoon at the head of dorgo bay. no white men have ever been in that way. the mountains come right close to shore there, and we can get on high ground right off and avoid that swampy jungle. then, southward along the ridges above the great precipice for ours, and we’ll see what we’ll see.”
“well!” said bentham, shaking his head, “good luck to you! but the pygmies or the outanatas will get you sure! you’ll have to wade through dynamite the whole way!”
“oh, we’re not exactly unprepared, you know,” demurred the curator. he showed him a curious pistol that the boys had often speculated over. it looked like a foreign automatic, only its barrel was a mere shell of steel, like a shotgun, and it had no hammer or firing mechanism.
[11]“i had this made. sort of shell thrower, you know. it’s rather effective at moderate ranges—shoots t. n. t. shells. it pays to look ahead in these expeditions and try to meet conditions as you imagine them likely to turn out. force, and plenty of it, is the only thing the savage really understands, so we’re fixed to defend ourselves if we have to.”
bentham looked relieved. “but suppose you get captured and tied up?” he questioned. “those beggars will eat you, sure—like you all the better if you are white.”
“i’ve been tied up before. mundurucus, up the orinoco. but i didn’t stay tied long.”
he twirled a ring on his right hand with his thumb as the others looked at him questioningly.
“picked this up from an old guru up in the himalayas. came out of some indian palace, most likely. i bet it’s got a history!” he pressed the monogram of the ring with his thumb tip as they watched. it was all done with one hand, but out of its base a tiny, two-edged steel knife stuck up from the base of the monogram. “you twist your wrist, with that ring knife inside, you see, and you’d be surprised to see how easy it is[12] to cut a thong around your wrists with it,” he exclaimed.
shouts on deck interrupted the boys’ exclamations of astonishment and brought them running out of the cabin. the mainland of kobror lay off not a mile to windward. the crew were tacking ship, and all was shouting and confusion.
“i guess we’d better get our outfits ready, boys,” said the curator. “call sadok and baderoon, so we can muster the party and see that they have everything.”
presently dwight returned, followed by sadok and baderoon. the former was a hill dyak, the “star” bird hunter of their party. he came up, completely armed, with his long sumpitan, or blowgun, of borneo in hand, and on his left arm was a conical shield of bamboo. a steel parang-ihlang hung at his belt, and over his shoulder was suspended the bamboo quiver of darts for the blowgun. his muscular brown arms and shoulders glistened in the sunlight which glinted on the gold and silver threads of his gorgeous chawat and the dull jewels that studded his jacket.
“what have you got for a sleeping rig in the jungle, sadok?” inquired the curator as the dyak stood waiting inspection.
[13]sadok turned him around, exposing the tightly rolled cadjan, or native mat, hung on his back. unrolled, it would be about four feet square, and it was house, blanket, mattress, and umbrella in one to him, for one corner of it was sewed into a pocket, so that he could wear the thing over his head when it rained.
“you’ll do, sadok. mr. bentham, here, will assign you some black boys to carry up our stuff when we land. you’ll take charge of them.”
“a’right, orang-kaya!” grinned sadok, and went forward among the crew again.
“baderoon next!” called the curator. “what you-fellah got to take ’long beach?”
baderoon burst into boisterous papuan merriment and did a handspring on deck. all he owned in the world was the long bow in his hand and a string about his middle, with a quiver of arrows dangling from it. his dress hardly needed taking off at night. there was a brass ring around one arm, with some tufts of human hair ornamenting it, whose owner had been eaten long ago—details obscure if you asked baderoon!—and there was a three-pronged comb stuck into the long frizzles of his mop of hair.[14] then, he wore a small tin mirror hanging by a string from his nose, and when baderoon had put on that prized possession he had said the last word in dandyism!
“here, baderoon-fellah, catch’m blanket!” said the curator, tossing him a spare one. “and mind you don’t wear it about your neck, the way the wanderobos did when the english forbade them to come into town without a blanket to cover their nakedness!”
baderoon exploded in a gust of merriment and tied the blanket decorously about his waist. at a sign of dismissal he went forward to rejoin sadok. the proa was now tacking in through the coral reefs. a fleet of black canoes came out from the village on shore to meet her. the paddlers scrambled aboard and immediately surrounded the white men, pointing and gesticulating with unslaked papuan curiosity. their long noses hooked at them like parrots’ beaks as they cackled boisterously, fingering freely and unabashed the clothing and equipment of the whites.
in a final reach the proa ran hard aground on the white sand beach, and everyone prepared to jump ashore over her bow.
“so long, for the present, baldwin,” said bentham, shaking hands. “i’ve got some[15] pearl business to attend to here with the chief, and i sha’n’t see you again. these rotters will carry up your luggage as your man directs. send for me if you need anything.”
he nodded cordially and was off into the village of wamba, which straggled along the shore under lines of coco palms. they landed and went up its one street, followed by a long line of black porters, each with a single article balanced on his head. the veranda of their bungalow peeped out of the jungle on a low hillside at the end of the street. bamboos hovered over it thickly, their nodding willow-leaved foliage almost hiding its thatched roof from view. here all their outfit was set down and the curator began settling like an old campaigner.
the boys sat out on the veranda, looking down on the main street of wamba with the keenest interest. the tall peaked gables of the thatch houses lined both sides of the sandy road. each house was made of long bamboo poles, laid up a-shaped like a wedge tent and lashed with rattan at their tops. every foot of the street seemed covered with busy people, for everybody’s business was being transacted out in the main road, in[16] everyone’s way. there were mop-headed papuan natives, strolling around with bundles of sugar cane over their shoulders; javanese sailors in their conical straw hats, buying parrots from turbaned mohammedan bugis; chinese merchants buying sago bread from more naked natives, who carried it by a yoke and two slings like a pair of dutch pails; more javanese, repairing a proa plank with native adzes; and a constant stream of aru hunters and fishermen, coming in with fowl, trepang, mother-of-pearl shells, birds, and coconut shells in baskets. for domestic pets there were pigs, kangaroos, goats, tame bobos (pelicans), and parrots everywhere, wandering at will about the street or swinging from a perch under the thatch porches.
then a native hunter came wandering by, with a spotted cuscus, or native opossum, hanging by its tail, and him the curator snared, to buy the specimen from him and engage the man for a guide to the blakangtana, the jungle hinterland, next day.
tiring of the noisy scene at length, dwight went inside and lay down on a cool rattan lounge, leaving nicky to help sort collection boxes with the curator. after reading[17] awhile, he lay down the book with a sigh of content and looked idly up into the thatch that was thickly woven through the poles of their roof. indolently gazing, he noticed a dark mass overhead, seemingly buried in the thatch. examining it more carefully, he could see yellow and black marks, and concluded that it must be a tortoise shell that some one had left there. but the thing still fascinated him, and every little while he would look up at it again, while the others went on with the business of settling the house. then a slight rustle in the thatch attracted him, and, gazing up at it steadily again, it suddenly resolved itself into a large snake, compactly coiled up in a kind of knot! dwight’s jaw dropped as he detected the head and its bright eyes in the very center of the folds.
“good lord, fellows!” he called out, jumping to his feet, “here’s a boa constrictor, a python!—up in our roof!”
the curator jumped up the steps of the veranda in a bound. “where! show me him!” he demanded.
“right up there!” laughed dwight, quivering with excitement. “and making himself at home just as nice as nice!”
[18]sadok started to draw his parang, but the curator stopped him.
“wait!” he commanded. “we don’t want to spoil his skin.”
baderoon came running in. “me kill’m! me catch’m tailie! me kill plenty snake on bouru!” he yelled, begging the curator for permission to show them.
the latter smiled quietly. “clear out, boys—and watch the fun!” he said, picking up the lamp off the table and sweeping a lot of small things out of the way. “ever see a native kill a python? i guess the house will stand it! go get’m baderoon-fellah!”
baderoon jumped for the rafters, and there was a violent commotion in the thatch as he dropped down with the tip of the boa’s tail in both hands. he and sadok tugged away at it, soon ripping down about ten feet of the writhing coils, while the others ran laughing for the door. the commotion inside increased, and then there was a heavy thump and the crash of chairs and tables upset and flying about, and then baderoon emerged, running down the steps with about thirty feet of snake behind him, twisting and lashing with its thick coils. the python swept everything with him and made a last[19] stand with its neck hooked about a veranda post, while the boys yelled and catcalled with glee. then baderoon tore him loose and, running fast, flew with him toward the jungle, where, stopping suddenly, he snapped the snake’s long body like a whiplash and smashed his head against a tree.
“whee!” yelled nicky, delightedly, from the veranda. “me for the next one! gee! i’d like to try that stunt!”
but the python was not nearly dead yet, and he started to squirm off into the cane. baderoon was on him like a flash, and, grabbing the tail, he snapped him against the tree again. nicky, prancing down from the veranda, dashed in and fumbled at the writhing coils, to try it himself; but with a quick twist the powerful tail fastened itself around his ankle, and a huge, thick loop of the snake rose and curled itself tight around his waist. the boy gasped, crushed breathless, and it looked serious for a time as dwight and the curator rushed down to the rescue, but suddenly there was a bright flash of steel, and sadok’s parang met the next loop coming down over the boy’s head and clove it nearly in two.
“me sorry, orang-kaya,” said sadok, as[20] the snake collapsed and nicky squirmed free of the aimless coils. “me spoil’m specimen?”
“you did just right, sadok!” said the curator, heartily. “he could have crushed nicky to death, even in his last throes—”
“him plenty debbil-debbil!” interrupted baderoon, coming up from freeing nicky. “white boy nebber, nebber let snake-fellah catch’m first! mus’ run with him-a tailie—fast!” he explained, earnestly.
“well,” said the curator, after the fat one had been guyed to everybody’s satisfaction, “le’s go in for a look-see. perhaps some more interesting creatures are camping out in our bungalow!”
they explored every nook and cranny of the hut, dislodging a few kangaroo mice, which were captured and added to the collections after hilarious chases, but no larger visitors were found, and no poisonous snakes, rare throughout the archipelago, were discovered. the curator set the lamp on a table out on the veranda, after supper, and they sat around it, collecting the rare moths and beetles attracted by its light. as a nightcap, the brilliant and wonderful clear-winged moth came fluttering in, and the curator snatched at it avidly with his net.
[21]“cocytia d’urviller!” he gasped, taking the gorgeous prize from the net. “boys, we are in luck! there are not five of these in all the museums of america! i guess that will be about all for to-night!”
the party turned in, and long before dawn were awakened by the native hunter at the veranda steps. gulping some hot coffee and downing a rasher of bacon and eggs, they slung on their knapsacks, grabbed their guns, and followed him to the boat for a trip to the mainland in the mighty jungles of aru, where dwelt the great bird of paradise.
