“Perhaps it’s as well not, my lad,” said their guide. “It was all very well, and he liked you, but some day he’d have grown older, and he’d have turned rusty, and there would have been a fight, and before he was killed you might have been badly clawed. Wild beasts don’t tame very well. You can trust dogs and cats, which are never so happy as when they are with human folk; but I never knew any one who did very well with other things. Ah, here’s another of my steps!”
He went to his men again, for they were rowing along a smooth-gliding reach, at the end of which rough water appeared, and all hands were called into requisition to help the boat up the long stretch of rapids, at the end of which, as they glided into smooth water again, Shaddy declared that they had mounted a good twenty feet.
Day after day was spent in this steady journeying onward. The weather was glorious, and the forest on either side looked as if it had never been trod by man. So full of wonders, too, was it for Brazier, that again and again as night closed in, and they moored on their right to some tree for the men to land and light their fire and cook, he thanked their guide for bringing him, as the first botanist, to a region where every hour he collected treasures.
“And some folk would sneer at the pretty things, and turn away because they weren’t gold, or silver, or precious stones,” muttered Shaddy.
All this time almost imperceptibly they were rising and climbing Shaddy’s water steps, as he had called them. They fished and had success enough to keep their larder well stocked. Birds were shot such as were excellent eating, and twice over Shaddy brought down iguanas, which, though looked upon with distrust by the travellers, were welcomed by the boatmen, who were loud in their praise.
It was a dream-like existence, and wonderfully restful to the lads who had passed through so many troubles, while the boat presented an appearance, with its load of drying specimens, strongly suggestive of there being very little room for more.