“No; you stop with the boat and keep her afloat. Here are the guns all ready loaded. I don’t suppose there will be any danger; but if there is, you must pepper the enemy with small shot to keep them back—that is, of course, if you see them attack me.”
“Hadn’t I better come, uncle?”
“No; I shall take Ebo. They may be as simple-hearted and friendly as the others we have met, and this country must be so grand a collecting ground that I cannot afford to be scared away by what may be false reports raised by people who have behaved ill to the natives.”
He took out a few strings of brightly coloured beads and a little roll of brass wire, and waved them in the air, when the savages shouted and kept on making signs to us to land.
We were only about twenty yards from the sandy shore now, and we could see every expression of face of the New Guinea men, as my uncle threw one leg over the side and then stood up to his knees in the clear water.
“Kill Ung-kul Dit,” said Ebo, clinging to his arm.
“No, no! Come,” replied my uncle.
Ebo’s club was already in his lingouti, and picking up his spear he too leaped into the water, while I sat down in the boat with the barrel of my gun resting on the gunwale as the sail flapped and the boat rocked softly to and fro.
The people seemed to be delighted as my uncle waded in; but I noted that they carefully avoided wetting their own feet, keeping on the dry sand talking eagerly among themselves; and though I looked attentively I could see no sign of arms.
So peaceful and good-tempered did they all look that I was completely thrown off my guard, and wondered how Ebo could be so cowardly as to keep about a yard behind my uncle, who walked up to them fearlessly, and held out his hand with a string of beads.