the gunboat was a large one, and carried two midshipmen besides parkhurst and balderson, who were, however, their seniors. the mess consisted of the four lads, a master's mate, the doctor's assistant, and the paymaster's clerk. in the gun room were the three lieutenants, the doctor, the lieutenant of the marines, and the chief engineer. the crew consisted of a hundred and fifty seamen and forty marines; the serpent having a somewhat strong complement. she had been sent out specially for service in the rivers, being of lighter draught than usual, with unusually airy and spacious decks, and so was well fitted for the work. the conversation in the junior mess of the serpent was very lively that evening. the vessel since her arrival on the station had made two runs between singapore and penang, but those on board had seen but little of the country, and were delighted at the thought of a possibility of active service, and the talk was all of boat expeditions, attacks from piratical prahus, of the merits of the bayonet and rifle opposed to kris and spear, and of sporting expeditions in which elephants, tigers, and other wild beasts were to fall victims of their prowess.
“you will find that you won't get much of that,” the mate, who was president of the mess, said, after listening to their anticipations of sport. “i have been on the west coast of africa and know what it is poking about in muddy creeks in boats, tramping through the jungle, knee deep in mud, half the crew down with fever, and the rest worn out with work and heat. i can tell you it is not all fun, as you youngsters seem to think, but downright hard work.”
“ah, well! any amount of work is better than standing here doing nothing,” dick said cheerfully, for the mate was known as a proverbial grumbler. he had been unfortunate, and, as is usually the case, his misfortunes were in some degree due to himself, for he was fond of liquor, and although, when on board, he took no more than his share, he was often somewhat unsteady in his speech when he returned from a run ashore; and although the matter was not grave enough for his captains to report altogether unfavorably of him, it was sufficiently so for them to shrink from recommending him for promotion, and in consequence he had seen scores of younger men raised over his head. he had been for some time unemployed before he had joined the serpent, and had been appointed to her only because captain forest, who was a friend of his family, had used his interest on his behalf. he had, however, when he joined, spoken frankly to him.
“i have asked for you, morrison,” he said, “simply for the sake of your father; but i tell you frankly, that unless my report is a thoroughly favorable one, you are not likely to be again employed. i was told that there was nothing special against you, but that in no case since you passed have you been warmly spoken of. it has been said that you know your duty well; but they had privately learned that you were fond of liquor; and although no charge of absolute drunkenness had been brought against you, it was considered that you would not make a desirable officer in a higher rank. now your future depends upon yourself; if you have the resolution to give up the habit, you may yet retrieve yourself. if i find that you do so, i shall certainly take the opportunity of giving you a chance to distinguish yourself, and shall strongly urge your claim to promotion. if i am not able to do this, you must make up your mind to be permanently put upon the shelf.”
the admonition had not been in vain, and since joining the serpent morrison had made a successful effort to break himself of the habit. he had very seldom gone ashore, and when he did so, never went alone, and always returned at an early hour, and without having taken more than he would have done in the ordinary way on board. he had not, however, given up his habit of grumbling, and his messmates were so accustomed to his taking a somber view of everything that his prognostication as to the nature of their work up the river had but little effect upon them.
“what do you think, sandy?” harry parkhurst asked the scotch assistant surgeon.
“i know nothing about it, except what i have read. they say that the country is healthy; but it stands to reason that this cannot be so while you have got rivers with swamps and jungles and such heat as this. however, we have a good supply of quinine on board, and with that and our allowance of spirits, i hope that we shan't, as morrison says, have half the ship's company down with the fever. it is all in our favor that we have only just come out, for they say that newcomers can resist the effects of these tropical rivers much better than those whose constitution has been weakened by a residence in the country. as to the sport, i have no desire to kill any animal that does not meddle with me. my business is all the other way, and if any of you get mauled, i will do my best to help the doctor to pull you through; but i am very well on board the ship, and have no desire to go tramping about among the swamps, whether it be to hunt animals or fight malays.”
“you think that everyone should stick to his last, sandy,” dick said with a laugh. “well, i only wish there were more on board of your opinion, for that would give more chances to us who like to stretch our legs ashore for a change.”
“i can stretch my legs here if i want to,” the scotchman said quietly, “and am not anxious to do more. i suppose, if there are expeditions against the malays, i shall have to go with them; but the fewer of them there are the better i shall be pleased.”
the talk was more serious aft, where the doctor and first lieutenant were dining with the captain. it ended by the latter saying, “well, doctor, if what your friend hassan said be true, we are likely enough to have our hands pretty full, and shall have to watch this fellow sehi as sharply as we do his neighbors. he is not under our protection yet, and if he sends his prahus down the river to plunder on the coast, as hassan says, he is not the sort of character likely to do us credit, and the position of a british resident with him would be the reverse of a pleasant one. however, we must hope that he is not as black as he is painted. he has evidently put the other chiefs' backs up, and we must receive their reports of him with some doubt. however, i have no doubt that, if he turns out badly, we shall be able to give him a lesson that will be of benefit to him.”
the first day's voyage up the river by no means came up to the anticipations of the midshipmen as to the country through which they were to pass. the width of the river varied from a quarter of a mile to three hundred yards; the banks on each side were lined with mangroves, presenting a dreary and monotonous aspect. progress was slow, the steam launch going ahead and sounding the depth of water, the captain having but little faith in the assertion of the native pilot that he was perfectly acquainted with every bank and shallow. being now the dry season, the tops of many of these shoals were dry, and numbers of alligators were lying half in and half out of the water, basking in the sun.
several of the officers who possessed rifles amused themselves by shooting at these creatures, but it was very rarely that any attention was paid to their firing, the balls glancing off the scaly armor without the alligators appearing to be conscious of anything unusual. there was more amusement in watching how, when the swell of the steamer rushed through the shallow water and broke on the shoals, the reptiles turned and scrambled back into the river, evidently alarmed at this, to them, strange phenomenon.
“i should not care about bathing here, davis,” harry parkhurst remarked to the old sailor.
“you are right, sir; i would rather have a stand up fight with the malays than trust myself for two minutes in this muddy water. why, they are worse than sharks, sir; a shark does hoist his fin as a signal that he is cruising about, but these chaps come sneaking along underneath the water, and the first you know about them is that they have got you by the leg.”
“which is the worse, davis, a bite from an alligator or a shark?”
“well, as far as the bite goes, mr. parkhurst, the shark is the worst. he will take your leg off, or a big 'un will bite a man in two halves. the alligator don't go to work that way: he gets hold of your leg, and no doubt he mangles it a bit; but he don't bite right through the bone; he just takes hold of you and drags you down to the bottom of the river, and keeps you there until you are drowned; then he polishes you off at his leisure.”
“the brutes!” harry exclaimed, with deep emphasis. “see, the first lieutenant has hit that big fellow there in the eye or the soft skin behind the leg; anyhow, he has got it hard; look how he is roaring and lashing his tail.”
“what is the best way of killing them?” dick asked.
“i have heard, sir, that in africa the natives bait a big hook with a lump of pork, or something of that sort; then, when an alligator has swallowed it, they haul him up, holus bolus. i should say a good plan to kill them would be with 'tricity. the last ship i was in, we had an officer of the marine artillery who knew about such things, and he put a big cartridge into a lump of pork, with two wires, and as soon as the shark had swallowed it he would touch a spring or something, and there would be an explosion. there was not as much fun in it as having a hook, but it was quicker, and he did not do it for sport, but because he hated the sharks. i heard say that he had had a young brother killed by one of them. he would sit there on the taffrail for hours on the lookout for them, with three or four loaded lumps of pork. why, i have known him kill as many as a dozen in a day. i expect the best part of his pay must have gone in dynamite.
“he had a narrow escape one day; somehow the thing went wrong, and in trying to set it right he fell over the taffrail. the shark had bolted the bait, but this was not enough for his appetite, and he went straight at the officer. he had had a young ensign sitting beside him, who had often watched his work, and knew how the thing went. i was standing near at the time, and he began twisting some screws and things as cool as a cucumber, though i could see as his hand shook a bit. well, he got it right just in time, for the shark was not half a length away from the captain, and was turning himself over for a bite, when the thing went off, and there was an end of the shark. the captain was a bit shaken up, but he made a grab at the rope, and held on to it till we lowered a boat and picked him up. he had to be got up on deck in a chair, and it was two or three days before he was himself again. when he got round he set to work again more earnestly than ever; and i believe that if we had stopped in the west indies long enough, there would not have been a shark left in those waters.”
“it was a capital plan, davis, and if we ever take possession of these rivers, we shall have to do something of that sort to get rid of the brutes. are the malays afraid of them?”
“i don't know, mr. parkhurst, but i think they are. i had a chat with a mate i met in the myrtle, which went home the day after we relieved them here. he had been up some of the rivers, and told me that every village had a bathing place palisaded off so that the alligators could not get at the bathers.”
“well, there is one thing—we shall have to be very careful when we are out in boats, for if we were to run upon a sunken log and knock a hole in the boat's bottom, there would not be much chance of our ever reaching the shore.”
“you are about right there, sir. i aint afraid of malays, but it gives me the creeps down my back when i think of one of them chaps getting hold of me by the leg. bob pearson told me that the only chance you have is to send your knife, or if you can't get at that, your thumbs, into the creature's eyes. but it would require a mighty cool hand to find the eyes, with the brute's teeth in one's leg, and the water so thick with mud that you could not see an inch beyond your nose.”
“well, i will make a note of that, anyhow, davis, and i will take a good look at the next alligator i see dead, so as to know exactly where to feel for its eyes.”
on the second day the scenery changed. in place of the mangroves a dense forest lined the river. birds of lovely plumage occasionally flew across it, and after they had anchored in the evening, the air became full of strange noises; great beasts rose and snorted near the banks; sounds of roaring and growling were heard in the wood; and the lads, who had been so eager before to take part in a hunt on shore, listened with something like awe to the various strange and often mysterious noises.
“what in the world does it all mean, doctor?” dick balderson asked, as the surgeon came up to the spot where the four midshipmen were leaning on the rail.
“it means that there is a good deal of life in the woods. that splashing sound you hear with deep grunts and snorts, is probably made by a hippopotamus wallowing in shallow water; but it may be a rhinoceros, or even a buffalo. that roar is either a tiger or a panther, and that snarling sound on the other bank is, no doubt, made by smaller animals of the same family, indulging in a domestic quarrel. some of the other sounds are made by night birds of some kind or other and perhaps by monkeys, and i fancy that distant vibrating sound that goes on without intermission is a concert of a party of frogs.”
“what is that?” as a shrill cry, as from a child, followed by a confused outburst of cries, chattering, and, as it seemed to them, a barking sound, followed.
“i fancy that is the death cry of a monkey. probably some python or other snake has seized it in its sleep; and the other noise is the outcry of its companions heaping abuse upon the snake, but unable to do anything to rescue their friend.”
“i don't think, doctor,” harry parkhurst said, in a tone that was half in earnest, “that i feel so anxious as i did for sport in the forest; and certainly i should decline to take part in it after nightfall.”
“i can quite understand that, lad. at night all the sounds of a tropical forest seem mysterious and weird, but in the broad daylight the bush will be comparatively still. the nocturnal animals will slink away to their lairs, and there will seem nothing strange to you in the songs and calls of the birds. i should recommend you all to take a sound dose of quinine tonight; i have a two and a half gallon keg of the stuff mixed, and any officer or man can go and take a glass whenever he feels he wants it. it would be good for your nerves, as well as neutralize the effect of the damp rising from the river. i should advise you who are not on the watch to turn in early; it is of no use your exposing yourselves more than is necessary to the miasma.”
the next day progress was more rapid, for the captain found that the assurance of the pilot that there was amply sufficient water for the serpent had been verified, and he therefore steamed forward at half speed, without sending the launch on ahead to take soundings. several villages were passed by the way, but though the inhabitants assembled on the banks and watched the steamer, no boats were put out, nor were any attempts made to barter their products with the strangers.
“it does not look as if we were popular, mr. ferguson,” the captain said to the first lieutenant. “it may be that they object to our presence altogether, or it may be because they believe that we are going to the assistance of this rajah sehi. it certainly does not look well for the future.”
“not at all, sir. however, we shall be at the rajah's place tomorrow morning, and shall then have a better opportunity of seeing how things are likely to go. at any rate, he is sure to be civil for a time, and we shall be likely to procure fruit and vegetables, which, as the doctor says, are absolute necessities if the men are to be kept in good health.”
the next morning they anchored about ten o'clock opposite the campong of the rajah. it was a good deal larger than any that they had passed on the way up, but the houses were mere huts, with the exception of a large wooden structure, which they at once concluded was the residence of the rajah. as soon as the serpent turned the last bend of the river before reaching the place, the sound of drums and gongs was heard, and a large boat, manned by eighteen rowers, shot out from the bank as the anchor was dropped. the two officials on board at once mounted the accommodation ladder, and on reaching the deck were received by the first lieutenant, behind whom stood a guard of honor of the marines.
upon stating that they came to express, on behalf of the rajah, the pleasure he felt at their arrival, they were conducted to the captain's cabin. compliments were exchanged through the medium of the interpreter, and a bottle of champagne was opened, and its contents appeared to gratify the visitors. they announced that the rajah would receive the captain that afternoon at his palace.
