So beautiful was the shore by the stream that the temptation was very great to erect a tent and live on the land, but it was considered too risky.
“Only fancy, Jack,” said the doctor with a queer look, “our meeting with the same trouble out in this solitary island as we should in London.”
“What trouble?” said Jack, laughing. “You don’t mean the noise?”
“No, but I mean the blacks,” said the doctor.
“Oh, I see,” cried Jack; “but it does seem such a pity. I should like to have a tent ashore.”
“It would be delightful under one of those big trees, but canvas is a poor safeguard against the point of a spear. It wouldn’t do.”
“No,” said Jack with a sigh, “it would not do.”
Many excursions into the interior were made—the interior meaning a climb up the slope of the great mountain—and in all cases a grand selection of beautifully-plumaged birds was secured. Many of these were the tiny sun-birds, glittering in scales of ruby, amethyst, sapphire, and topaz; then too at the sides of the streams vivid blue-and-white kingfishers with orange bills were shot, many of them with two of the tail-feathers produced in a long shaft ending in a racket-like flat, giving the birds a most graceful aspect.
Then there were plenty of paroquets, rich in green, orange, and vermilion; rain-birds as the Malays call them, in claret and white, with blue and orange beaks; parrots without number, and finches, swallows, and starlings of lovely metallic hues; but the greatest prizes were the birds of paradise, of which several kinds were secured, from the grandly-plumaged great bird of paradise to the tiny king. Whenever one of these was shot in some great grove at daybreak, Jack hesitated to have it skinned for fear of injuring the lovely feathers, over which adornments Nature seemed to have done her best. Now it was one of the first-named, a largish bird, with its feathers standing out to curve over in a dry fountain of golden buff, ornamented with their beautifully flowing; wave-like shafts; and this would be of a prevailing tint of soft cinnamon red; while the smaller kinds were lavishly adorned with crests and tippets and sprays of feathers brighter than burnished metal.
“I don’t know how it is,” said Jack one day, “but every bird we find seems more beautiful than the last.”