“Doctor Instow says it will, only it must have time. Do you feel any sensation in it now?”
“Not a bit, sir. Doctor asked me if he hurt me when he altered the bandages this morning, but I had to tell him he might do anything and I should not feel it. Just as if it was quite dead. Rum, ain’t it, sir?”
“It’s very sad, Ned.”
“Oh, I don’t know, sir. It’s a nuisance; but the doctor says it will come right in time, so one’s got to wait. He says he’ll get the wound healed up, and then we can talk to the nerves and muscles with some good friction. Treat it like a lucifer, sir; give it a sharp rub and make it go off. But I shall be glad when he’ll let me come on deck. Might do a bit o’ fishing, sir.”
“You shall, Ned, as soon as you can.”
There were no signs of the savages’ visit when they passed inside the lagoon again, and, in the hope that they might remain now unmolested, the yacht steamed right away from the entrance and cast anchor nearly on the opposite side of the island, where the lagoon was at its widest, so as to give ample room for manoeuvring in case of attack, where the shore was more beautiful than in any part they had yet seen.
One of the tiny rivers ran down a precipitous gully in a series of fern-hung falls, to lose itself in the golden sands, and close at hand the sheltering trees were of the grandest in size and loveliness, overhung as they were with festoons of flowers, each tree affording ample study for Sir John and his friend; and the collecting went on apace from morn to eve, so that the boxes they had brought began to fill up and smell strongly of the aromatic gums and spices used to keep ants at a distance.
The sailors took the keenest delight in the birds, and were eager to learn to skin, and carefully laid them in the hot sunshine till they dried. They gloried too in the pickle-tub, as they called the spirit-cask, to which the abundant snakes and lizards were consigned. Then of an evening they were always waiting for Jack to give the word for fishing, partly as an interesting sport, but after the first few times, for the sake of what Lenny called the pot, though in almost every case the capture was fried.
It needed a good deal of care and discrimination though, and the doctor’s natural history knowledge was often called upon to decide whether some gorgeously-armoured creature would be wholesome or no, some of the tropic fish being poisonous in the extreme.
Then in addition there were the handsome birds which were collected; these, especially the fruit-pigeons, being very toothsome, though the larger parrots and cockatoos were, as Wrensler the cook said, not to be sneezed at, though he declared that they would have been far better if plucked instead of skinned.