They got Nicky tucked away for the night and his tent fly secured down strongly like a wedge tent, for great plashes of raindrops were beginning to fall and the rolling thunder came nearer and nearer down the mountains. Then came the roar of the rain, and bright, vivid flashes of lightning rent the twilight.
Sadok and Baderoon moved their mats under the curator’s hammock fly, while rain drove in sheets through the tropical night. It was furious while it lasted, but by eight o’clock the storm had died to distant mutterings far back in the interior, and a pitch blackness ensued. Then the stars came out, and in the moist, steaming stillness the camp went off to sleep for their first night in the New Guinea jungle.
V
THE OUTANATAS
FOR the next few days the water hole became a star collecting ground for the entire expedition. Nicky was laid up a day in camp, recovering from the effects of the death adder’s poison, but he soon came to haunt the pond, for it and the stream that flowed past their camp were his main reliance for abundance of reptilian life.
“Here’s where we make the main collection, fellows,” said the curator, as he and Sadok came back to their temporary headquarters loaded with curious hook-billed Macrorhina kingfishers, magnificent crowned pigeons, Manucodia starlings of brilliant hues of plumage, blue flycatcher wrens, and many other species of the abundant bird life of New Guinea.
“We’ll fill the main collection crates with a representative collection in all four divisions of natural history. That will leave us free to concentrate on the rarer varieties during the exploration trip,” he continued. “I vote we have a pig hunt to-morrow. Baderoon tells me he has discovered plentiful rootings down in that mass of high jungle that separates us from the mountain chain. We ought to lay in some fresh meat and cure some bacon before starting into the interior.”
“Me for the hogfest!” crowed Nicky. “I’ve about nailed every lizard, tree frog, and snakelet in this vicinity. What ammunition shall we use, sir?”
“For wild boar I’m inclined to the solid ounce ball in a twelve-gauge shotgun,” grinned the curator. “It’s the only thing that will stop ’em at close range. Beats a high-power rifle all hollow, for it knocks ’em down to stay. I brought along some shells loaded with three-quarter ounce ball for our twenty-gauges, and we’ll serve ’em out to-morrow.”
On the next day the pig hunt was started. The wild pig of New Guinea, Sus papuana, is in several respects peculiar to himself. Armed with those long tusks that the natives use for nose ornaments and breast shields, he is wild, long legged, and speedy as a deer. He has the typical Asiatic screw tail, in place of the long straight one of the wild boar of Europe, but is almost hairless and provided with thick horny shoulder plates under the skin that will turn almost any bullet. Like all pigs, he fights well when cornered, is very tenacious of life, and attacks with a slashing charge of his tusks, attempting to upset a man with his momentum and then turn and rend out his ribs with a powerful stroke of the long, sharp tushes.
Baderoon and Sadok disappeared into the jungle to get above their feeding ground and act as beaters, while the curator and the boys took up vantage points a short distance back from the creek in the swampy bottoms.