Chapter II: Part 2

“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 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 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 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 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 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.

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, 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.

“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 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.

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 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!”

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 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 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 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 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 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.

_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, 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!”

IV

NICK ENCOUNTERS A DEATH ADDER

Baderoon was carried into the deck house, his long, muscular Papuan frame livid and limp. His rattan shield and bow were borne by Sadok, but from his wrist still dangled a long war club captured by him during the fight. It was of stout ironwood, with a head made of a thick disk of a stone like jade. The club was ornamented with rows of boars’ tusks dangling from its handle, alternating with tufts of human hair, and a stout strap held it to the wrist at its handle. Dwight remembered having a glimpse of Baderoon crashing valiantly through the pirate swarm with it, after his arrows were all shot away.

The curator put some brandy to Baderoon’s lips and the “boy” revived. The first thing he felt for was the tin mirror in his nose. Finding this still there, he sank back with a sigh of relief.

“There! That’s fine!” encouraged the curator, holding up the Papuan’s woolly head. “You-fellah come good-fellah soon, Baderoon! He’s got quite a rap on the roof and he’s lost a lot of blood from that arrow wound where it got torn out during the scrimmage. Get me my first-aid, quick. He feels a lot better, now that he knows his charm is all right!” he chuckled.

Baderoon opened his eyes and an irresistible grin cracked his thick lips.

“No _kai-kai_ [eat] me-fellah! _Orang-kaya_ him go _Boom!--Boom!_--All stop!” he grinned weakly, snapping all his fingers to imitate the explosion.

“All right, boy,” beamed the curator. “You-fellah stop, quiet! Will plenty debbil-debbil your arm,” he warned, producing the antiseptics. He shot the iodine into the open wound, while Baderoon set his teeth obediently, enduring the pain as best he could. Then his master wrapped on the gauze and bandages and hung the arm in a sling, and they all went out, leaving the native resting easily on a bench, afraid to touch his bandages under fear of the _orang-kaya’s_ displeasure.

The proa was bowling along up the lagoon, sailing farther and farther in behind the Charles Louis Mountains as they looked about them. A large river flowed in up at the head of the lagoon, they knew, but the curator had decided to take the first creek mouth that looked uninhabited on the mountain shore. Not a sign of a village or even a canoe had they seen, so dense are the mangrove swamps. Finally a dent in them, at the end of a long valley between two of the mountains, came in sight. A careful search of the trees around it with the glasses revealed no more native scouts. The curator judged that they had gotten up to sparsely inhabited country, and the proa was nosed into a little bay with the swift, clear water of the creek running into it. With slack sheet she laid her prow into the mouth of it, the shores slipping by close at hand.

He gave the order to go ashore, and, shouldering their packs, Nicky and Dwight leaped into the jungle, followed by Sadok with a huge crate of empty collection boxes on his back. Baderoon jumped next, able to walk now, and carrying nothing but his bow and shield, a borrowed quiver of arrows, and his captured war club. Then the curator turned to the _jurugan_.

“Come back here in three weeks, Captain,” he said. “We’ll be here waiting for you--or dead. Good-by, all! Nice fight, wasn’t it!” A flash of grins swept the crew’s faces as he seized his light double shotgun and jumped for the bank. The proa backed off and soon her sails filled and she stood down the lagoon, bound for Aru.

“Well, boys, we’re on our own!” said the curator, cheerfully, joining the rest of the party. “I reckon we can stay alive for three weeks in this country! And we ought to have something to tell about when we get back here. _Paradisea superba_, the superb bird of paradise, is what we particularly want; also an accurate report on the mineralogy of this region.”

They picked their way up over clinking bits of old broken coral, aiming for the high ground above the source of the stream. Skirting along this for some distance, they soon found that it was a small, flat table-land of some ancient coral growth, back of which was the real jungle. The sparse soil was grown with stunted seaside palms and various species of ironwood and lignum-vitæ. Through it the stream cut on its way from the interior. The curator had about decided to establish camp here until the region could be investigated before going farther, when a cry from Nicky aroused them. It came from farther upstream.

“This way, fellows!” it called; “here’s something interesting!”

They followed the call, to pitch down the coral bank to a small beach by the stream-side, clear of mangroves. An abandoned outrigger sail canoe lay hauled up on the shore. The coral flat had protected it from the moist jungle rot, but its weatherbeaten planks showed that it had been there for several years.

“A crocodile slipped into the water as I came down here, and found--this,” announced Nicky. “It looks like a Ceram or Salwatty boat to me. See the single mast and the two bamboo outriggers.”

She was about twenty-five feet long, with a bamboo platform overhanging the body of the canoe on each side astern, its outer edges guarded with stout bamboo rails. The body was of flat, hewn planks, built up on a wide keel hollowed from a single log. The New Guinea boats were all made of one or more log canoes, hollowed out of a single log, they knew; this canoe came from Ke’ or Ceram, but of its history there was not a trace. The sail, of woven cotton, still lay wrapped around its yards. Two lengths of bamboo, about twenty feet long and six inches thick, formed the floating outriggers, which were lashed to bow-shaped hardwood spars notched across the gunwales. All her rattan lashings were in as good shape as the day she was made.

An involuntary shiver of apprehension went over the party. Others had come--and never returned!

“Some poor devils ventured in here after paradise birds and got eaten, I presume,” said the curator. “It’s a cinch they never got back! We’ll adopt her. We may need her some day! Here’s good water and dry ground, fellows! Let’s camp here and collect within easy distance until we know the lay of the land. And we’ll all keep together for the present, boys,” he ordered, meaningly.

The parangs got busy, and soon a space was cleared in the underbrush where the two tent flys of the boys and the curator’s hammock could be swung. Sadok disappeared into the jungle, whence the sound of his chopper soon came, and presently he returned to camp, bearing a long green pole of bamboo across his shoulders. This he notched with footsteps cut above each joint, and the pole was then laid upright in the fork of a small ironwood tree. Up it the curator climbed, to look out over the country.

“That was some look-see, boys!” he announced, coming down from the pole. “The mountains lie right near us, to the right, with a strip of deep jungle, about half a mile wide, beginning just beyond this table of coral land. We’ll have to go through it with compass and parang. This stream comes down from a notch in the mountains, with some high grass plateaus shelving out from their sides. It’s a great country, and I doubt if anyone finds us for a time yet. I did not see a sign of a hut or a village. It’s safe to collect anywhere on this coral ground, I think. And there are thunderheads coming over the mountains to the west right now, so make your tents secure for the night and cook whatever you’re going to before the rain comes.”

Nicky did not care to eat just then, so he set out on an exploring trip. For some distance he poked along, slowly, above the course of the stream, starting at every rustle of big land crabs scuttling for their holes in the underbrush. The growth of tangled ironwoods was so thick that he had to hack with his parang to get even through the thinnest vistas. He moved slowly along, the thrill of being alone in an unknown land peopled with savage cannibals putting his nerves on edge. He recalled stories of how the Outanatas did not eat a man whole, like the South Sea Islanders, but had a playful way of cutting off a leg and binding up the stump, saving the man for further feasts while they ate the leg before his eyes; and how, last year, six Javanese had been suddenly decapitated by the Tugeri, just inside the barbed wire of the Dutch fort at Merauke, and how--

_Brrrrumm!_--right behind him! It might have been the grunt of a wild boar: it might have been--anything! Nicky jumped, whirling in the air, electrified with fear, and landed on his feet with gun cocked and staring eyes. Nothing whatever was visible. The dense brush was as silent and inscrutable as the Sphinx. Trying to quiet his pounding heart, the boy began to turn cautiously around, when--_Brrrruuumm!_ right behind him again! He whirled about, angry this time, looking with all his eyes for something to shoot at.

_Brruum!--Brrumm!_ The sound seemed to come from overhead, and, looking up, Nicky saw a large air plant, its blatant flowers in showy profusion--and hovering in front of them was a large tropical humming bird!

The revulsion was too great! The boy threw back his head and yelled with hysterical laughter.

“Frightened to death by a humming bird!” he whooped. “_Yow-yowri!_ Well, it’s time I shoved along and accomplished something!”

He pushed his way through the thickets, defiantly now, hoping that something _would_ turn up worth shooting at. Presently he came to a little open glade grown up with saw grass, with a small pond in the center of it. As he burst through the thicket two animals rose up out of the grass across the pond and went jumping off, sailing over the yellow field in long leaps that carried them twenty feet to the bound. Nicky did not have to be told that they were wallabys, the New Guinea species of kangaroo. He whipped out his long-barreled Officer’s Model and poised its fine sights on the rearmost wallaby. He had learned through long practice that his revolver was as good as a rifle at any range up to seventy-five yards, if well handled, and he depended on it for all big game. As the gun barked, the wallaby pitched down, rolling over and over like a rabbit in the saw grass, its long hind legs kicking convulsively. The other wallaby soared in a frantic series of hops, and reached the jungle before the wavering sights of the revolver could be steadied on it.

Nicky started to dash through the grass around the pond after his prize, but the sudden soar of a small animal like a flying squirrel, but much larger, brought him to a full stop. It had left the topmost branches of a tall thorn tree on the edge of the jungle and had volplaned downward in a long flight across the opening. Nicky’s ready shotgun sprang to shoulder and he covered it in full flight and pulled trigger. The creature fell into the grass as he blew the smoke from his barrel and slipped in another shell. A single step forward developed more life, for a large green grasshopper like a katydid sprang from its depths, made a short flight, and lit near by. It had a peculiar shield like a leaf curved backward over its head. Nicky whipped off his helmet to capture it, for he recognized the great shielded grasshopper of New Guinea and he knew that Dwight would want it.

He crept forward stealthily, when his eye was attracted by the bright flash of orange and black where a medium-sized bird was hopping from branch to branch in the thicket to his right. One glance at the quantity of long feathers of an intense orange hue that adorned its neck told him that it was the rare paradise oriole, closely allied to the true paradise birds and a specimen of the utmost value to the curator.

Nicky raised his gun, embarrassed at all these sudden riches of natural history that surrounded him. It occurred to him that this little pond bore all the aspects of the African water hole, in that it attracted wild life as a sort of center, and that he could spend a long time right here without beginning to exhaust its possibilities. As the gun barked the bird fell tumbling through the thicket and the boy reloaded, wondering what new marvel would develop at his very next step. Then the grasshopper claimed his attention. It had made another short flight. This time the helmet scooped him in. He paused a moment to wonder over the remarkable camouflage that nature had provided for this insect, for the shield resembled a green leaf so closely that a passing hornet or bird, which were its chief enemies, would be completely deceived.

In lieu of a better place to put it, Nicky pinned it on his helmet and then resolutely trailed through the grass to find the small flying creature that he had shot, unmindful of the quantities of insects that he had stirred up, the very number and diversity of which would have driven Dwight into a frenzy.

“Must tell the old scout about this!” muttered the boy. “He’d camp here a week! Ought to be something in my line, too, around this water. Heigho! What in the dickens is this?” he exclaimed, picking up the animal. It _looked_ like an opossum, but it had broad furry membranes extending from fore to hind leg exactly like our own flying squirrel.

“Flying opossum, by ginger!” cried the boy, for he had of course read up on all the natural history of New Guinea that is known. He examined the curious creature with all the sensations of the true naturalist. It is a far different thing to read of these examples of nature’s marvelous diversity, than to actually handle and examine the creatures themselves. Like all but two of New Guinea’s mammals, this was a marsupial, a reminder of that far time when all of Papua, Australia, and the adjacent islands connected by the shallow sea was one vast continent, entirely separated from Asia by deep sea. _Why_ did this continent evolve marsupials in every form of animal life, even the bear and the wolf? Here was the counterpart of our flying squirrel, with the same protective capacity to fly, but a marsupial and by structure most closely allied to the opossums. It was surely a brave conundrum!

He retrieved the paradise oriole and started out to the pond again, but a sharp hiss in the grass stopped him like an electric shock. A black and mottled snake rose threateningly, with steely tongue quivering from its mouth. Nicky recoiled, shielding his eyes with his arm, for he had recognized with a shock of loathing fear the dreaded death adder of Papua, which can spit poison with considerable accuracy for more than six feet. He backed off rapidly, watching the snake narrowly, for he knew that it would attack with great swiftness, blinding his eyes before striking. Then his shotgun sprang to shoulder as the snake moved toward him through the grass, and he pulled trigger as its horned head appeared for an instant over the tubes. Out of the mist of smoke and the confusion of the recoil Nicky had time to realize but one thing--that head was still weaving toward him with the speed of an express train! It would not do to aim the gun again and so expose his eyes. He turned to fly, dropping his gun and tugging frantically at his parang. As it flashed from its wooden sheath he made a swift backhand slash with it, urged by the imminent horror of the snake being close behind him. He felt the parang’s blade cut bone, and at the same instant something soft and wet struck the back of his neck and a hot, irritating pain seared his flesh. Putting up his hand as he ran, he found his fingers covered with a pale yellow fluid that burnt where it touched. Nicky stopped at the thicket and faced about. A violent thrashing of coils in the grass behind him, now flashing up the white belly, now the mottled back, told him that he had beheaded the adder. He went back cautiously, for he appreciated now that the borders of that pond would be alive with snakes. He got to water finally, and began washing strenuously. The pain still kept up, however, and he could feel a large blister raising on the skin of his neck.

“I must get back to camp quickly, where the curator can paint me with iodine!” he muttered to himself. “What would happen if I should faint here in the jungle!”

He found the head of the death adder and wrapped it in his handkerchief and tied it to his belt. The body was about eight feet long. Dragging it over to the thicket, he hung it on a bush and then skirted around, keeping a sharp watch at his feet, and finally came out to the body of the wallaby.

It was very like the great gray kangaroo of Australia, but much smaller and reddish in color. He swung it over his shoulder and retraced his steps to the thicket. Tying the long body of the adder to his belt, he pushed for camp. He felt dizzy and weak, and sick at the stomach, and his neck burnt like a fire. Staggering on, he sought the thinnest openings in the brush and so unconsciously retraced his steps; but the briers tore at him and his burden with maddening tenacity and he steadily grew weaker and weaker. At last the welcome sound of voices and chopping came to his ears, and with a last burst of endurance he drove through the thickets and fell forward limply, just over the edge of their clearing.

The curator dropped his microscope and notebook and ran over, followed by Dwight, who had heard his startled exclamation.

“Man, animal, or reptile?” giggled Dwight, looking down at the odd huddle of wallaby, snake, and boy that was Nicky.

“Cut it, and call Sadok and Baderoon! Quick!” snapped the curator, sharply. “Something has happened to him. Nothing is ever trivial in this jungle, Dwight!” He pulled off the wallaby as he spoke, and his eyes fell at once on the red scar on the back of Nicky’s neck. He examined it carefully, but no sign of fangs was visible.

“Go get the medicine kit!” he barked, as Dwight left on the run. Baderoon came up, and his eyes opened as they lit on the body of the snake.

“_Koikoim meten!_” he gasped, horror-stricken. “Me go find’m taboo for him--quick! Boy him die!” He dashed off into the jungle. Sadok bent over, shaking his head. The snake was unfamiliar to him and he could do nothing. Dwight returned with the medicine kit and the curator painted the spot with iodine, but it seemed to have no effect. Nicky was in a kind of swoon, from which all efforts, even brandy, failed to arouse him. Faces lengthened as the minutes went by with no improvement. Finally Baderoon emerged from the jungle, carrying a spray of some kind of plant.

“Me find’m taboo!” He grinned cheerfully. He crushed the weed in his hands and rubbed the juice on the spot, kneading it in and crooning a wild Papuan chant the while. After some five minutes of it, which seemed like five weeks to the white men looking on, Nicky opened his eyes.

“Gee! I could--write a--fine story--about this!” he sighed, weakly. “I’ve been conscious all the time,” he went on, more strongly as Baderoon kept up his vigorous kneading, “but for the life of me I could not move anything. Seemed to be kind of paralyzed. Baderoon--you’re a brick!” he cried, grasping the mop-haired Papuan’s horny hand.

“_Orang-kichil_ [little chief] all right? Me make’m _koikoim_ debbil-debbil!” he grinned, kneading steadily and applying more of the pale-green plant juice.

Nicky told them all about it as he steadily grew stronger, and finally he sat up and undid the handkerchief holding the snake’s head. “It’s a fine specimen, all right, though!” he maintained, stoutly. “Baderoon, you fix’m koikoim’s--isn’t it?--koikoim’s head, and we’ll save the whole of him for mounting. Me for a sleep for a thousand years!”

They got Nicky tucked away for the night and his tent fly secured down strongly like a wedge tent, for great plashes of raindrops were beginning to fall and the rolling thunder came nearer and nearer down the mountains. Then came the roar of the rain, and bright, vivid flashes of lightning rent the twilight.

Sadok and Baderoon moved their mats under the curator’s hammock fly, while rain drove in sheets through the tropical night. It was furious while it lasted, but by eight o’clock the storm had died to distant mutterings far back in the interior, and a pitch blackness ensued. Then the stars came out, and in the moist, steaming stillness the camp went off to sleep for their first night in the New Guinea jungle.

V

THE OUTANATAS

For the next few days the water hole became a star collecting ground for the entire expedition. Nicky was laid up a day in camp, recovering from the effects of the death adder’s poison, but he soon came to haunt the pond, for it and the stream that flowed past their camp were his main reliance for abundance of reptilian life.

“Here’s where we make the main collection, fellows,” said the curator, as he and Sadok came back to their temporary headquarters loaded with curious hook-billed Macrorhina kingfishers, magnificent crowned pigeons, Manucodia starlings of brilliant hues of plumage, blue flycatcher wrens, and many other species of the abundant bird life of New Guinea.

“We’ll fill the main collection crates with a representative collection in all four divisions of natural history. That will leave us free to concentrate on the rarer varieties during the exploration trip,” he continued. “I vote we have a pig hunt to-morrow. Baderoon tells me he has discovered plentiful rootings down in that mass of high jungle that separates us from the mountain chain. We ought to lay in some fresh meat and cure some bacon before starting into the interior.”

“Me for the hogfest!” crowed Nicky. “I’ve about nailed every lizard, tree frog, and snakelet in this vicinity. What ammunition shall we use, sir?”

“For wild boar I’m inclined to the solid ounce ball in a twelve-gauge shotgun,” grinned the curator. “It’s the only thing that will stop ’em at close range. Beats a high-power rifle all hollow, for it knocks ’em down to stay. I brought along some shells loaded with three-quarter ounce ball for our twenty-gauges, and we’ll serve ’em out to-morrow.”

On the next day the pig hunt was started. The wild pig of New Guinea, _Sus papuana_, is in several respects peculiar to himself. Armed with those long tusks that the natives use for nose ornaments and breast shields, he is wild, long legged, and speedy as a deer. He has the typical Asiatic screw tail, in place of the long straight one of the wild boar of Europe, but is almost hairless and provided with thick horny shoulder plates under the skin that will turn almost any bullet. Like all pigs, he fights well when cornered, is very tenacious of life, and attacks with a slashing charge of his tusks, attempting to upset a man with his momentum and then turn and rend out his ribs with a powerful stroke of the long, sharp tushes.

Baderoon and Sadok disappeared into the jungle to get above their feeding ground and act as beaters, while the curator and the boys took up vantage points a short distance back from the creek in the swampy bottoms.

Dwight soon found himself alone under the tall foliage, with vines and creepers crisscrossing in front of him and dense undergrowth, making it impossible to see thirty feet away, all around him. Great, slippery roots buttressed out from the tree trunks, crawling over the muddy soil like alligator backs. Nicky and the curator were farther on down the creek, both as silent as the grave, for it was essential to make no noise. Dwight realized that he had been given the post of honor this time, and that it would be he who would bear the brunt of the charge. In spite of himself he found himself shivering with excitement, opening his gun to peer at the shells, setting the safety on and off, and otherwise betraying symptoms that looked very like fear. He had never hunted wild boar before, and he found himself wishing that he had a bayonet or a spear or something to defend himself at close quarters. As it was, he would have to depend entirely on steady nerves and a well-placed bullet.

Then, far up the jungle, he heard the distant noises of the infernal din that Sadok and Baderoon were making, yelling and beating with their spears on their shields. It was followed presently by faint squeals, and later he could hear the grunts, it seemed, of a whole drove of wild boars. They were coming like the wind, the undergrowth crackling under their hoofs, vines tearing and ripping and carrying away bush growth, and then the jungle floor fairly shook, as if locomotives were thundering down on him.

A swishing and waving in the undergrowth showed him that they would pass him about thirty yards off, between him and the creek. Dwight sternly repressed an impulse to hang back and let them go by. To see clearly to shoot, he would have to run forward and plant himself nearly in their path.

“Don’t be a coward! _Into_ this, you boob!” he swore at himself, as he drove forward through the tangle of jungle growth. He ran out on a great prone trunk and peered into the moving bushes. They were going by, grunting and squealing with mixed terror and anger--five of them, and two great big fellows, with long, wicked ivory tushes curling around their snouts. Dwight raised the twenty-bore, followed along back of the shoulder of the nearest, and fired. Instantly a bawl of pain and rage went up as the boar stopped, whirling about a broken foreleg and looking about him red eyed with rage. The rest went thundering on, and a boom from the curator’s gun rang through the jungle. Dwight’s boar spied him and came hitching toward him on three legs, grunting his rage. The boy had opened his gun to slip in another shell, so eager was he to have plenty of shots. In an electric shock of realization, he saw that he had not time to do anything of the sort. Hastily snapping it shut, he drew a wavering bead and fired again. The ball hit somewhere in the shoulder and glanced off, but it put the boar in a frightful rage. He charged the log with a red glare in his eyes and leaped up, his tusks sweeping the upper surface of it. Dwight leaped off and reloaded frantically in the brief breathing space left him. With a leap like a deer, the boar went over the trunk, while Dwight fired both barrels full into his head at six feet, and then turned and dashed into the jungle. A great vine caught under his armpits as the boy crashed into it, and it laid him sprawling in the thick bush growth. He wormed through it desperately, and reloaded, wondering all the time why he had not been gored and trampled to death. His heart pounded so that its rapid beats were audible as he opened his mouth to breathe. Then he realized that the boar had not followed, and, plucking up courage, he stole back to look.

There lay the boar, threshing feebly about beside the log, his life slowly ebbing away. Dwight watched him, afraid to come nearer, scarce daring to hope that he had won. A final convulsion, and the boar seemed to go to sleep as he gave a last little sigh and stretched his great head out on the jungle.

“Whoops! I’ve got him!” yelled Dwight, stepping nearer to prod at the carcass with his gun barrels.

“Had a fat time with him, too, judging by the noise!” laughed the curator’s voice. “I got one, too--nice pig.”

Dwight remembered that the curator had fired but one shot--coolly and carefully placed, no doubt, but he was not ashamed. He had done well, for his first try! Nicky had not fired at all, for the rest of the drove had swerved and crossed the creek in a splash at the two gunshots. He and the curator came over to look at his trophy.

“Ought to cut out those and wear them in your nose, to be really fashionable in New Guinea, Dwight!” laughed Nicky, pointing to the razor-sharp tushes. “I was just coming over to lend a hand to help the curator up a tree when he fired, and the rest of the family beat it across the creek. Out o’ luck, as usual!” he grinned, cheerfully.

After a time Sadok and Baderoon came up and set about butchering the two pigs. The bacon flitches and hams from them were cured over a smoke rack during the next two days, while the party dined on fresh liver, and, later, pork chops, after the game had hung for a day.