The men, as the line approaches the swamp, are scarcely six yards apart and within this close-drawn ring are nearly a hundred of the animals. The ground has become increasingly marshy, and soon we are wading ankle-deep in water. As we break through the last thicket the open swamp is disclosed to view. Here an exciting scene greets our eyes.
Entirely surrounded by a cordon of naked, yelling savages are a hundred kangaroos leaping and bounding here and there in the swamp, trying to escape the advancing line of men. Their splashing is prodigious, and because of their leaping this way and that there seem to be many more of them than there really are. Their frightened little cries appeal to our sympathies and we drop out of the line, not caring to engage in the coming slaughter.
The Kia Kias soon get within striking-distance and in a very short time the excitement is over. Many of the animals escape, much to our satisfaction, but when the toll of the hunt is taken there are sixty of them stretched out on a strip of dry ground which caps a low rise beside the swamp. The natives are wild with joy at their success, for they tell us that in their last drive they succeeded in catching only twelve animals.
Grasping the kangaroos by their powerful hind legs and carrying them dangling down their backs from the shoulders, the natives set out on the return to the kampong. Unaccustomed to the bearing of burdens, they stop for rest frequently and it is late in the afternoon when we enter the kampong. Here the women greet us with great joy, for their stomachs will be full for a long time to come. While immediate preparations are made for roasting some of the animals, the men prepare to cure the remainder by drying and smoking them.
Strangely enough, there is no attempt to save or cure the skins, and when we question the savages regarding this, they shake their heads. They have no use for them, they say, and let it go at that. Wearing no clothes, they do not require the skins for bodily covering and the only use they have for leather is for covering the heads of their drums, for which purpose they invariably use pigskin. A few of the women save narrow strips of the hide, from which they will make the seed-decorated bandoleers that some of them affect, but this is the only use to which they seem to put the skin of the kangaroo. Yet, properly tanned, it would make admirable leather, for it is as soft as kid.
The dogs make short work of the many skins, eating them hair and all and disgorging the balled-up hair later. The men save some of the leg bones, from which they make nose ornaments, but in the main the dogs get these also. It is surprising how the dogs fatten up after one of these feasts. Between feasts one can count every rib and the poor creatures are so gaunt that it would seem an act of mercy to put them out of their misery. Nature never intended dogs to exist on a diet consisting mainly of cocoanut. After a feast, however, the dogs drag themselves around with stomachs bulging. In a few days, and until the bones and meat are quite gone, their hair is sleek and shiny and in contrast to their former appearance they are positively fat.
The men and women gorge themselves exactly as the dogs do, with the result that there is little activity in the kampong until the meat is entirely consumed. They then fall back on their staple diet until such time as the women can prevail upon the men to go on another excursion.
The natives generously offer us two of the kangaroos to vary our diet of tinned goods, but the little animals seem so much like things to be petted rather than eaten that we thank our hosts warmly and tell them that, inasmuch as we have plenty of our own kind of food and they have so little, we could not think of taking their meat from them. The excuse passes muster with them and they do not press the matter, much to our satisfaction; for at times it becomes awkward to explain certain things which to us are a matter of course.
CHAPTER XIV
The Bird of Paradise
Shortly after the kangaroo hunt there come to the kampong two Chinese, with a party of Moresby boys, who are making their way to the coast and Merauke, where they can dispose of the skins of the birds of paradise they have taken. The Chinese are of the typical trader class and appear prosperous, for their watch-chains are very heavy and of pure gold,—not the red gold we know, but the twenty-two-karat metal of the Orient.