Nub’s plan was to form a ladder up the tree with the bamboos they had seen. With a little patience, he assured them, the feat could be accomplished; so they all eagerly set out to commence operations, Alice accompanying them; while the doctor continued his search for the vegetable food they so much required. He first, however, cut a stick from the thick end of a bamboo, for the purpose of digging edible roots, which he thought it probable he might discover.
Nub also suggested that they should forthwith set to work to build a house large enough to contain the whole party. A house would be far better for Alice than the tent, in which she had to lie close to the ground, with some risk of the intrusion of snakes or noxious insects; besides which, bad weather might come on, when they would all require shelter.
“Nothing like bamboo-house,” observed Nub. “If earthquake come, it no shake down; if storm come on, it no blow away.”
The mate assented to the black’s proposal, and agreed at once to cut down a sufficient number of bamboos, not only for the ladder, but for the house. This was not quite so easy a task as it at first appeared, for though the canes were hollow they were excessively hard, and it was only by chopping downwards all round that they could be broken off. At length, however, a sufficient number for the proposed ladder were cut down and carried to the foot of the tree.
Nub was not going to make a ladder of double poles; the tree being of soft wood, he intended to stick in the rounds horizontally, and to support them with a single pole. They had also to collect a quantity of tough and lithe vines, which would serve to bind the rounds to the outer pole; the thickest end of which was stuck deep into the ground. This done, the work went on rapidly, round after round being driven into the tree, about three feet apart. Nub, continuing his work, went on ascending step after step, Dan following him when he got too high up to reach the long poles from the ground. The height looked perilous in the extreme, and Alice, as she watched him, could not help dreading that he might miss his footing and fall down; but Nub was highly delighted with the success of undertaking, and seemed to have no fears on the subject.
“Nub puts me in mind of ‘Jack and the Bean Stalk,’” said Walter, laughing. “I only hope that he won’t find an ogre at the top of the tree.”
“No fear about Nub,” observed the mate. “I hope that he may soon wring the necks of the hornbills and send them down to us.”
Nub was now near the hole where the female hornbill had been seen. She had drawn in her head; and her mate was either absent from home or was concealed among the thick foliage at the top of the tree. The last round was in, and Nub was seen preparing to mount on it, that he might put in his hand and haul out Madam Hornbill. He was just about to do so, when she put out her long beak, and began pecking away furiously at his hand; while, at the same moment, down flew Mr Hornbill from a bough on which he had been snugly ensconced till a favourable opportunity arose of making an attack on the assailant of his fortress. That every man’s home is his castle, is rightly held in England as an established law, and the hornbills naturally considered their nest their castle. With loud screams of rage the male bird attacked poor Nub, who slipped down to the next round, where he held on with might and main, trying to defend his head from the furious onslaught of his feathered foe. Fortunately, his curly head of hair was a good thick one, and prevented the bird from inflicting the injury it might otherwise have done. Keeping his head down, so as to defend his eyes, he rapidly descended the ladder, the hornbills cawing and screaming all the time. The male bird, however, did not attempt to descend beyond the upper rounds of the ladder.
“I no tink we lose our dinner, though,” said Nub, as he got to the bottom. “What say you, Massa Shobbrok?”
“Certainly not, Nub,” answered the mate. “I have got a notion which I am pretty sure will succeed.”