Warren H. Miller

“ Below them they could see a great sandy crater in the center of the village, the huts all slanting askew, while warriors were running to the coconut trees, arming themselves hurriedly. A short distance up the hill the curator turned and fired the air pistol with a long-range shell. The deafening crash of its explosion rang through the jungle over the village, and they saw little black men thrown violently about, like black tumble-bugs, with its concussion. They waited no longer, but toiled up the hill as fast as they could climb. Shouts below and calls in the jungle came to their ears. ”

“ After some climbing, a ledge was found that rose over the summits of the trees below. They wormed up it and lay flat in the grass on its edge, spying out the country with their glasses. Over to the east rose the cone of the old volcano, with the pygmy village on it, the girls’ tree huts visible like white specks in the sunlit clearing. Beyond that was the mountain with the great banyan tree on its north shoulder, and beyond that again in the blue distance, about twelve miles off, the bald knob above Cassowary Camp.
But it was the green jungle below them that they searched most carefully. ”

“ The curator cupped his hands.
“Baderoon! Baderoon! Here we are!” he yelled. Then he and Sadok laid Dwight down under a rock ledge and sought ambushes. Yells and war cries sounded from the mountain side all about them as the long line of Outanata warriors splashed across the creek, brandishing their weapons. Parties of pygmies formed for the assault in the swales. The occasional cough of Sadok’s sumpitan at different places on the mountain showed that he was outlying and picking off men here and there. ”

“ The ubiquitous banana was [23] everywhere, growing wild in the forest, generally in the open glades of pandanus palms, whose scraggly trees twisted high in the misty air, with spikes of leaves like century plants at their branch tips. And every now and then, through the dim vistas of vine and creeper, they could note a dense thicket where a giant fig tree grew, surrounded by its own forest of aërial root shoots a hundred feet in diameter.
Down on the jungle floor scuttled millions of silent hermit crabs, or great orange-and-red land crabs popped down their holes. ”

“ PIRATE VISITATIONS MEANWHILE Nicky and Sadok had been exploring into the untracked jungle to the southward. The low hills of Aru grew more rocky, and the rank jungle gave way to sparse open growth, with rocky soil and wild grass swales here and there. It was hot, out here in the sun, and their canteens were in frequent use. Presently a wild brush turkey jumped from cover and ran cackling and gobbling through the bush growth. He went like a deer, as Nicky whipped out the Officer’s Colt and fired on the run. At the same time Sadok’s sumpitan coughed and its dart flashed across the grass tops. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nature did not grow bushes in such dense shade! He was about to fire into it, when a long black arm struck out from behind the tree trunk and there was a flash of bright steel, while the bush writhed in convulsions and then lay still.
Baderoon! In spite of his religious taboo against steel, he had broken it for them. Dwight could appreciate that, and he began to have immense confidence in their two wild allies. In the jungle, where he and the curator and Nicky were helpless, these two were masters. They could beat the pygmies at their own game. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nicky, prancing down from the veranda, dashed in and fumbled at the writhing coils, to try it himself; but with a quick twist the powerful tail fastened itself around his ankle, and a huge, thick loop of the snake rose and curled itself tight around his waist. The boy gasped, crushed breathless, and it looked serious for a time as Dwight and the curator rushed down to the rescue, but suddenly there was a bright flash of steel, and Sadok’s parang met the next loop coming down over the boy’s head and clove it nearly in two. ”

“ A man’s eyes would be worth nothing if he once got himself well into them.
A detour of about a mile brought them around the century plants, and then came lava escarpments, steep and difficult to climb. Up them they swarmed, and found themselves on a gradually rising, arid table-land with sparse vegetation growing all about, and magnificent views out in every direction.
Working southward, they finally came out on a bald knob that the curator had noted from the camp below and had determined to reach. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Their resolute, weather-tanned young faces bespoke the hardy outdoorsmen, [3] of the same breed, but younger, as the curator. Dwight was tall and spare, with a keen hatchet face and merry gray-green eyes that twinkled at one when he talked, yet they could grow hard and cold as ice in time of peril. Nicky was stout; habitually good-humored, habitually chuckling over the least joke, and always finding one and making himself the butt of it on every occasion. ”

“ The three white men were standing before a small palm-thatched deck house which was their home on the Malay proa Kuching. Curator Baldwin of the National Museum was their leader. He was a tall, rangy giant of a man, his sinewy frame clad in tropical khaki, with the inevitable puttees of the East accentuating the muscular leanness of his long legs. One placed him easily—mining engineer or leader of a scientific field party, captain of his team in college days, most likely, that commanding sort of man to whom exploration in dangerous out-of-the-way places is all in the day’s work. ”

“ By midafternoon she had come off Dobbo, the principal pearl port of the Aru Islands, and the captain altered her course slightly, heading for the coast of Kobror, the wildest of the two great mainlands of Aru.
Out of the coral reefs that surround the harbor of Dobbo put forth a long, black canoe. [5] Her crew of naked blacks foamed up the water in spats of spray with their paddles, singing and shouting as they came. Up in her high carved prow sat a white man, dressed in the cottons of the equatorial tropics, with a Japanese-bowl hat sheltering his head from the sun. ”

“ 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 ”

“ Then a slight rustle in the thatch attracted him, and, gazing up at it steadily again, it suddenly resolved itself into a large snake, compactly coiled up in a kind of knot! Dwight’s jaw dropped as he detected the head and its bright eyes in the very center of the folds.
“Good Lord, fellows!” he called out, jumping to his feet, “here’s a boa constrictor, a python!—up in our roof!”
The curator jumped up the steps of the veranda in a bound. “Where! Show me him!” he demanded.
“Right up there!” laughed Dwight, quivering with excitement. “And making himself at home just as nice as nice!” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ With a fierce burst of pistol shots the boys picked them off.
Then the brown flash of the curator’s long frame leaped out of the deck house. An arrow pierced his helmet as his arm swept over his head in the cricketer’s swing. A brown object like a baseball shot over to the lakatoi, followed by another and another as the arm went on swinging with incredible swiftness.
[63] Brr-aaam! Brr-aam! Brr-aam! The detonation was frightful, riving the lakatoi apart in great splinters of logs and planks as the grenades exploded. Men, sails, and spars were torn apart in livid flashes of blinding light. ”

“ Not a bush moved, not a stick cracked; the pygmies might have utterly vanished from the earth, for any sign that the jungle gave to the contrary.
Then came the call of the Papuan lory, twice repeated. It was not far off, and it roused Dwight to a frenzy of hard thinking. The curator and Nicky, with perhaps Sadok, also, were coming, having heard his pistol shot. They must be warned at any hazards. To move from his place of concealment was death. He cudgeled his brains for an answer, turning over one plan after another rapidly and rejecting them all. ”

“ My whole [231] life has been that of a scientist, a seeker after knowledge. When I have found a new thing my interest in it ceases. As a wanderer and an explorer I am happy; as a wealthy mine owner I’d be miserable. All my education has been in the service of science; it’s the only life for me.”
“Me, too!” grunted Nicky, splitting his bamboo wand and sticking a small sliver in it to hold it open. “And, there’s one specimen from New Guinea that I didn’t get, and that’s a sea snake. You can have your mine for all of me!”
“By George! that’s the way I feel, too!” exclaimed Dwight. ”