“I would not loiter here, Nat,” he said, “amidst such a treacherous, bloodthirsty set, but the great island is so tempting that I long for a ramble amongst its forests. I know that there are plenty of wonderful specimens to be obtained here. New kinds of paradise birds, butterflies, and beetles, and other attractions that it would be a sin not to obtain.”
“Perhaps we shall find a place by and bye where there are no inhabitants, uncle,” I said.
“That is what I have been hoping for days,” he replied; and not long after we sailed round a headland into a beautiful bay with the whitest of sand, trees clustering amidst the lovely yellow stone cliffs, and a bright stream of water flowing through a gorge and tumbling over two or three little barriers of rocks before losing itself in the calm waters of the bay.
Some six or seven miles back was a high ridge of mountains, which seemed to touch the sea to east and west, cutting off as it were a narrow strip from the mainland, and this strip, some fifteen miles long and six wide at its greatest, was fertile in the extreme.
“Why, Nat,” cried my uncle, “this should be as grand a place as our island. If it is free of savages it is the beau idéal of a naturalist’s station. Look! what’s that?”
“A deer come out of the wood to drink in the stream,” I said.
“Poor deer,” laughed my uncle, “I’m afraid it will have to come into our larder, for a bit of venison is the very thing we want.”
As he spoke he cautiously took up a rifle, rested it upon the edge of the boat, waited a few moments, and then fired at fully five hundred yards’ distance, and I saw the deer make one great bound and fall dead.
“Good! Eatum,” said Ebo approvingly; but instead of indulging in a frantic dance he shaded his eyes and gazed about in every direction, carefully sweeping the shore, and paying no heed to us as the boat was sailed close in.
As the keel was checked by the sand Ebo leaped out, and I thought he was about to rush at the deer to skin it for food, but he ran off rapidly in one direction right along the shore, coming back at the end of a quarter of an hour, during which, after dragging our prize on board, we remained, gun in hand, upon the watch.