Chapter III: Part 3

On the third morning the whole party left camp with two days’ provisions, to make a first exploration of the table-lands back in the mountains. They steered across the jungle by compass, Sadok and Baderoon clearing the way with their parangs. Then the ground began to rise, and slowly they worked up from the wild profusion of equatorial jungle into the more arid growths of the mountain side. The going became easier, as on all high ground, and the nature of the wild life and vegetation began to change. New insects and birds became numerous, and their progress was slow because nearly all of them were wanted for the collections, and the curator knew from long experience that the time to take a specimen was when you saw him, for you might not get another.

By midafternoon they had reached the plateaus near the notch in the mountains, and here they encountered their brook again. But what a different stream from the smooth, deep, jungly creek flowing silently down below through overhanging arches of vines and creepers! Here its bed was wide and pebbly as any northern stream, the creek following the deepest parts, with dry bars of pebbles scoured clean by former freshets. Wild trees of the coffee and Euphorbia families, thorns, and acacias dotted the stream banks. It was hot up here, but dry, and a pleasant place to live in. The curator was examining the pebbles eagerly, to get some idea of the rock formations of the mountains, when Sadok whistled softly and pointed upstream. A party of tall black natives was threading through the forest, and their leaders were already splashing across the stream bed! They stopped instantly as they spied the khaki helmets of the explorers, and more warriors joined them. It was a war party, as they could tell by the white-streaked faces, the weapons they carried, and the white breastplates of boars’ tusks that they had seen in museums before.

“Outanatas,” said the curator, quietly, as their party drew together for support. “We’ll stand right here and watch what they do.”

The tall, slender, mop-haired savages splashed through the creek, about twenty-five of them in the party, and they were armed with spears, bows, and clubs. Each man had a shield on his left arm, made of some tough wood, carved in red and white scrolls. They shouted and yelled at the curator’s party as they bunched together on the strand of the creek, and then came running swiftly down the pebbly drift, their long skinny legs shining with white amulets of sea shells.

“Holler, ‘Friends!’ at them, Baderoon-boy,” said the curator as they came nearer, hesitating and staring at the white men.

“_Muana komia!_” cried Baderoon, dropping his bow and shield in sign of amity.

The natives yelled. Whether it was friendly or derisive they could not tell. Then they formed in an irregular line and began a war dance toward the party.

“They’re showing off, I think,” declared the curator. “If they meant war, every man jack of them would have melted into the jungle and be shooting at us by now. Still, we’d better be on our guard.”

He dug into a flap pocket of his belt and took out a trench grenade, while the boys loosened their revolver flaps cautiously, their shotguns hanging loosely in their arms. Sadok reached for his parang, but the curator stopped him.

“Not yet, Sadok; we can’t make the first hostile move. I’ll give an order if I think they’re getting dangerous.”

The natives came on, yelling and dancing. Most of them wore long white boars’ tusks through the nose and curving up around their cheeks, giving them a singularly fierce aspect. Some had white shell combs dangling low over their foreheads, and nearly all wore a collection of white shell rings hanging in their ears. They brandished their spears and clubs as they advanced and retreated, going through the pantomime of mimic warfare. They made diabolical faces and thrust out red tongues at the explorers as they came closer, but whether it was war or peace even Baderoon could not tell them.

The boys watched the war dance, striving to quiet the shivers of apprehension that _would_ persist in rising. It was harder to bear there than any amount of fighting, and they had much preferred standing off any number of natives well hidden in the bush.

At about fifteen yards off, the line of natives had worked themselves into furious action, stabbing with their spears at the air, the rows of hideous shields dancing like evil genii from some other world. As more of them spread out on each flank, a guttural shout came from one of the tallest.

“Shoot, _Orang_!” shrieked Baderoon, but he was too late! From behind each native’s shield swung a black arm holding a short stick of bamboo. They swept forward like flails, and instantly the air was filled with blinding fine sand and ash dust. It closed their eyes with the acrid, cutting particles, and involuntarily their arms went up to shield their faces, while guns went off aimlessly. Sadok flashed out his parang in the cloud, and the curator jumped back to throw his bomb, but there was no room to use it. The natives closed in on them in a whirlwind of grabbing, skinny arms. Dwight saw stars as a club descended on his helmet, and everything went white before him. He was dimly conscious of a last impression of Sadok standing off three of them with his parang, and the curator buffeting his way through the shields toward him with bare fists, when his senses left him....

When he came to he was lying on the ground with his arms tightly bound behind him. Nicky and the curator were sitting up, also tied, and beyond them was Sadok, his head covered with blood where they had clubbed him. An occasional suppressed groan came from Baderoon; only themselves could understand the agony he was enduring, with his wounded arm ruthlessly trussed up like their own.

The Outanatas were chattering and arguing around them. Finally a long rope was brought and the captives tied together, a loop of it in a single knot around each of their necks, so that any attempt to escape would bring it tight. Then they were all dragged to their feet and formed in a line, with a double file of natives on each side, and the party set off through the jungle.

The way led back through the same trail the natives had come up on, the jungle path working gradually down toward the lagoon. The boys did little talking, for it seemed to make their captors angry, but they had plenty of time to think as they marched along. Dwight noted that the curator still carried his queer pistol, and their own were in the holsters yet, for the natives had dropped the flaps in disgust at the first sight of steel. Their shotguns were being carried by a couple of natives, each holding it with a wad of moss in his hand to protect it from the touch of steel, against which they had a taboo. Sadok’s sumpitan, with its spear blade lashed to its muzzle like a spear, they could understand, and his parang and Nicky’s were in the hands of their captors. They evidently respected these as real weapons of war, as they also did Baderoon’s bows and arrows and both the shields, for these were being carried along as trophies.

By nightfall the trail pitched suddenly downward toward the lagoon, and the warriors raised their voices in an exulting chant. It was answered by the deep boom of war drums, and presently they came down to a native village on the shore of the lagoon. The mangroves had been cleared away here, and on the beach were some twenty long black canoes, hauled up, their high carved prows looming darkly against the glassy surface of the waters, greenish orange in the dying hues of twilight.

The huts of the village were of bamboo, arched up from ground to ground over a stout ridge pole, and thatched with palm attap. An excited crowd of native men gathered around their party, while the warriors went on singing and dancing, telling in vigorous pantomime the story of their capture. There seemed to be no central chief, but some of the older and more powerful warriors at length came to some sort of agreement, and they were all thrust into an empty hut, the men who had captured their weapons claiming the duty of being guards.

The explorers sat watchful on the clean sand floor of the hut, with their guards standing in the doorway. A great fire was started out in front, and they could see even the women and children, now, venturing from the huts. Log after log was piled on the fire, and then pairs of natives passed the door, carrying between them huge, rounded stones. One after another these were laid on the fire, and gradually they became red hot underneath, while the upper surfaces were smooth and sooty in the licking flames.

“Prenty bad!” whispered Baderoon in the curator’s ear. “Fire dance! Make you-fellah hopp’m on rock till he cook you’ foots. Den dey _kai-kai_ dat foots. Leg, he stop, ’til next time. All _kai-kai_ some day.”

It was time to act! The curator shifted his trick ring with his thumb and opened the catch when it came inside his palm. His fingers closed around his right wrist and sought the binding of twisted pandanus leaf. A steady scratch-scratching of the little blade in the ring on the leaf fiber went on, while their guards looked out the door, watching the preparations.

VI

THE CURATOR’S AIR PISTOL

The flickering red lights from the dying flames of the fire lit up the walls of the hut as the curator sat, free, with his hands still behind him, considering what to do next. The fiery glow of embers under the hot stones urged him to speedy action, for already the tom-toms of trumpet-shaped Papuan war drums and the whang of stringed instruments had struck up. The natives were yelling for the first prisoner to be brought out. He did not propose that their party should go on stumps for the rest of their lives.

He reached carefully for the hunting knife in his belt, and, leaning up against Baderoon, his arm slipped behind him and cut his thongs. Then the knife was passed on, and Baderoon freed Sadok. The three silently arose and crept toward the guards leaning out the door. Fingers moved stealthily for their necks, while the boys watched them tensely. With a sudden pounce, both guards were seized and dragged within the hut without a sound. Sadok was strong as a gorilla, and his man soon ceased to struggle. The curator and Baderoon had more trouble with theirs, for the black had only one good arm, but the guard was finally subdued, gagged, and tied after a silent tussle in which all three joined. Then the boys were freed, and Sadok jumped for his sumpitan, parang, and kriss, which leaned up against the walls of the hut.

“This way--quick now!” hissed the curator, pointing to the blank rear wall of the hut. Sadok ripped a door in it with his kriss, while the curator drew his pistol, inserted a small metal cylinder in its breech, and shoved down hard with the muzzle of the weapon on an abandoned shield of the guards. A crinkly noise like a spring came from within it, and he smiled grimly and replaced the pistol in its holster. Then they all crept out through the back wall into the dark jungle, Baderoon helping himself liberally to weapons as he left.

Dwight, tingling with excitement, automatic in hand, crawled along on all-fours behind the curator, who followed Sadok, and so they worked steadily toward the beach over the thick, soft duff. At length the last of the line of canoes, close to the boundary of mangroves, rose up ahead, and, one by one, they crawled around both sides of it, keeping below the gunwale out of sight. The lurid glow of the fire was behind them, and, silhouetted against it were circles of mop-haired savages, singing in unison with the beat of the drums, the warriors dancing around the fire.

Quietly they rose and lifted the bow of the long boat. Her stern was afloat and she gave easily, but it took their combined strength to shove her out. At last she floated, and they all got in, Sadok giving her a last artful shove that sent her silently around the end of the mangroves and out of sight. They groped for paddles, dipped them noiselessly, and stole along, close to shore, not even a ripple coming from her prow. The noise behind them grew gradually more indistinct, until the rhythmical dub-dub of the drums alone reached them.

“Whoosh!” sighed Nicky, at last, and it seemed he had been holding his breath for a week. “Some getaway! But it’s about time those beggars went for their lunch, though!” he observed, facetiously, while his powerful shoulders swept the paddle easily. “‘My--word!’ as Bentham would say, but I don’t fancy being fried on stones for these heathen! I’ve contributed too many blankets and things to missionary boxes--and I want my money back!” he laughed.

“Quiet!” ordered the curator, sternly. “This show isn’t over yet, and there may be scouts along shore. We’ve got to make time!”

They bent to the paddles, driving the heavy canoe along down the shore of the lagoon. Fifteen tense minutes passed, while black palm fronds and ragged banana leaves swept by overhead past the stars. They had put nearly a mile between them and the landing when--

“Hist!” called the curator, stopping his paddle suddenly.

A riot of excited yells came faintly through the jungle.

“They’re wise! Hep, boys! _hep!_” They drove the canoe along as fast as she could be made to go. She needed at least ten paddlers to get any real speed out of her, and the boys realized that there would be more doings this night! A clearer burst of sounds told that the natives had come down to the beach and discovered their missing canoe. Then torches glared out over the black, glassy water, and presently a fleet of canoes set out, each with a blazing brand flaming on its prow. Some of them set out across the lagoon, others went upstream, and eight started down the shore, moving abreast and covering the water far out. Nothing could escape them!

“Make for the open, Sadok!” called the curator over his shoulder to the Dyak, who was stern paddle. “We haven’t a chance here, but we might get by them out beyond the last one out there.”

They drove the canoe out on the broad bosom of the lagoon, the lights from the eight flares streaming across the water to them in long red pencils, and it seemed incredible that they were not seen already. The curator, however, knew better the actual range of a flare visible from the eyes of a man in the boat with it, for he had tried it before, jacking deer. The lights came steadily on, yells and whoops blaring over the waters. The canoes soon passed them, in a long, straggly line between them and the shore.

They stopped their own boat and watched their pursuers.

“Gee! it’s a clean escape!” exulted Dwight, “and we’re bows on, so it’s impossible to see us--” The enthusiasm in his voice trailed off as they all paused, holding their breaths, to watch the flare on the nearest canoe. It seemed to be parting in two and the second light grew to a long flame. Then it suddenly rose in a high, curving arc as a flaming javelin went up like a rocket. A weird glare lit up the water far and wide.

“Clever stunt! Those savages are sure resourceful, I’ll say!” admired the curator. “We’re _it_, all right!”

A babel of yells arose from the nearest canoe as he spoke, and her light began to move out toward them, the flashes of her paddles winking like swiftly waving bars of light. The other canoes changed course likewise, and the whole pack fanned out in a sort of V, with the nearest canoe leading. A second flaming javelin soared into the night and lit up the waters. Diabolical war whoops burst out from all the canoes this time, and amid exulting yells a few long-range, roving arrows fell into the lagoon around them.

“Don’t anybody shoot, except Sadok, until I say the word!” gritted the curator, “and I want you boys to call me eighty yards as near as you can judge it when that canoe comes that near!”

Arrows from the nearest boat now began to whistle overhead and fall into the bay with a sharp _chrrp!_ like quenching hot iron.

“Eighty yards, I think, sir,” whispered Dwight a few moments later as he peered over the gunwale.

“Just about,” muttered the curator, aiming his pistol carefully over braced knees. A sharp _kjkrrr!_ came from the weapon as he pulled trigger. A tiny spark swept in a flat trajectory over to the canoe, and then, like detonation of thunder close at hand, came a stunning report and the white, blinding glare of the explosion of a shell. The flash gave them one tremendous, significant glimpse of flying splinters and the cannibal canoe doubling up like a broken stick--and then came pitchy, inky darkness, followed by the shouts of the savages swimming in the water and the roar of a wave rolling swiftly toward them which rocked their canoe to her beam ends.

“Gad! I hate to shoot up these beggars, even if they are cannibals bent on dining off us!” exclaimed the curator, reloading. “Hope they’re mostly scared to death! This second shell ought to do it.”

He steadied the pistol on his knees and aimed at the second canoe, swooping down on them, the cannibals yelling and discharging flights of arrows into the night. Again the blinding white flash and the terrific report. The curator had aimed it so as not to hit the canoe directly, and they saw a wave rise in front of her which engulfed the canoe and put her crew powerless in the water.

But the others came right on, regardless. “Paddle, boys! Make it quick and snappy! They’re closing in on us! Once more ought to knock the fight out of them!” He reloaded hurriedly and fired at the third canoe, the shell exploding in midair right over it. The shouts from five canoefuls of bloodthirsty cannibals surrounding them, foaming up the water with their furious paddles, filled the night with pandemonium. Their situation looked desperate now, for the Outanatas seemed determined upon their recapture and they had lost some of their fear of the curator’s shells.

“Fire, boys! for all you’re worth--I’ll give you light!” he yelled, whipping out his flashlight. “Hold it, Baderoon!” he ordered, as the rays from its parabolic reflector shot over the water.

The automatics began to bark, while the negro crouched behind the gunwales, shivering with fear, yet holding the light steadily on two war canoes bunched close together. The curator aimed a short-range shell right over them, hoping to founder the remaining canoes. The fearful concussion of the T. N. T. knocked their own party sprawling, and, where there had been two canoes, now there was a boiling geyser of water in which they rose like tossed logs, their crews tumbling headlong through the white glare. It proved too much for the remaining three canoes. The flashlight showed them turning tail and paddling away in frantic haste.

“Travel, Nigger, Travel!--that’s what T. N. T. means!” whooped the curator. “Paddle, boys, after ’em--_hard_! I’m going to put the fear of God into these people!”

He aimed the air gun at a high arc, and the shell whistled on its way. High over the three canoes it exploded, with the strength of giant-powder fireworks. Under its glare they could see the paddlers knocked hurtling with the concussion.

Baderoon laughed uproariously. “_Yow-yowri!_ Prenty debbil-debbil, _Orang-kaya!_ Make’m thunder--_Boom! Boom!_”

“Threw a good scare into ’em! That’s the ticket!” grinned the curator. “They’ll swim ashore pretty well gentled, I’m thinking!--Keep after ’em, boys, as hard as you can make her go! They’re gaining on us!”

He raised the air gun to its utmost elevation and the tiny streak of fire of the fuse rose in a high arc. It fell into the bay ahead of the three canoes, and there was a muffled thud which blew the whole bottom out of the bay. A white avalanche of water came roaring toward the three canoes and their bows rose dizzily and then the sterns flipped high in the air. A babel of yells and shouts told of one canoe upset, and then they steadied their own to meet the onrushing wave. It rocked giddily, like a bark canoe in a boiling rapids, and water slapped over her sides in a deluge, but her deep keel held her upright.

“Bail, Dwight--and you, too, Baderoon!” ordered the curator. “Nicky, you and Sadok keep on paddling. Don’t kill yourselves, as we’re out of range of them now. I’m going up to that village and lay down the law to that whole tribe! They’ll let white men alone, after that.”

They followed slowly in the wake of the two fleeing canoes, and finally lay floating idly about a mile out in front of the village. The canoes that had gone across the lagoon and those from upstream had now returned, as they could see by the assembling flares at the landing. Howlings and constant booming of drums came over the water. They dozed on the thwarts, letting the canoe drift and waiting for dawn. The noise on shore kept up throughout the night, but, after an interminable wait, a faint paling in the east, which swiftly grew to daylight over the calm waters of the lagoon, set them to paddling slowly toward the shore again.

As they drew near it was full daylight and the clouds overhead were already aflame with the rising sun. The curator loaded his air gun and stood up in the bow as they approached the landing. A deathlike silence reigned throughout the jungle. The long black canoes lay hauled up in rows, deserted, and not a sign of life appeared in the huts nor in the glades under the coco palms.

As their bow grated on the beach, the curator took careful aim at the largest of the huts and fired. The jungle shook with the sharp detonation as the building was torn asunder in crackling walls of bamboo and rattan which immediately took fire. Runnings and scamperings in the forest--and then all was silent as the grave again.

They stepped ashore in a compact little party, the boys with ready pistols, Sadok’s long sumpitan sweeping every glade for a mark. The curator walked to the center of the clearing and swept the surrounding forest with his arm.

“Pigs!” he pronounced, in the Arfak dialect, waving his arm around comprehensively.

There were rustlings in the jungle, but no native dared show himself.

“Tell them, Baderoon, that white men are peaceful--when let alone. Also, that the white man will not harm any chief if he will step out and talk.”

Baderoon raised his voice, translating the curator’s message. Absolute silence brooded in the jungle.

“Tell them,” said the curator, and his voice rang like iron, “that the white man would be friends. But if they do not make a talk at once he will bring down his thunders and lightnings and utterly destroy this village, their canoes, and their coconut palms. I have spoken it.”

Baderoon translated, and at this a grizzled old sinner with a white mop of woolly hair stepped out trembling from behind a tree.

“If the White Thunderer will only deign not to utterly destroy _us_!” he croaked, shaking all over as Baderoon translated.

“Ye shall call your old men to tow-tow; and ye shall send runners to every village, far and near, lest the thunders descend on them also!” declared the curator, sternly.

“It is agreed,” said the old man, finally, with shaking voice. “Only let the white man not harm us further! Many warriors and many canoes come not back because of him!”

He called into the forest and three other old men came unwillingly forth. They advanced, unarmed, to the edge of the clearing, stooping down and pouring sand on their heads in token of abject submission, but that was as far as they could be coaxed to come.

“It is well,” called the curator, at length, for he had no wish to risk any undue familiarity with them. “Shoot something, Sadok. I want them to fear you, too.”

Sadok looked around for a mark, and his eyes lit on a wandering pig under one of the huts. He poised his sumpitan and the dart flew out of its muzzle. The pig squealed and twitched his tail, and then went on rooting. In another moment he sighed and laid over, dead.

A shiver and a rustling of leaves ran through the underbrush.

“Ye have seen the silent death, also,” said Baderoon, raising his voice at the curator’s prompting. “Do not eat the pig; it is taboo.”

One of the old men took off his boars’-tusk breastplate and stepped forward and laid it on the ground. He testified that it was a present. At a sign from the curator Baderoon fetched it. The scientist examined it curiously. The white tusks were laid in rows, one atop the other, and their ends were bound with fiber network, thickly ornamented with polished red beads. The curator started with astonishment as he looked closely at them.

“Ask him where they get those red beads, Baderoon.”

There was some talk and waving of arms, and then Baderoon turned to the curator. “Him get’m big mountain--down there,” he said, pointing to the south. “Mus’ fight litty hill men for him. Prenty too-much trophy.”

“Tell him the white man is pleased, and will give a present, too.”

The curator undid his red-silk bandanna, and Baderoon bore it over ceremoniously and laid it before the chief. The latter grinned, for the first time, and they could see that he was dying to handle it. He nodded at the curator with beaming eyes and made the pantomime of rubbing noses.

“Nothing doing!” snorted the curator. “That’s where the earlier explorers all lose out! The natives soon find out we’re ordinary, vulnerable human beings, if you let them get too familiar. Tell him, Baderoon, that the white man says to start his runners at once, and never to touch another white man so long as he lives! Farewell!”

He turned to go as Baderoon translated. They walked back to the canoes and picked out a small one, more easy to handle. Shoving off, they paddled down the lagoon, the curator sitting silently in the stern, for he knew that curious eyes were watching him from the jungle. A repressed eagerness shone in his own as he still examined curiously the boars’-tusk breastplate in his hands.

“Well--I guess that’ll hold ’em for a time--eh, boys?” he smiled, raising his eyes from it at length when they had left the village landing far behind. “And--I may have something important to tell you after we reach camp!”

“Some weapon, that air pistol of yours, sir!” said Nicky, admiringly. “How did you ever get such an idea?”

“Oh, that was just a hang-over from the Western Front,” replied the curator. “I’ve been through any number of trench scrimmages, and I learned that it’s not the iron casing of grenades that does the most mischief, but the gas itself. It has far more rending power than that cast-iron shell of the grenade. Remember our old air guns of boyhood? Well, I sent some sketches to the factory and had them make me this pistol on the same lines. These light nickel shells of T. N. T. turned out to be as good as heavy grenades when I tested them. All that is needed is something to throw them with accuracy, so I had this gun made and a lot of shells, timed for eighty, fifty, and thirty yards--which is about as close as you can be to them with any safety. That’s all there is to it. Beats the old dynamite stick that they used to use on the savages of the South Seas all hollow, I’ll say!”

They passed the floating wreckage of the night before as he spoke, and everyone set to work picking up paddles, spears, and arrows, the latter sticking up out of water, point down, like buoys. Then the curator made a grab and hauled aboard a floating shield. It was of the same long, oval type that the war party had carried the day before, and he examined the red paint in the carving minutely with his magnifying glass.

“It’s the same mineral we found in Aru, Dwight,” he declared, after a close scrutiny. “Wait till we get to camp; I’ve got a fine young idea hatching.”

That was all they could get out of him, but the paddles swept on more tirelessly than ever, for both boys were consumed with curiosity over the new mineral.

At length they came to their own headland, with the frowning ramparts of the mountains looming back of them endlessly to the south. Here was the mouth of their creek, and up it they drove the canoe under the green arches of the jungle. After a time it came out at the old coral bank, and the abandoned sail proa showed up ahead, its bow still on the little beach. Sadok and Baderoon jumped ashore and set about getting their fire started, while the boys dove for their provision sacks, for they had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours and were famished.

But the curator could not wait. He cut off a sliver from the red mineral paint in the shield scrolls and scraped a portion of it into a small test tube which he got out of his mess kit. Filling it with a little water, he went over to Nicky’s alcohol flame and brought it to a boil. Then he opened a tiny bottle of acid and dropped a tear of it into the test tube.

“Gad! boys!” he whooped. “What do you think of _that_?” he cried, holding up the tube, now filled with a cloudy yellow precipitate. “Remember that red stone we got in the channels of Aru, Dwight? Well, this is the same mineral, _cinnabar_, red oxide of mercury, boys! If there’s a mountain of it, as these natives tell us, back in the hills, we’ve _got_ to find it, for, once it is reported, it will change the whole history of this part of New Guinea. The stuff is worth its weight in gold!”

“Three cheers for Exploration!” mumbled Nicky, his mouth stuffed with food. “Have some, Professor!”

VII

CASSOWARY CAMP

“Baderoon, how call-him that place chief-fellah get red paint?” asked the curator, turning to Baderoon from the test tube in his hand.

“Red Mountain!” said Baderoon, promptly.

“Good Lord!” ejaculated the curator. “There can’t be a whole mountain of cinnabar, you know! Why, you could buy out the United States Treasury with it! Might be a stratum of it--but, no; ‘_Red_’ Mountain! If there’s enough of the ore in sight to give it that name, it’s something we’ve got to see and report. Everything else is insignificant compared to this, boys!” he exulted. “I discovered a mountain once, in Mexico, near the top of which was a thick vein of cinnabar. Some day they’ll run a railroad in there and get it out, it’s so valuable. But a whole mountain of it, and right handy to the sea! Why, man, it’ll make Holland the queen of the world again! Think how the world’s mercury is hoarded, for making fulminate, for every primer and every shell fuse that is shot!” he went on, excitedly. “Think of the explosives possible, with unlimited supplies of mercury. T. N. T. isn’t in it, compared with some of the fulminates! The Japs won the Russian war with their new camphor shell, but their supply of camphor is limited. Some day there will be a big war over Red Mountain, take it from me!”

“’Ray for Exploration!” crowed Dwight. “Come on, Mr. Baldwin; here’s some nice wallaby steak!”

The curator grinned as he came back to earth and bit into the succulent meat. “Just the same, boys, we’re going to see that mountain, or die in the attempt. The only thing that worries me is how to handle the pygmies. It’s right in their country, and we’ll have to wade through them to get there. They were peaceable enough with the English expedition, but that was only because they were afraid to start anything. They’re always at war with the Papuans, and there’s a sort of no-man’s land between the jungle and the foothills which cannot be crossed by either side without a fight. However, the first thing for us to do is to jerk the rest of this wallaby meat and each man carry along a bag of pemmican made of it.”

They erected a pole jerky frame that afternoon, and started a small drying fire under it, with long strips of the meat hanging in rows from the poles. Under the hot tropical sun the drying process went on apace, and soon the strips had become hard sticks of meat, greasy to the touch, hard and fibrous as wood. Steadily, also, the collections grew larger, box after box being filled with Dwight’s insects, Nicky’s reptiles, and the curator’s birds, while their big tin of bird skins was filled up and sealed. This main collection was to be a representative one of the whole region, after which only the rarer specimens need be sought for. On the third day the crate of collections boxes was cached, well hidden in a coral cave dug in the thickets.

Meanwhile Sadok set about replenishing his supply of poisoned arrows, as his quiver of them had run low. He cut a quantity of the long thorns of the sago palm, and near the bottom of each he lashed a little cone of the corklike bark, so that it would just fit in the bore of the sumpitan, which was about three eighths of an inch in diameter. For poisoning the points he had a supply of the gummy juice of the upas tree, brought from Borneo and carefully kept in a small bamboo bottle which hung on his belt.

Sadok was grouched. A faint but noisesome odor came from somewhere in the jungle, where his three heads were drying, but here, look you, had been two fights with the Outanatas since, and never a head for his personal collection! He was comforted, however, by the curator telling him that the upas vine, or some other representative of the strychnine family, grew in New Guinea, also, and that there would be plenty of ructions before he ever saw Borneo again.

Their stay at this camp had given them not only a fair idea of the general features of the country, but of the weather as well. Under the west monsoon, its daily changes were as regular as clockwork. A fine cool dawn, followed by several hours of misty and clearing weather when it was good to be up and doing; then the heat of midday, when even the jungle people knew enough to take a siesta; and then, about four o’clock, a tropical thunderstorm of the utmost violence, lasting until eight at night, when the sky cleared off. They soon learned to plan their day according to these weather changes, and at length the party broke camp for the long trek into the mountains. They followed much the same trail as before, to the table-lands along the mountain flank, and stopped for lunch on the pebbly site of their capture by the war party of the Outanatas of the week before.

But with what different feelings now! Then the fear of the unknown, the dread of meeting cannibal savages who would surely regard them as but strangers to be killed and eaten at sight. Now a feeling of confidence replaced all that. They had established the superiority of the white man in all that region, the respect in the native mind that is based only on superior force. Not even a native runner had dared show his face since that punitive expedition of the curator’s. They even felt confident to hunt singly, not too far from the main party. While the others were settling down for the noonday siesta in the heat of midday, Dwight spied a flash of brilliant orange in the greens of the jungle across the creek, and set out alone after the bird, shotgun in hand. The orange spot flew off into the jungle as he drew near it, but Dwight had caught a glimpse of black-velvet plumage, and that flaming fire of orange on the throat, which made him tingle all over with the thrill that it _might_ be the exceedingly rare six-shafted bird of paradise! He followed on through the jungle, his eyes fixed on that small dot of black perched far ahead, high in the tree tops. Moving as cautiously as he could, he worked through the festooned creepers and the huge boles of giant jungle trees toward his prize. But to his chagrin, it flew off again, just as he was about to try the spiteful little twenty-gauge at long range.

The boy’s eyes followed the bird avidly. To bring back a six-shafter! Why, all this expedition had been for just such a prize as this! Nothing is known of this bird save what can be conjectured from the few skins now in the world’s museums. To add one more to that meager collection, each specimen with who knows what story of adventure and privation behind it, seemed to Dwight a corking enterprise. Using all the woodcraft he possessed, he worked silently through the jungle. Experience had taught him to look ahead for a place to plant each footstep, not only to be sure that one did not step on a snake, but also to insure the foot coming down in position to fire instantly. With gun muzzle up, he advanced carefully, praying earnestly that his quarry might linger just a few minutes more.

Again the paradise bird fluttered off, and this time Dwight had but a line on where he had gone, for the last glimpse of him disappeared through the jungle, far off through the tree trunks. He groaned with disappointment, but he was not the boy to give up while there was a ghost of a chance left. Fixing on a tall Erythrina as the last tree past which the bird had soared, he set out as fast as possible. In perhaps half an hour he reached the tree, and, taking the range, set out again, his eyes scrutinizing the leafy foliage of the jungle roof. He had about begun to lose hope now, and, moreover, to realize that he was totally lost in the jungle, far from his companions, when a flutter of wings some distance ahead showed him his siren bird, flitting about and feeding on clusters of blue tropical berries that hung in the foliage of a high tree top that loomed up ahead.

Dwight heaved a sigh of relief. The bird would surely stay there, feeding, and he had plenty of time for a careful stalk. He wormed through the jungle, and at last arrived where an aim could be had, at not more than forty yards. Raising the gun carefully, he fired, and down came his prize, at last!

It was with a sort of breathless wonder that Dwight looked over the six-shafted bird of paradise as he lifted it gently out of the dense undergrowth in which it had fallen. _Why_ did nature lavish such abundant beauty on a bird destined never to be seen by eyes that could appreciate it? Human eyes, that is, for, of course, the bird would be forever a delight to the eyes of that dull-colored little mate of his whose protection demanded something less gorgeously visible. It made him feel how insignificant is man in nature’s world. Man, the animal, as exhibited by the naked savages who inhabited this forest was Nature’s own child; assuredly this bird was not so decorated to please him! Man, the intellectual, civilized man, could feel a thrill of rapture over this creature of Nature’s, admire its intense golden-orange throat scales, its rich, velvety, purple-black plumage, its crown of vivid emerald and topaz colors, with the long wire-haired plumes springing back like a coronet from its head; but Nature cared nothing for intellectual man and his mind, which was not of her doing, and she certainly did not make this bird for him! In fact, we are each one of us two people, Dwight philosophized, amusing himself with these fancies as he examined the paradise bird in his hand--man the animal, the creature of Nature, living very like the animals themselves and dependent on her, like them; and man, the intellectual, a creature of a power that is above Nature, the Being from whom sprang art, religion, philosophy, science, all the things that are above Nature and essentially antagonistic to her. But in the end Nature always has her revenge, for her jungles reclaim proud cities, as in India and Central America, or her deserts isolate them, as Athens and the Parthenon, or her sands bury them, like Egypt and the Sphinx.

“All that sermon from one small tropical bird!” laughed Dwight to himself, carelessly, as his thoughts came back to earth again. “Nature may be irreconcilably hostile to us--but, where am I now, and how am I going to get out? That’s the real question for _this_ man!”

He had no idea how or where his wanderings in pursuit of the paradise bird had taken him. All that was certain was that he had not crossed the creek again, and that he was somewhere east of it. He laid a course west with the compass, and set out, confident that he would sooner or later strike the stream.

But Nature proceeded to show him how utterly insignificant to her is man. The first indication of it was a large plop of her tropical rain which fell on his helmet. Dwight looked up, surprised to see the sky overcast and the thunders of the daily afternoon tropical storm muttering in the mountains. He must have been several hours following this six-shafter! He hurried on back toward the creek, stumbling through the jungle and striving to stifle panicky impulses to run. It was essential to keep his head, and to pick out landmark trees, methodically, ahead on his course, for you cannot steer yourself like a ship with the compass in the jungle. He forced his attention upon this, ignoring the raindrops, the steady patter of which kept up in the tree tops. The wetted undergrowth soon soaked his thin khaki. He now bitterly regretted setting out without his pack. Just a moment to have shouldered it would have been enough, but he had been too eager, too afraid to lose sight of his precious prize.

A distant roar of wind, and an angry cannonade of thunder came from the west, setting the jungle to rocking and tossing overhead, while birds flew wildly through the tree tops, croaking and screeching harshly. Dwight stopped and listened to it. He was trembling all over with the wet cold, and sharp chills were running through him. Now or never was the time for a signal, for no sound would carry far after the rain came. He raised his gun, fired both barrels, and listened with all his ears.

No answer, save the roar of the rain, sounding louder and louder and coming nearer and nearer. He looked about for the largest tree near him and ran for it. The branches of wind-lashed forest were now parting overhead, and out of the dark gray came vivid flashes of lightning which filled the jungle with winking light. The long ropes of creepers which climbed up to the branches of his tree from the jungle floor swung solemnly in the wind, and Dwight crept under them and huddled close against the trunk, cowering in the buttresses of the great roots.

Then came the rain, in furious white sheets that filled the forest with a flying haze. It soaked him instantly to the skin, while peal after peal of thunder went off like cannon shots. An ungovernable terror seized the boy--the fury of the wind-driven rain, the loneliness, the crashing and riving of limbs and branches--and he lifted up his voice in one last, despairing yell with every ounce of lung power that he possessed.

There was no answer--save a low, sibilant hiss, which sounded through the lowering gloom, close at hand, whispering sharp and clear in his ears above the noise of the storm! Dwight, startled with a shiver of fright, looked up, to perceive that one of the great vines overhead was _not_ a creeper, but a huge python, lowering himself steadily, his neck crooked, and his head drawn back to strike at him! His gun flashed to shoulder, and both barrels went off blindly as the boy’s nerves collapsed with the shock of horror and he sank down in a shivering heap. He had a dim feeling of yards and yards of snake tumbling down through the vines beside him, but he seemed not to care about it at all, for it was comfortable down here between these roots ... if he could only find a place for his head....

When he came to it was pitch dark and the storm had gone on. A scampering of jungle rats made off through the black as Dwight moved his cramped limbs wearily, to find them aching all over and his face hot and flushed with fever, while violent chills kept running upward through his body.

He peered about him, bewildered; then conscious ideas began to pelt in upon him.

“F-f-fire! Quick-ick as I can m-make one!” he chattered to himself, fumbling for his pocket flasher. Its small but brilliant light lit up the jungle, causing many an outcry of night birds and a scurrying over the forest floor of land crabs and small marsupials. It also revealed the tumbled heap of the python lying beside him, its neck shot in two and parts of its reticulated length already gnawed by rodents. He glanced at it casually; to get wood that would burn was the real worry now! the jungle was black as a pocket, and a wan mist hung through it. After one flash of the light on those miasmas, drifting like pale death through the trees, Dwight hurriedly got out his medicine kit and swallowed some quinine. Then he sought kindlings in the underbrush, breaking twigs here and there, but they were all sodden and moldy. He felt sick all over and burning with fever, and he wanted to lie down again and sleep forever; but it was most imperative to stay alive, so he started off through the jungle in search of firewood, stumbling westward by compass, until a great tangle of vines ahead of him told of a prone dead tree.

His spirits rose as his eye lit on it, and he pushed his way under the great bole with ready shotgun, for he could not tell how many jungle dwellers might have camped under it during the storm. A grand scampering and creeping rustled the dry leaves under the trunk, but it soon stopped and the flashlight showed the cavelike space all clear. Dwight shouldered his way into it, and at once cleared a space for a fire and began peeling off strips of dry bark from the under side of the tree. Blessed, blessed fire! The one human thing in all this dark jungle! That was the turning point in his mental distress, for dejection gave way to cheerfulness, wandering homelessness to a hearth and a campfire. Soon the warmth of its small blaze penetrated even his chilled bones, and it and the quinine gradually drove off his fever. Dwight waited out the night under the trunk, trying the cave man’s posture of sleep, squatting on his hams with his head resting on arms crossed over his knees (still used by the hill men of India and by many tribes of the Malay Archipelago). He found it not so bad, even though irksome to a white man’s heel tendon. Keeping the fire going with bark and small branches broken from the tree trunk, he gradually dried out, and at length there came the dawn of another day and the jungle awoke to life.

Starting off by compass again, he steered due west, bound in time to strike the brook. It was not for an hour more of traveling that the jungle began to lighten on ahead, and bits of sky, glimpses of mountain side, and the tops of low trees told him he was coming to where the brook skirted the plateau. Dense, thorny underbrush began to block his way now, and beyond it came the rippling murmur of the stream. He shouted for the curator and his party, hoping that he was near enough to camp for his voice to be heard. No answer came, except the sough of the wind over the grasses and bushes of the plateau, so Dwight decided to get out into the open and study the mountains for something familiar. He forced his way to the stream-side and jumped across.

He discovered, from the familiar headlands of the mountain chain, that he was some distance above camp. It seemed well to fire another signal in the open, and he was about to do so when three large birds as big as ostriches jumped from the grass in the swales and began to run, making a scraping, cackling noise something like the wild brush turkey.

“Cassowaries!” exclaimed Dwight, thrilling with adventure again as his gun sprang to shoulder. They were running like deer, their red, wattled heads and bright-blue necks stretched out ahead like giant chickens. His shotgun held only sixes, so Dwight aimed for the speeding head of the nearest cassowary as at a flying quail, swinging ahead and firing like a wing shot.

The cassowary went down, while the other two flapped off in a wild burst of speed, using their wings to aid their legs. Dwight rushed out, intending to finish off his bird with the knife, as he did not wish to injure the skin of the specimen with a close-up shot. The great bird lay in the grass as he came up, its fiery eye looking at him, unconquered, like a rooster that has been worsted in a fight. As he rushed up it flew at him, squawking discordantly. Dwight beat him off with the barrels of his gun. The air seemed full of the great black wings of his adversary, blinding him with blows of the coarse, double-quilled pinions. It never occurred to him that a cassowary could be really dangerous, and he laughed confidently as the heavy bird fell to the ground and prepared to spring again. With the second leap its long blue neck lunged out and its blunt bill caught his shirt collar and held on like a snapping turtle, while its stout legs drummed fiercely on his chest. Dwight felt the canvas of his coat being ripped, and then a sharp pain seared down his breast to the belt like a hot iron. He was now fighting off the cassowary desperately, stabbing blindly, and warding off the blows of the wings on his head with his left arm. The tearing and rending of its legs on his chest kept up with increasing violence, and he was forced to bring his elbows in close to protect his stomach, dropping his knife and grabbing with his hands at the stout feet of the cassowary--anything to prevent being disemboweled!

Then a shiver went through the bird, its eyes fluttered closed, and the grip of its bill loosened, while the boy tugged himself free. He jumped for his knife in a battling rage, intending to close in and finish his adversary, who was now kicking feebly, when he heard a shout, and turned to see Sadok and the curator come running across the swales. A sumpitan dart sticking in the bird’s side told all!

“Did he hurt you?” yelled the curator, sprinting toward him. “Don’t ever go near a wounded cassowary, you darn fool!” he exploded, wrathfully, as he came up. “Don’t you know they’re more dangerous than a kangaroo? Look!”

He stooped and held up the bird’s claw. On the inside toe was a long hooked talon, curved and sharp as a tiger’s claw.

“Did he get you with it?” demanded the curator, looking at him anxiously, for Dwight still stood looking at him, speechless, holding to his chest with his left hand.

“Guess he did!” gasped the boy, swaying weakly. He lifted his hand and his fingers ran red with blood.