“Orang-kaya give me-fellah sign take ’long black boy?” he suggested.
“Sure! They might murder you for your mirror, in all your youth and innocence!” laughed the curator. “Here, Nicky, get out a couple of your empty alcohol tins. The chief’d love them, to put in his ears.”
Baderoon eyed them longingly as Nicky got out the cans from his rucksack. He’d have dearly loved to put them in his own ears, only the important detail of stretching the lobe enough for such ornaments had been neglected in his youth. Such does contact with civilized whites debase the poor savage! He handled the cans reverently, and finally stowed them somehow in his loin cloth.
“Tell’m the Thunderer make war on litty black men—plenty heads!” grinned the curator. “Run—plenty—too much!”
Baderoon laughed merrily and set off into the jungle without a word. By some way known only to himself he would cover those thirty miles that day, threading alone through the trackless jungle. By noon next day a war party of the Outanatas would be halfway back to them, thirsting for a foray on their ancient enemies, the pygmies—with the powerful aid of the man who called down the lightnings—or the curator was no judge of human nature!
After Baderoon had gone, they studied the mountains and valleys to the south for some time, planning a route.
“That big sugar loaf to the northeast looks familiar to me, Nick,” said the curator. “Don’t you remember it, from our banyan tree outlook?”
They got out the map, and presently located it from bearings taken on the map from their position on Red Mountain. Once on that sugar loaf, it would be easy to locate the bald knob above Cassowary Camp.
He pointed out the shoulder to Sadok. “We go there,” he explained. “You stop ’long front. You see black man, make’m call like red lory, two time, and come back.”
Sadok comprehended quickly, and with a white flash of his teeth led on, his sumpitan balanced in his hands for instant use, and so they set out. In two hours they had reached the shoulder, some six miles through the jungle, and were cautiously reconnoitering for a lookout. After some climbing, a ledge was found that rose over the summits of the trees below. They wormed up it and lay flat in the grass on its edge, spying out the country with their glasses. Over to the east rose the cone of the old volcano, with the pygmy village on it, the girls’ tree huts visible like white specks in the sunlit clearing. Beyond that was the mountain with the great banyan tree on its north shoulder, and beyond that again in the blue distance, about twelve miles off, the bald knob above Cassowary Camp.