She was about twenty-five feet long, with a bamboo platform overhanging the body of the canoe on each side astern, its outer edges guarded with stout bamboo rails. The body was of flat, hewn planks, built up on a wide keel hollowed from a single log. The New Guinea boats were all made of one or more log canoes, hollowed out of a single log, they knew; this canoe came from Ke’ or Ceram, but of its history there was not a trace. The sail, of woven cotton, still lay wrapped around its yards. Two lengths of bamboo, about twenty feet long and six inches thick, formed the floating outriggers, which were lashed to bow-shaped hardwood spars notched across the gunwales. All her rattan lashings were in as good shape as the day she was made.
An involuntary shiver of apprehension went over the party. Others had come—and never returned!
“Some poor devils ventured in here after paradise birds and got eaten, I presume,” said the curator. “It’s a cinch they never got back! We’ll adopt her. We may need her some day! Here’s good water and dry ground, fellows! Let’s camp here and collect within easy distance until we know the lay of the land. And we’ll all keep together for the present, boys,” he ordered, meaningly.
The parangs got busy, and soon a space was cleared in the underbrush where the two tent flys of the boys and the curator’s hammock could be swung. Sadok disappeared into the jungle, whence the sound of his chopper soon came, and presently he returned to camp, bearing a long green pole of bamboo across his shoulders. This he notched with footsteps cut above each joint, and the pole was then laid upright in the fork of a small ironwood tree. Up it the curator climbed, to look out over the country.
“That was some look-see, boys!” he announced, coming down from the pole. “The mountains lie right near us, to the right, with a strip of deep jungle, about half a mile wide, beginning just beyond this table of coral land. We’ll have to go through it with compass and parang. This stream comes down from a notch in the mountains, with some high grass plateaus shelving out from their sides. It’s a great country, and I doubt if anyone finds us for a time yet. I did not see a sign of a hut or a village. It’s safe to collect anywhere on this coral ground, I think. And there are thunderheads coming over the mountains to the west right now, so make your tents secure for the night and cook whatever you’re going to before the rain comes.”
Nicky did not care to eat just then, so he set out on an exploring trip. For some distance he poked along, slowly, above the course of the stream, starting at every rustle of big land crabs scuttling for their holes in the underbrush. The growth of tangled ironwoods was so thick that he had to hack with his parang to get even through the thinnest vistas. He moved slowly along, the thrill of being alone in an unknown land peopled with savage cannibals putting his nerves on edge. He recalled stories of how the Outanatas did not eat a man whole, like the South Sea Islanders, but had a playful way of cutting off a leg and binding up the stump, saving the man for further feasts while they ate the leg before his eyes; and how, last year, six Javanese had been suddenly decapitated by the Tugeri, just inside the barbed wire of the Dutch fort at Merauke, and how—
Brrrrumm!—right behind him! It might have been the grunt of a wild boar: it might have been—anything! Nicky jumped, whirling in the air, electrified with fear, and landed on his feet with gun cocked and staring eyes. Nothing whatever was visible. The dense brush was as silent and inscrutable as the Sphinx. Trying to quiet his pounding heart, the boy began to turn cautiously around, when—Brrrruuumm! right behind him again! He whirled about, angry this time, looking with all his eyes for something to shoot at.
Brruum!—Brrumm! The sound seemed to come from overhead, and, looking up, Nicky saw a large air plant, its blatant flowers in showy profusion—and hovering in front of them was a large tropical humming bird!
The revulsion was too great! The boy threw back his head and yelled with hysterical laughter.
“Frightened to death by a humming bird!” he whooped. “Yow-yowri! Well, it’s time I shoved along and accomplished something!”