“So long, for the present, Baldwin,” said Bentham, shaking hands. “I’ve got some pearl business to attend to here with the chief, and I sha’n’t see you again. These rotters will carry up your luggage as your man directs. Send for me if you need anything.”
He nodded cordially and was off into the village of Wamba, which straggled along the shore under lines of coco palms. They landed and went up its one street, followed by a long line of black porters, each with a single article balanced on his head. The veranda of their bungalow peeped out of the jungle on a low hillside at the end of the street. Bamboos hovered over it thickly, their nodding willow-leaved foliage almost hiding its thatched roof from view. Here all their outfit was set down and the curator began settling like an old campaigner.
The boys sat out on the veranda, looking down on the main street of Wamba with the keenest interest. The tall peaked gables of the thatch houses lined both sides of the sandy road. Each house was made of long bamboo poles, laid up A-shaped like a wedge tent and lashed with rattan at their tops. Every foot of the street seemed covered with busy people, for everybody’s business was being transacted out in the main road, in everyone’s way. There were mop-headed Papuan natives, strolling around with bundles of sugar cane over their shoulders; Javanese sailors in their conical straw hats, buying parrots from turbaned Mohammedan Bugis; Chinese merchants buying sago bread from more naked natives, who carried it by a yoke and two slings like a pair of Dutch pails; more Javanese, repairing a proa plank with native adzes; and a constant stream of Aru hunters and fishermen, coming in with fowl, trepang, mother-of-pearl shells, birds, and coconut shells in baskets. For domestic pets there were pigs, kangaroos, goats, tame bobos (pelicans), and parrots everywhere, wandering at will about the street or swinging from a perch under the thatch porches.
Then a native hunter came wandering by, with a spotted cuscus, or native opossum, hanging by its tail, and him the curator snared, to buy the specimen from him and engage the man for a guide to the blakangtana, the jungle hinterland, next day.
Tiring of the noisy scene at length, Dwight went inside and lay down on a cool rattan lounge, leaving Nicky to help sort collection boxes with the curator. After reading awhile, he lay down the book with a sigh of content and looked idly up into the thatch that was thickly woven through the poles of their roof. Indolently gazing, he noticed a dark mass overhead, seemingly buried in the thatch. Examining it more carefully, he could see yellow and black marks, and concluded that it must be a tortoise shell that some one had left there. But the thing still fascinated him, and every little while he would look up at it again, while the others went on with the business of settling the house. Then a slight rustle in the thatch attracted him, and, gazing up at it steadily again, it suddenly resolved itself into a large snake, compactly coiled up in a kind of knot! Dwight’s jaw dropped as he detected the head and its bright eyes in the very center of the folds.
“Good Lord, fellows!” he called out, jumping to his feet, “here’s a boa constrictor, a python!—up in our roof!”
The curator jumped up the steps of the veranda in a bound. “Where! Show me him!” he demanded.
“Right up there!” laughed Dwight, quivering with excitement. “And making himself at home just as nice as nice!”
Sadok started to draw his parang, but the curator stopped him.
“Wait!” he commanded. “We don’t want to spoil his skin.”