But Carey’s greatest treats were upon the hunting expeditions made by the beachcomber’s blacks ashore to obtain fresh meat in the way of a delicacy or two for their chief and something substantial for themselves.
One day Carey was gazing rather disconsolately at the shore and wondering when the time would come for him and his companions to be free again, when Black Jack bounded to his side, making the boy start round, to find the man in a menacing attitude, his teeth bare, eyes wide open displaying scarcely anything but the whites, for he was squinting so horribly that his pupils had disappeared behind his thick nose, while the club he held was quivering as if he were about to strike. The suddenness of the approach startled Carey for the moment, and he leaped back, but the reaction came as quickly, and with doubled fist he rushed at the black; but the latter was too quick, leaping aside, and Carey’s second attack, which took the form of a flying kick, was also unsuccessful.
Black Jack’s face was now covered with a series of good-tempered wrinkles.
“Come ’long,” he cried. “Kedge bird—wallaby. Be ticky-ticky, up a tree.”
“Be ticky-ticky?” said the boy, wonderingly.
“Ess. Come ’long; be ticky-ticky. Buzz–zz–uzz,” he went, with a wonderfully good imitation of the whirr of an insect’s wings, while he made his hand describe the dartings to and fro.
“Big fly so,” he cried, and drawing his boomerang from the hair girdle, he took a few steps, whirled it a moment or two, and then hurled it towards the shore. “Buzz—hum!” he cried, and then he stood grinning with delight at the boy’s admiration of the gyrations made by the curious implement.
At the first throw it seemed to Carey that it would drop as soon as the force was exhausted into the sea, where the hard wood must cause it to sink. But nothing of the kind; it went skimming over the water like some gigantic insect, and at last made a graceful curve, rose up on high quivering and fluttering, and came back till it was over the deck, and then came twirling down.
“Big tree, ticky-ticky, fly dat how.”
“Oh, I see; fly ticky-ticky,” cried Carey. “Honey?”