meanwhile nicky and sadok had been exploring into the untracked jungle to the southward. the low hills of aru grew more rocky, and the rank jungle gave way to sparse open growth, with rocky soil and wild grass swales here and there. it was hot, out here in the sun, and their canteens were in frequent use. presently a wild brush turkey jumped from cover and ran cackling and gobbling through the bush growth. he went like a deer, as nicky whipped out the officer’s colt and fired on the run. at the same time sadok’s sumpitan coughed and its dart flashed across the grass tops.
“doubled!” shouted nicky, as the turkey tumbled and lay kicking stiffly. they ran out to retrieve it. only the dart of the sumpitan stuck in its side.
“missed, by hookey!” laughed nicky at himself. “judged by dyak standards, i’m[43] a mere swine, i suppose. eh, sadok? say, what poison are you using now?” he exclaimed suddenly. “that turkey fell over like a shot. the upas-tree stuff takes some time—three hours for a man, they tell me.”
sadok held up the little pot of bamboo for him to smell. “upas vine, orang-kichil” (little chief), he explained. “him different tree. red bark. ver’ quick!”
“smells like strychnia to me,” said the boy, wonderingly. “beats all how nature has provided a specimen of that family of trees all over the tropics throughout the world. india, the nux vomica; south america, the wourali; here, some new one that i don’t know. i’ll ask the curator some day.”
they broiled two great steaks from the breast of the turkey for the midday meal, for the poison from the darts does not reduce the edibility at all, and sadok stowed the legs for further food. after the lunch they set out in a generally southeasterly direction, as nicky knew it would bring them at length to another of those odd channels that divide aru, and he wanted to see something of vorkai, the southernmost island. a large screw pine came in sight. its almost bare branches twisted high into the bright sunlight,[44] and the spikes of daggerlike leaves growing in clusters at the branch tips drew an exclamation of pleasure from sadok, for he was nearly out of pandanus leaf to wrap “spec’mens” in. they went over to it.
“hi!” called nicky. “look who’s here!”
a large brown animal was climbing around up near the tops.
“tree kangaroo. get him! the curator will want one!” cried the boy, drawing his revolver. he aimed carefully, and at the report the animal flinched, but seemed to maintain its hold in the branches. he fired again, with the same result. the tree kangaroo now moved sluggishly toward another branch.
“shoot, sadok! i must have hit him, but he sure can carry a lot of lead!”
sadok raised the blowgun to his lips and held his cupped fist over his mouth. filling his lungs, he blew a full breath. the dart soared up into the tree top and they saw it sticking from the animal’s side. presently his limbs grew limp and he partly fell, but his long, hooked claws caught in the branches and hung. he made no further move.
“dead as a mackerel, but i’ll have to swarm up after him!” declared nicky, emphatically.[45] he was a fearless climber, and he shinned the trunk and was soon in the branches. worming up one of them, he reached the tree kangaroo. it was like its cousins, the wallaby of new guinea and the great gray kangaroo of australia, but with heavy, coarse fur and long, hooked claws especially adapted to climbing.
“hit him both times, myself,” he called down: “gorry! but he’s tenacious of life!” he detached the animal from its hold and dropped it down. it weighed some sixty pounds. they were an hour skinning it, after which sadok put away some of the choicest meat, for he never let an opportunity for food go by in the jungle.
then nicky spied a great blue butterfly, the papilio ulysses, soaring through the tops of the screw pine overhead. they set off in hot pursuit, with the skin of the kangaroo hanging to his belt.
“dwight will want this fellow!” urged nicky, stumbling through thickets and over stony and coralline ground. hermit crabs scuttled out of their way in the underbrush; lizards of every shade streaked across under their feet, but still the lad kept his eyes on that magnificent prize which persistently[46] flew high. at length it came down and alighted on a moist spot in the earth, evidently thirsty. he crept up and dropped his helmet over the great metallic-blue beauty.
“hooray! what a prize for dwight! how in thunder am i ever going to carry it, though?” he started to pin it to his helmet, but sadok shook his head.
“him all tore, in bushes,” he objected. “me show’m.” searching the jungle awhile, he presently came back with a broad, flat cactus leaf which he was busily paring of thorns as he walked. then he slit it open with his kriss and gouged out a recess for the body of the butterfly in its pulpy interior. lining it with flat pieces of pandanus, he was ready for papilio ulysses, who was forthwith spread out, flat winged, and then securely bound in his green prison with thongs of rattan.
“some sandwich!” grinned nicky as it was slipped into the map pocket of his rucksack. “worth about fifty dollars just as it stands! won’t i have some fun with old dwight, with it, though!”
they abandoned collecting for the time, as the canteens were running low and water was getting to be a problem unless they expected to live on what could be poured from[47] the air plants that grew profusely in the dry jungle. a small ravine running downhill looked promising, and they climbed down into it. after half a mile it grew swampy, and soon a small, clear stream of fresh water developed. they were filling the canteens at the nearest hollow when voices came through the jungle, the chatter of a child and the deep cackle of an old man, both speaking papuan. sadok and nicky waited. presently both appeared, coming down to the brook. the man was an almost naked, mop-haired aru native, carrying a bow and quiver; the pickaninny wore only a string around his fat middle, and had a tiny bow in his hands. both jumped and dashed back into the jungle, with grunts and squeals of fear, at sight of nicky.
the latter laughed and called after them reassuringly. presently the pickaninny appeared, climbing a sapling trunk like a small tree frog. he stopped, peering around the trunk at them curiously, his feet dug into the bark with bunched-up toes, his sinewy little hands wound around the trunk, while his inquisitive face looked at them with a half-fearful expression.
nicky smiled at him and dug into his[48] pockets. he fished out a small bag of beads and held out a few of the sparkling trinkets in his palm. the youngster’s eyes snapped. they could see the old man peering at them through the underbrush, arrow on bow, afraid to come out at all.
nicky beckoned to the boy and motioned to give him some. he finally descended the tree, and with many advances and retreats ventured out to clutch the beads in his small paw. then he dashed back into the jungle, where a childish yell and the sound of a slap told that the old man had seized him and rifled him of his beads.
nicky called out the pickaninny and gave him more. then the old man poked his head out, and sadok spoke to him in malay. he knew that tongue enough to talk, and presently they were exchanging news. with much coaxing he was finally got out where nicky could pour him quite a handful of the green, blue, red, and yellow trinkets. much impressed, he jerked his thumb over shoulder and invited them to visit their village, which, he said, lay a short distance on.
they followed up what appeared to be something of a trail, and soon the jungle cleared and a blue arm of the sea lay before[49] them, with a large island offshore. nicky took it to be varkai, but his attention was soon called to the village itself. it was of two palm huts, built on piles about seven feet above the ground, and the place was crowded with natives, most of whom gave one astonished look at nicky and then bolted for the jungle.
the old man called them back, and presently the orang-kaya, or chief, came toward him, holding out his hand for more beads. it was not long before nicky was the center of an excited throng of chattering papuans, who fingered his clothing and pranced around him with characteristic native merriment. nicky was a whole circus in himself, he began to appreciate. men, women, and children never seemed to tire of standing and gazing at him, after which they would usually do a somersault or roll on the ground with explosions of boisterous laughter. to them he and his clothes were the funniest thing they had ever looked at.
as it was growing late, sadok arranged for a night’s lodgings. a space about ten by twenty feet at the end of one of the huts was cleared off and turned over to their use. here they laid down their few belongings[50] and sat down on mats to watch the strange life around them. a clay floor behind a partition served for a fireplace, where sadok set about cooking the kangaroo meat. the rest of the hut was jammed with natives talking and laughing incessantly, only ceasing when their eyes were fully occupied in staring at him.
in the midst of it all, a yell, “bajak! bajak!” (“pirates! pirates!”) arose, and everyone tumbled out of the hut and poured down to the beach. great guard fires piled up along shore were lit, and their lurid glare lighted up the whole scene; the proas of the natives hauled up on the beach, the warriors dancing along the shore, brandishing their bows and spears and yelling defiance, and the two huts back a short distance, with the black wall of the jungle behind them, made a wild picture that long remained vivid in nicky’s memory.
nicky and sadok had come down, eager to be in the fray, and it seemed to the boy that never had he been in so savage a spot on the earth as in this forgotten corner of aru, with native warriors around him and a pirate ship from the new guinea coast somewhere out there on the sea.
[51]presently he made her out a long double proa, or catamaran, with one big lateen sail; a small lakatoi, with at least fifty warriors in her, the orang-kaya told him. she came on swiftly, under both paddles and sails, and, when some fifty yards off the beach, opened fire with the flash and bang of singapore muskets loaded with black powder.
bows twanged all about nicky, javelins flew through the air, sadok’s sumpitan coughed. some of the younger warriors turned to run at the sound of gunfire, but the older men held steady, for their homes and ships would be plundered if defeated. nicky drew his revolver and opened fire in return. the heavy thunder of its .38 special cartridges, close at hand, made all the warriors near him jump and run, but the fact of six flashes along shore and the execution it evidently did among the pirates caused them to stop paddling and haul in sheet as the lakatoi swung around.
“now, then, sadok, launch one of those proas and after ’em and we’ll have ’em on the run!” barked nicky, seizing the psychological moment to attack. sadok called on the orang-kaya, and he and a dozen warriors sprang to the nearest proa and launched her,[52] nicky reloading swiftly. as she put out for the pirate lakatoi he opened up with a second burst of pistol shots. the pirate was now making all sail out to sea, the few flashes from her native muskets showing that most of her crew were paddling hard away from them. presently her mat sail came down and she paddled into the eye of the wind, where their own proa could not follow. nicky shot a third burst after them as the range widened out of bow shot.
“gee! the curator told me that new guinea pirates still attacked the villages in the wilder part of aru, but i couldn’t have believed it!” he muttered to himself. “now i’ve been in it—and we drove them off! must be a fine country we’re going to, what sadok!”
“plenty bad mans ober dere!” agreed sadok. “mus’ shoot all time.”
they picked up a few dead men out of the dark waters. hideously streaked with white clay, they wore long white boars’ tusks through their noses, and had a peculiar breast guard, made of rows of boars’ tusks one above the other, woven in a kind of net of palm-fiber. a keen, flat bamboo knife floating in the water gave nicky a clew as to the tribe.
[53]“tugeri!” he exclaimed. “head hunters. they were after heads and loot, sadok! a sudden attack and a quick getaway is their style. last year they appeared suddenly inside the barbed wire of the dutch fort at merauke and decapitated six javanese and got away before the garrison could get out after them. we’ll have a time, with either them or the outanatas!”
the proa returned to shore amid the shouts and rejoicings of all the village capering about the beach. nicky and sadok, utterly weary, retired to their portion of the hut to sleep, after the first burst of enthusiasm had died down. but the natives made an all-night orgy of it. nicky put on his bathing suit headgear and his night socks over his arms and wrists, and turned in on a palm-fiber mat, while mosquitoes hummed about him and the noise and shouting and laughter on shore dulled away in his drowsy ears.
next day they bade good-by to the chief. he had a present to make, it seemed, in return for the white man’s services in repelling their visitors of the night before. out of a fetish bag, that held evidently the treasures of the entire village, he took a parcel carefully wrapped in cotton. unwinding it, he[54] drew out the skin of a bird of more than ordinary interest. reverently he unwrapped the last of its bindings, and handed it to nicky with a smile of grateful pleasure.
“gorry!” muttered the boy, as he received the present before the whole tribe. “if i’m not wrong, that’s the rarest of the rare—the magnificent bird of paradise! won’t the curator be tickled, though!”
it was a small bird, but brilliant in the extreme of plumage. the head was covered with small, brown, velvety feathers, but back of its neck arose a fan-shaped ruffle of the most brilliant yellow, backed by a second fan of intense metallic orange. the whole of the breast was rich, deep green, in changeable hues of peacock and purple. the tail was formed of two curved plumes of delicate metallic brown, which curved in airy spirals—a feathered gem as rich in coloring as the vividest-hued humming bird, but far larger.
“the only one!” managed the chief, in malay, as nicky bowed his thanks.
“i’ll bet it is! but two have been found in all new guinea. this is the first reported from aru. had it long, chief?”
“many years. no more. white man welcome!” grinned the old fellow, gratefully.
[55]they bade them all good-by and set out by compass for the neighborhood of camp. how to find it was something of a poser, but after a morning’s march the lay of the hills began to seem familiar once more and sadok led them in to the very jungle of tall trees where they had first seen the great birds of paradise.
dwight was in camp, and overjoyed at nicky’s present of the papilio ulysses, which was so rare a treasure that he at once set about pouring a plaster-of-paris mold for it and getting it under glass without delay.
“i wish i had a trade-last for you, old scout,” said dwight as he mounted the specimen, “but i haven’t. the curator and i have been mineralogizing since you were gone. we found out a lot about the interior of new guinea—”
“new guinea!” echoed nicky, amazedly.
“yes, new guinea,” retorted dwight, and he told nicky of the source of the channels that divide aru.
“and didn’t you get a single sea snake, down there?” asked nicky, regretfully. “the shallow sea’s full of ’em, all highly venomous, you know—”
“i didn’t!” shivered dwight, recalling the[56] hours they had spent unprotected on the raft. “that’s more in your line. real sea serpents, eh?”
“yep. i still believe in the sea serpent,” laughed nicky. “there are plenty of small ones among the new guinea coasts and up the lagoons. they have a broad, finny tail like an eel, but are true serpents. they swim up near the surface and live on fish, but have poison fangs just like many of the land snakes. that’s why i am still convinced that there may be a larger species, sometimes seen far at sea by ships. they have been too often reported to be a myth. but these islands are too dry and rocky for anything but lizards. where’s the curator gone?”
“he went after a black cockatoo which came through the grove awhile ago. i heard his gun recently.”
a little later the curator returned, carrying a specimen of the great black cockatoo, a rare find, but it was nothing to his delight over the magnificent bird of paradise that nicky sprang on him unawares.
“man dear, where did you get that!” he yelled, examining it avidly. “that’s the big prize of the expedition, so far. i guess we can go on to new guinea, now!”
[57]on the next day camp was broken and the party steered out of the jungle by compass and hunter’s paths, arriving back at the bungalow by nightfall. the following two days were mighty busy, for nicky, as “snakeologist” of the expedition, had a large assortment of reptile skins to prepare, and the curator, as ornithologist, likewise; and all of them had to be packed in ant-proof tin receptacles before leaving. dwight, as entomologist, mounted his specimens in flat, glass-covered wooden boxes, which could be packed a dozen at a time in tin cases.
that evening the curator hunted up the captain and crew of the proa and they warped her out into the harbor, for they were to sail for new guinea the next morning. they all slept aboard once more, and at dawn stood out of the coral reefs and headed around kobror for the hundred-mile run across to the coast of dutch new guinea. two mornings after, the lofty chain of the charles louis mountains, as the northern end of the snow mountains has been named, jutted out of the sea under banks of clouds. navigators have measured the height of these mountains at six to nine thousand feet, taking observations from the decks of passing vessels, while[58] the higher peaks of the snow mountains to the south rise to sixteen thousand feet. the mouths of a few rivers in that country have been noted on the map; but the hinterland remains a mystery to the world. even the south and north poles are better known.
by afternoon, the mainland had become quite visible, jungly foothills rising ridge on ridge to the base of the great precipice, which stretches south for two hundred miles, the greatest precipice in the world. above it towered the snowy peaks far back in the mainland. they came to realize how utterly unknown and impenetrable it all is, when they awoke next morning to find the proa at anchor in a deep bay, with the jungly mountains all around them and a lagoon thirty miles long stretching back into the hinterland. mangrove swamps lined the shore in an unbroken line. here and there a dent in them told of the mouth of a stream. no living human was in sight, but the smoke of signal fires rose from points along shore, and scouting parties of native savages could be made out through the glasses already watching them, swinging through the trees over the mangroves like troops of monkeys. now and then a long black canoe, with high[59] carved prow, would cross the upper lagoon, driven by lines of paddling blacks. the very haste of them spelled danger, the passing of the word through the villages that a strange proa was here. a short raid on shore, a few miles into the jungle at most, unless attempted by a whole regiment of soldiers, would be certain to end in ambush and murder. as for those dense jungles and towering mountains back a day’s march into the interior—unexplored! danger! pygmies! head hunters! was written all over them!
they were examining the shore curiously, with a sense of the utter hopelessness of the undertaking oppressing them, when a huge black lakatoi, or native catamaran, jutted its prow around the point of a cape to seaward. everyone turned to watch it, and with chatterings and gesticulations the crew sprang to life.
“lakatoi, orang-kaya!” sang out sadok, pointing to seaward. she towered like a castle out of the sea. a single mast rose out of her amidships, carrying one long triangular mat sail with deeply incurved ends. around the mast was a wooden platform, a sort of fighting deck with rails around it, and it was held down on the two log canoes which floated[60] the structure by long bamboo arches like the backs of a bridge. the lakatoi was crowded with warriors whose spears and bows and clubs could be made out jutting up through the serried ranks like tiny black jackstraws.
“bajak! bajak!” (“pirates! pirates!”) rose the excited yell forward, and there was a mad scramble of the crew to the waist for weapons.
“every lakatoi full of natives is a ‘pirate’ to these beggars,” laughed the curator. “they’ll probably prove hostile, though. look to your guns, boys.”
“are you going to use the queer pistol, sir?” asked dwight, curiously, slipping a clip of cartridges into the butt of his automatic.
“nope. won’t need to this time,” smiled the curator. “got to save it for something worse!” he strolled to the deck house and went inside.
dwight and nicky watched the lakatoi bowling down toward them. the natives on her were brandishing their bows and spears and did not seem in the least friendly. their own crew now lined the rails of the proa, armed with a motley collection of singapore muskets, old repeating rifles of the spencer vintage, and bows and arrows. they[61] yelled defiance at the approaching catamaran and were evidently eager for a fight.
she came steadily on, while everyone crouched behind the gunwales, peering at her. at about fifty yards a cloud of arrows sailed from her and came swishing and singing aboard, striking the deck house and sticking in the soft planks. dwight picked up one of them, while the thunder of black-powder guns roared out from their own ship. the arrow was of cane, without nock or feathers, a yard long, and had a point of ebony notched with barbs for a foot back.
“outanatas!” he exclaimed. “they mean business. give it to ’em, nick!” they fired their pistols, hoping to add to the number who had already dropped struggling on the fighting platform. sadok’s long sumpitan stuck out over the gunwale, and at every cough from its muzzle a yelling, arrow-shooting native would grow livid and fall helplessly among his comrades. her deck was a shambles, but there were plenty of them left and she came steadily on.
a crash shivered the proa from stem to stern as the lakatoi’s high prows rode up over their gunwale, and twenty blacks leaped aboard, stabbing with their spears over shields[62] that were hideous with the carved scrolls of diabolical faces on them. parangs flashed out among the crew and a fierce hand-to-hand struggle on deck ensued. the crew charged at the invaders, led by sadok, whose whirling parang-ihlang swung around his head in red flashes that cleft to the bone where they struck. the boys held off, firing deliberately where a particularly fierce native seemed to be carrying all before him. on and on came the boarders in a living black stream, while the air sang with arrows from those still on the lakatoi. they were outnumbered, three to one. slowly the crew gave back in the furious mêlée, the struggling mass of brown and black men stabbing and cutting in a writhing heap in the waist. behind them two tall natives fought toward the masts, armed with blazing torches to set the sail afire. with a fierce burst of pistol shots the boys picked them off.
then the brown flash of the curator’s long frame leaped out of the deck house. an arrow pierced his helmet as his arm swept over his head in the cricketer’s swing. a brown object like a baseball shot over to the lakatoi, followed by another and another as the arm went on swinging with incredible swiftness.
[63]brr-aaam! brr-aam! brr-aam! the detonation was frightful, riving the lakatoi apart in great splinters of logs and planks as the grenades exploded. men, sails, and spars were torn apart in livid flashes of blinding light. the concussion knocked down the combatants on their own ship, while a giant, foamy wave leaped out of the sea and engulfed them, the water falling on the fighting men in the waist like a deluge. terror-stricken, the boarders gave back, falling like flies before the busy parangs, the survivors leaping headlong into the sea. of the lakatoi there was nothing left but a mass of floating fragments. in a moment more it was all over and the crew stood breathing heavily, looking at the curator with broad grins of delight.
“welcome to new guinea!” laughed the curator, grimly, standing with a fourth hand grenade in his grip, its firing mechanism still unarmed. “i guess that will be about all, captain,” he said to the jurugan, who stood nursing a cut shoulder. “stop those fellows!” he ordered, for the guns were beginning to bark again at the survivors of the lakatoi swimming in the water. “let ’em get ashore and tell all about it. ought to give us quite a rep! how did you make out,[64] boys?” he asked, turning to them coolly. “this was nothing compared with some of our trench parties.”
“nice souvenir you’ve got, sir!” grinned nicky, pointing to the long arrow still sticking in the curator’s helmet. “dwight and i got off easy. they didn’t seem to pay much attention to us. never saw a firearm before, i suppose. a lot of the crew seem dead or wounded, though, and i saw baderoon go down.”
“get hold of sadok, when you can,” ordered the curator. “i see he’s busy in the waist. and have them bring baderoon into the deck house.”
some of the crew were now cleaning up the waist and others were hoisting the anchor by its primitive wooden windlass so as to sail the proa farther up the lagoon. sadok came up, breathing happily through his wide malay nostrils.
“me have’m lov’y fight, orang-kaya!” he beamed. “catch’m three head!” he grinned, holding up the gory trophies for them to admire. “but you, orang-kaya!” his eyes looked adoringly at the curator. “white man debbil-debbil verree strong! him fight like hell!”
