But there was a spice of danger down here, for great sharks, three fathoms long, with terrifying open mouths, made for the windows, and grabbed at Kep. They knew not what glass was, and thought that to swallow the boy was the easiest thing in the world. When they found that they had not succeeded, they would swish their tails about, and dash off angry and disappointed.
Fishes with large glaring eyes and heads clad in shields of bone at times dashed against the plate-glass. They looked like miniature iron-clads, as they sailed towards Kep, and the marvel was that they did not break the diving bell to pieces.
* * * * *
If you look at a good map of the world, gentle reader--by the way, are you gentle, I wonder?--you will be able to discover at a single peep where New Guinea is. But the map is not made yet that can show you all the outs and ins, the gulfs and bays and locks of the island's entrancing fore-shores.
You will look up north from Australia for New Guinea, and be surprised at its strange, ungainly shape, its points and promontories, its immense size, and the multitude of small islands around it on every side. Nor'ard and west, if you wandered along its beautiful shores, north and west and far away, you would find yourself--if you had not previously been killed and eaten by cannibals--at McLuer inlet, or Triton Bay, or at Cape Spencer on the shores of Dampier Strait, looking out across a fiery blue ocean at clusters of green cocoa-nut crowned islands, on almost any one of which you could have but little difficulty indeed in becoming something of a real Crusoe. But after a time, I guess, it would not be one marked footprint on the wet sand you might find, but fifty.
You would naturally imagine then, that you were come for, and that you were soon to figure as a cold sirloin or side-dish at a feast and wild dance given by some Papuan chief. N.B.--The inhabitants of New Guinea are called Papuans.
Oh dear, what a region of beauty and romance is embodied in these simple words, "the South Sea Islands."
But if up there, you got a dhow, and went cruising west, and had the good luck not to be eaten, and thus enjoy yourself instead of being devoured for the enjoyment of some else, a blue shark for example, the trip would be delightful, though dangerous. You would have plenty of food, and the seas are studded with green islands, that appear from a distance to be floating, like great emeralds, twixt sea and sky, so that, when thirsty, you could go on shore, and get little black boys to climb the tasseled trees and pitch down cocoa-nuts for you. It would be a charming holiday, and you would not want much to wear. But in time you would reach Celebes itself, another great spreading insect of an island, on which many and many a terrible murder has been committed, and many a missionary massacred.
Resuming your journey, you would in time reach Borneo. Well, by its shores you would find that civilization and trade, and all that has made the marvellous progress of our world, was there to greet you. You would meet English-speaking friends there, but you would have to run up a pretty heavy tailors' bill before you could, with any show of modesty, visit their houses.
You've heard of the "Wild Man of Borneo"? Well, he is still up there, among the midland mountains, and though he might still lick his lips after eating some roast long-pig, he is now a much more respectable member of society than when I first knew him. At that time he was a real and terrible head-hunter. He wanted me to part with mine. I told him I could not see where the fun came in. Then he tried to convince me, by waving a terrible iron-spiked club. But not being used to carry on a conversation through such a medium, I shot him through the shoulder, and he bolted home to thrash one of his fifteen wives.