Beatrice Grimshaw

Name: The Jumping Bamboo
Author: Beatrice Grimshaw

The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

Summary

“The Jumping Bamboo”, published in 1913, is a work by Beatrice Grimshaw. It explores elements such as sorcerer, New Guinea and Mo.

Quotes from The Jumping Bamboo (Beatrice Grimshaw)

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ The Marquis was sitting up on his bed, looking white and drawn.
“It is the 'touch of death,'” he said. “I have felt it—cold as—as nothing but death is cold.” He sat like a statue; his hand had let mine go and was gripping tight to the edge of the bed. I was up in a moment, and looking ail round the tent. There was not a thing to be seen. Having searched, I put out the light again and waited. It is not a good thing to make yourself a target for possible arrows shot in the dark. I could hear the Marquis breathing heavily. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ Sight and hearing are not the only senses that a bushman can use to good effect. I smelt, cautiously and without noise.
There was the marshy odor of the river behind the palms. There was the indescribable smell of a native village—dry, sun-baked earth, insanitary whiffs of decaying stuff, the hay-like odor of old thatch. And something more—the smell of cocoanut-oil, warm and fresh, and very near.
I remembered that the Papuan always oils himself after bathing. I recollected having seen Mo in the river.
Very cautiously I stretched out and touched the Marquis's hand. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ So I told the Marquis. We were sitting on the ground outside our tent and watching the villagers moving about their daily tasks—water-carrying, net-making, wood cutting, fetching sago from the forest, going out to dig yams, or to hunt pig. They looked peaceable enough, and it was a peaceful, pretty scene, with the sun just rising over the tall green palms and the smoke curling thin and blue from under the deep thatch roofs.
But the old hand in New Guinea knows well—too well—that the Papuan is most dangerous when, apparently, most friendly. The quiet aspect of the place meant nothing—or worse. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ TO ENTER an unknown, hostile town in the heart of New Guinea—to have trouble over a village beauty, see a sorcerer restore the dead to life, discover a huge diamond, and be involved in a sudden death—all within twenty-four hours—is adventure enough for any one. Enough even for the Marquis. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ Anyhow, there is one thing we aren't going to do, Marky, and that is, leave a chunk of a rough diamond you could break a man's head with knocking loose about Kata-Kata in a sorcerer's bag.”
[Illustration: I HAVE NEVER BEEN CALLED A NERVOUS MAN; BUT I WAS DOWN THE LADDER AND THE STREET ALMOST BEFORE THE MARQUIS]
“I am all of accord with you—no blooming fear!” said the Marquis. “But, Flint, there is one thing that I must not forget, even on account of the diamond—my seek for the occult. Can we not get this Mo to show us more things of his magic?” ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ We turn ed in all standing, even to our boots. The carriers were camped in a little hut close by; our stores were mostly piled up in the tent, and we had our revolvers strapped round our waists.
It was arranged that we were to take watch and watch about, for two hours each, and that the man on watch should sit on his bed, not lie. I could guess the time easily enough, and the Marquis thought he could also. In any case, there should be no striking of matches.
The night wore on but slowly. At first there were constant stirrings in the village—talking, squabbling, moving here and there ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ And then they said the sorcerer would let loose his snake at night in the house of the man he wanted to kill, and the brute would bite him, and the sorcerer would get it and take it home again before he was seen.”
“Taubada, true you talk,” broke in Koppi Koko, who was squatting on the ground close to us, chewing betel-nut most contentedly. “That puri-puri man, he take him snake all the time 'long one bamboo, carry him along him chest.”
“That accounts for the milk of the cocoanut,” I said. “What a pair of babies to be scared by a stick with a snake in it, hopping about! ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ Mark, let's talk it all out.”
“Perfectly,” said the Marquis, turning his full-moon face round upon me.
“Look here. We've got to get that diamond. And we've got to avoid being poisoned, as the girl was. And we've got to get our carriers out safe with ourselves, and be on our way to the coast inside of a day or so at the most: it isn't healthy to stop here too long.”
“Perfectly. That's right.”
“Well, then, I reckon the sorcerer's not going to go on keeping the diamond where he did, because a blind baby could have seen that we wanted it. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ People—natives, I mean—said that the Kata-Kata sorcerers knew how to tame snakes and make them like dogs, and that the brutes would bite any one their masters told them to. The sorcerers would get a bit of a man's clothing, taken next his skin where it had the scent of his body, and worry and tease the snake with it so that it would know the smell, and hate it. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ The Marquis gave it, and as I am alive, he was crying crying as he did.
There was nothing to make a fuss about.I had the top joint of the finger off in two clean chops. And there is no finger a man can spare better than the left-hand third.
I tied it up and put a sort of tourniquet on. Then I remembered the diamond—it was not so strange that I'd forgotten it for a minute or two, all things considered— and put my right hand into the jar that had lately held such an unpleasant occupant. I pulled out—not the diamond, hut a bit of common stone tied up in a leaf.
The sorcerer had us again. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ Noon is the lonely hour in Papua, when the heat is at its worst; no man stirs about who is not compelled to do so. The women were in the yam fields, taking their mid-day rest from toil beneath the shelter of the bush. The men were loafing about somewhere in the depths of the forest, pretending to hunt. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ It was too much to suppose that the matter would be allowed to end there. The little man must have developed a worse grudge against us than against his late unlucky fiancée, and if her fate was an example of what we had got to expect, things were looking lively. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Beatrice Grimshaw, The Jumping Bamboo (1913)

“ And that thing was death, I know, because in these plains where all the time hot there nothing cold at all, and that which has touched me was the cold of
[Illustration: WE STOOD IN THE DARK UNDER THE HOUSE, LOOKING BREATHLESSLY THROUGH THE CRACKS IN THE FLOOR, AND WATCHING MO.]
“Rats! You aren't dead. Have some whisky,” I said, pouring it out.
“Yes, I am escaped; that's what I don't comprehend,” said the Marquis thoughtfully. “That good whisky; that warms the muscles of the heart. ”

Beatrice Grimshaw

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Quotes from The Jumping Bamboo (Beatrice Grimshaw)

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