“Yes, and collecting botanical specimens. There will be no need now to toil up a certain distance every day, and we shall stop at every likely-looking collecting ground to go ashore, and certainly explore every side stream or creek.”
“And fish? Hamet says it would be capital if I could catch enough fish for a dinner now and then; and I want to bathe.”
“Of course, and you shall try; but there are crocodiles. I have seen two within the past hour, one swimming, and the other lying on a sandbank.”
“Why, I saw that,” cried Ned; “but it was so still that I concluded it was all fancy, it lay so close, and looked so like the sand and mud. Well, I may fish if I can’t bathe, and—well, that does seem curious just as I said that. Look, there are two of the black fellows at it.”
“A dark brown and a light brown to be more correct,” said Murray, as he looked at a boat some fifty yards ahead of them, where it had just shot round a bend of the smooth stream, with a Malay boy paddling; while another in bright sarong and gay-looking baju or jacket, and a natty little military-looking cap on one side of his head, leaned back trailing a line for some kind of fish.
“I say, you sir,” cried Ned loudly, as he noted that the brown-looking boy was about his own age, and that he was watching the newcomers eagerly, “what’s the Malay for what you are catching, and how many have you caught?”
For answer the boy gave his line a snatch in, and let it go again, showing his teeth, and laughing heartily.
“Well, you might be civil,” said Ned flushing. “I say, Hamet, ask him how many he has caught.”
The boatman asked the required question, and received an answer in the Malay tongue.
“He says he has only just begun.”