Volume Three—Chapter Six.

Volume Three—Chapter Six.New Formosa—The Matchlock.“What is it?” said Bevis.“I saw a savage.”“Where?”“In the sedges on the shore there,” pointing across the weeds. “I saw his head—he had no hat on.”“Quite sure?” Bevis looked, but could not see anything.“Almost very nearly quite sure.”They watched the sedges a long time, but saw nothing.“Was it Charlie, or Val, or Cecil?”“No, I don’t think so,” said Mark.“They could not get round either,” said Bevis. “If they crossed the Nile like we did, they could not get round.”“No.”“It could not have been anybody.”“I thought it was; but perhaps it was a crow flew up—it looked black.”“Sure to have been a crow. The sedges do not move.”“No, it was a mistake—they couldn’t get here.”They went on again and found a wild bullace.“This is the most wonderful island there ever was,” said Bevis; “there’s always something new on or about it. The swan—I shall shoot the swan. No, most likely it’s sacred, and the king of the country would have us hunted down if we killed it.”“And tied to a stake and tortured.”“Melted lead poured into our mouths, because we shot the sacred swan with leaden bullets.”“Awful. No, don’t shoot it. There are currant-trees on the island too—I’ve seen them, and there’s a gooseberry bush up in the top of an old willow that I saw,” said Mark. “Of course there are bananas; are there any breadfruit-trees here?”“Certain to be some somewhere.”“Melons and oranges.”“Of course, and grapes—those are grapes,” pointing to bryony-berries, “and pomegranates and olives.”“Yams and everything.”“Everything. I wonder if Pan will bark this time—I wonder if anything is gone,” said Bevis as they reached the stockade. Pan did not bark, and there was nothing missing.They set to work now to make some tea and roast the moorhens, having determined to have tea and supper together. The tea was ready long before the moorhens, and by the time they had finished the moon was shining brightly, though there were some flecks of cloud. They could not of course play cards, so Bevis got out his journal; and having put down about the honey-bird, and the swan, and the discoveries they had made, went on to make a list of the trees and plants on the island, and the birds that came to it. They had seen a small flock of seven or eight missel-thrushes pass in the afternoon, and Mark said that all the birds came from the unknown river, and flew on towards the north-north-west. This was the direction of the waste, or wild pasture.“Then there must be mainland that way,” said Bevis; “and I expect it is inhabited and ploughed, and sown with corn, for that’s what the birds like at this time of the year.”“And the other way—where they come from—must be a pathless jungle,” said Mark. “And they rest here a moment as they cross the ocean. It is too far for one fly.”“My journal ought to be written on palm leaves,” said Bevis, “a book like this is not proper: let’s get some leaves to-morrow and see if we can write on them.”“Don’t shipwrecked people write on their shirts,” said Mark, “and people who are put in prison?”“So they do—of course: but our shirts are flannel, how stupid!”“I know,” said Mark, “there’s the collars.” He went into the hut and brought out their linen collars, which they had ceased to wear. Bevis tried to write on these, but the ink ran and sank in, and it did not do at all.“Wrong ink,” he said, “we must make some of charcoal—lampblack—and oil. You use it just like paint, and you can’t blot it, you must wait till it dries on.”“No oil,” said Mark. “I wanted to rub the gun with some and looked, but there is none—we forgot it.”“Yellow-hammers,” said Bevis, turning to his journal again; “what are yellow-hammers?”“Unknown birds,” said Mark. “We don’t know half the birds—nobody has ever put any name to them, nobody has ever seen them: call them, let’s see—gold-dust birds—”“And greenfinches?”“Ky-wee—Ky-wee,” said Mark, imitating the greenfinches’ call.“That will do capital—Ky-wees,” said Bevis.“There’s a horse-matcher here,” said Mark. The horse-matcher is the bold hedge-hawk or butcher bird. “The one that sticks the humble-bees on the thorns.”“Bee-stickers—no, bee-killers: that’s down,” said Bevis. Besides which he wrote down nettle-creepers (white-throats), goldfinch, magpie, chaffinch, tree-climber, kestrel-hawk, linnets, starlings, parrots, and parrakeets. “I shall get up early to-morrow morning,” he said. “I’ll load the matchlock to-night, I want to shoot a heron.”He loaded the matchlock with ball, and soon afterwards they let the curtain down at the door, and went to bed, Bevis repeating “Three o’clock, three o’clock, three o’clock,” at first aloud and then to himself, so as to set the clock of his mind to wake him at that hour. Not long after they were asleep, Pan as usual went out for his ramble.Bevis’s clock duly woke him about three, and lifting his head he could see the light through the chinks of the curtain, but he was half inclined to go to sleep again, and stayed another quarter of an hour. Then he resolutely bent himself to conquer sleep, slipped off the bed, and put on his boots quietly, not to wake Mark. Taking the matchlock, he went out and found that it was light, the light of the moon mingling with the dawn, but it was misty. A dry vapour, which left no dew, filled the wood so that at a short distance the path seemed to go into and lose itself in the mist.Bevis went all round the island, following the path they had made. On the Serendib side he neither saw nor heard anything, but as he came back up the other shore, a lark began to sing far away on the mainland, and afterwards he heard the querulous cry of a peewit. He walked very cautiously, for this was the most likely side to find a heron, but whether they heard his approach or saw him, for they can see almost as far as a man when standing, by lifting their long necks, he did not find any. When he reached the spot where the “blaze” began that led to Kangaroo Hill, he fancied he saw something move in the water a long way off through the mist.He stopped behind a bush and watched, and in a minute he was sure it was something, perhaps a cluck. He set up the rest, blew the match, opened the lid of the pan, knelt down and looked along the barrel till he had got it in a line with the object. If the gun had been loaded with shot he would have fired at once, for though indistinct through the vapour he thought it was within range, but as he had ball, he wanted to see if it would come nearer, as he knew he could not depend on a bullet over thirty yards. Intent on the object, which seemed to be swimming, he began to be curious to know what it was, for it had now come a little closer, and he could see it was not a duck, for it had no neck; it was too big for a rat: it must be the creature that visited the island and took their food—the idea of shooting this animal and surprising Mark with it delighted him.He aimed along the barrel, and got the sight exactly on the creature, then he thought he would let it get a few yards closer, then he depressed the muzzle just a trifle, remembering that it was coming towards him, and if he did not aim somewhat in front the ball would go over.Now it was near enough he was sure—he aimed steadily, and his finger began to draw the match down when he caught sight of the creature’s eye. It was Pan.“Pan!” said Bevis. He got up, and the spaniel swam steadily towards him.“Where have you been, sir?” he said sternly. Pan crouched at his feet, not even shaking himself first. “You rascal—where have you been?”Bevis was inclined to thrash him, he was so angry at the mistake he had almost made, angry with the dog because he had almost shot him. But Pan crouched so close to the ground under his very feet that he did not strike him.“It was you who frightened the herons,” he said. Pan instantly recognised the change in the tone of his voice, and sprang up, jumped round, barked, and then shook the water from his shaggy coat. It was no use evidently now to think of shooting a heron, the spaniel had alarmed them and Bevis returned to the hut. He woke Mark, and told him.“That’s why he’s so lazy in the morning,” said Mark. “Don’t you recollect? He sleeps all the morning.”“And won’t eat anything.”“I believe he’s been home,” said Mark. “Very likely Polly throws the bones out still by his house.”“That’s it: you old glutton!” said Bevis.Pan jumped on the bed, licked Mark, then jumped on Bevis’s knees, leaving the marks of his wet paws, to which the sand had adhered, then he barked and wagged his tail as much as to say, “Am I not clever?”“O! yes,” said Mark, “you’re very knowing, but you won’t do that again.”“No, that you won’t, sir,” said Bevis. “You’ll be tied up to-night.”“Tight as tight,” said Mark. “Just think,” said Bevis. “He must have swum all down the channel we came up on the catamaran. Why it’s a hundred and fifty yards—”“Or two hundred—only some of it is shallow. Perhaps he could bottom some part—”“But not very far—and then run all the way home, and then all the way back, and then swim off again.”“A regular voyage—and every night too.”“You false old greedy Pan!”“To leave us when we thought you were watching while we slept.”“To desert your post, you faithless sentinel.” Pan looked from one to the other, as if he understood every word; he rolled up the whites of his eyes and looked so pious, they burst into fits of laughter. Pan wagged his tail and barked doubtfully; he had a shrewd suspicion they were laughing at him, and he did not like it. In fact, it was not only the flesh-pots that had attracted Pan from his post and led him to traverse the sea and land, and undergo such immense exertion, it was to speak to a friend of his.They thought it of no use to go to sleep again now, so they lit the fire, and prepared the breakfast. By the time it was ready the mist had begun to clear; the sky became blue overhead, and while they were sitting at table under the awning, the first beams shot along over Serendib to their knees. Bevis said after breakfast he should practise with the matchlock, till he could hit something with the bullets. Mark wanted to explore the unknown river, and this they agreed to do, but the difficulty, as usual, was the dinner, there was nothing in their larder but bacon for rashers, and that was almost gone. Rashers become wearisome, ten times more wearisome when you have to cook them too.Bevis said he must write his letter home—he was afraid he might have delayed too long—and take it to Loo to post that night, then he would write out a list of things, and Loo could buy them in the town, potted meats, and tongues, and soups, that would save cooking, only it was not quite proper. But Mark got over that difficulty by supposing that they fetched them from the wreck before it went to pieces.So having had their swim, Bevis set up his target—a small piece of paper with a black spot, an inch in diameter, inked in the centre—on the teak, and fired his first shot at forty yards. The ball missed the teak-tree altogether, they heard it crash into a bramble bush some way beyond. Bevis went five yards nearer next time, and the bullet hit the tree low down, two feet beneath the bull’s-eye. Then he tried at thirty yards, and as before, when he practised, the ball hit the tree five or six inches lower than the mark. He tried four times at this distance, and every time the bullet struck beneath, so that it seemed as if the gun threw the ball low.Some guns throw shot high, and some low, and he supposed the matchlock threw low. So he aimed the fifth time above the centre, and the ball grazed the bark of the tree on the right-hand side very much as Mark’s had done. Bevis stepped five yards nearer, if he could not hit it at twenty-five yards, he did not think it would be his fault. He aimed direct at the piece of paper, which was about five inches square, but the bullet struck three inches beneath, though nearly in a line, that is, a line drawn down through the middle of the paper would have passed a little to the left of the bullet hole.This was better, so now he tried five yards closer, as it appeared to improve at every advance, and the ball now hit the paper at its lower right-hand edge. Examining the bullet holes in the bark of the tree, and noticing they were all low and all on the right-hand side, Bevis tried to think how that could be. He was quite certain that he had aimed perfectly straight, and as he was now so accustomed to the puff from the priming, that did not disconcert him. He kept his gaze steadily along the barrel till the actual explosion occurred, and the smoke from the muzzle obscured the view. It must be something in the gun itself.Bevis put it on the rest unloaded, aimed along, and pulled the trigger, just as he would have done had he been really about to shoot. Nothing seemed wrong. As the heavy barrel was supported by the rest, and the stock pressed firm to his shoulder, pulling the trigger did not depress the muzzle as it often does with rifles.He aimed again, and all at once he saw that the top sight must be the cause. The twisted wire was elevated about an eighth of an inch, and when he aimed he got the tip of the sight to bear on the paper, so that, instead of his glance passing level along the barrel, it rose slightly, from the breech to the top of the sight. The barrel was more than a yard long, so that when the top of the sight was in a line with the object, the muzzle was depressed exactly an eighth of an inch. An eighth of an inch at one yard, was a quarter at two yards, three eighths at three yards, at four half an inch, at eight it was an inch, at sixteen two inches, and at twenty-four three inches. This was very nearly enough of itself to account for the continual misses. In a gun properly made, the breech is thicker than the muzzle, and this greater thickness, like a slight elevation, corrects the sight; the gun, too, is adjusted. But the matchlock was the same thickness from end to end, and till now, had not been tried to determine the accuracy of the shooting.Bevis got a file and filed down the sight, till it was only a sixteenth of an inch high, and then loading again, he aimed in such a way that the sight should cover the spot he wished to strike. He could see both sides of the sight, but the exact spot he wanted to hit was hidden by it. He fired, and the ball struck the paper about an inch below and two inches to the right of the centre. Next time the bullet hit very nearly on a level with the centre, but still on the right side.This deflection he could not account for, the sight was in the proper position, and he was certain he aimed correctly. But at last he was compelled to acknowledge that there was a deflection, and persuaded himself to allow for it. He aimed the least degree to the left of the bull’s-eye—just the apparent width of the sight—and so that he could see the bull’s-eye on its right, the sight well up. He covered the bull’s-eye first with the sight, then slightly moved the barrel till the bull’s-eye appeared on the right side, just visible. The ball struck within half an inch of the bull’s-eye. Bevis was delighted.He fired again, and the ball almost hit the very centre. Next time the bullet hit the preceding bullet, and was flattened on it. Then Mark tried, and the ball again went within a mere trifle of the bull’s-eye. Bevis had found out the individual ways of his gun. He did not like allowing for the deflection, but it was of no use, it had to be done, and he soon became reconciled to the concession. The matchlock had to be coaxed like the sailing-boat and our ironclads, like fortune and Frances.Bevis was so delighted with the discovery, that he fired bullet after bullet, Mark trying every now and then, till the paper was riddled with bullet holes, and the teak-tree coated with lead. He thought he would try at a longer range, and so went back to thirty-five yards, but though he allowed a little more, and tried several ways, it was of no use, the bullet could not be relied on. At twenty yards they could hit the bull’s-eye, so that a sparrow, or even a wren, would not be safe; beyond that, errors crept in which Bevis could not correct.These were probably caused by irregularities in the rough bore of the barrel, which was only an iron tube. When the powder exploded, the power of the explosion drove the ball, by sheer force, almost perfectly straight—point-blank—for twenty or twenty-five yards. Then the twist given by the inequalities of the bore, and gained by the ball by rubbing against them, began to tell; sometimes one way, sometimes another, and the ball became deflected and hardly twice the same way.Bevis was obliged to be content with accuracy up to twenty, or at most twenty-five yards. At twenty he could hit an object the size of a sparrow; at twenty-five of a blackbird, after twenty-five he might miss his straw hat. Still it was a great triumph to have found out the secret, and to be certain of hitting even at that short range.“Why, that’s how it was with Jack’s rifle!” he said. “It’s only a dodge you have to find out.”“Of course it is; if he would lend it to us, we should soon master it,” said Mark. “And now let’s go to the unknown river.”

“What is it?” said Bevis.

“I saw a savage.”

“Where?”

“In the sedges on the shore there,” pointing across the weeds. “I saw his head—he had no hat on.”

“Quite sure?” Bevis looked, but could not see anything.

“Almost very nearly quite sure.”

They watched the sedges a long time, but saw nothing.

“Was it Charlie, or Val, or Cecil?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Mark.

“They could not get round either,” said Bevis. “If they crossed the Nile like we did, they could not get round.”

“No.”

“It could not have been anybody.”

“I thought it was; but perhaps it was a crow flew up—it looked black.”

“Sure to have been a crow. The sedges do not move.”

“No, it was a mistake—they couldn’t get here.”

They went on again and found a wild bullace.

“This is the most wonderful island there ever was,” said Bevis; “there’s always something new on or about it. The swan—I shall shoot the swan. No, most likely it’s sacred, and the king of the country would have us hunted down if we killed it.”

“And tied to a stake and tortured.”

“Melted lead poured into our mouths, because we shot the sacred swan with leaden bullets.”

“Awful. No, don’t shoot it. There are currant-trees on the island too—I’ve seen them, and there’s a gooseberry bush up in the top of an old willow that I saw,” said Mark. “Of course there are bananas; are there any breadfruit-trees here?”

“Certain to be some somewhere.”

“Melons and oranges.”

“Of course, and grapes—those are grapes,” pointing to bryony-berries, “and pomegranates and olives.”

“Yams and everything.”

“Everything. I wonder if Pan will bark this time—I wonder if anything is gone,” said Bevis as they reached the stockade. Pan did not bark, and there was nothing missing.

They set to work now to make some tea and roast the moorhens, having determined to have tea and supper together. The tea was ready long before the moorhens, and by the time they had finished the moon was shining brightly, though there were some flecks of cloud. They could not of course play cards, so Bevis got out his journal; and having put down about the honey-bird, and the swan, and the discoveries they had made, went on to make a list of the trees and plants on the island, and the birds that came to it. They had seen a small flock of seven or eight missel-thrushes pass in the afternoon, and Mark said that all the birds came from the unknown river, and flew on towards the north-north-west. This was the direction of the waste, or wild pasture.

“Then there must be mainland that way,” said Bevis; “and I expect it is inhabited and ploughed, and sown with corn, for that’s what the birds like at this time of the year.”

“And the other way—where they come from—must be a pathless jungle,” said Mark. “And they rest here a moment as they cross the ocean. It is too far for one fly.”

“My journal ought to be written on palm leaves,” said Bevis, “a book like this is not proper: let’s get some leaves to-morrow and see if we can write on them.”

“Don’t shipwrecked people write on their shirts,” said Mark, “and people who are put in prison?”

“So they do—of course: but our shirts are flannel, how stupid!”

“I know,” said Mark, “there’s the collars.” He went into the hut and brought out their linen collars, which they had ceased to wear. Bevis tried to write on these, but the ink ran and sank in, and it did not do at all.

“Wrong ink,” he said, “we must make some of charcoal—lampblack—and oil. You use it just like paint, and you can’t blot it, you must wait till it dries on.”

“No oil,” said Mark. “I wanted to rub the gun with some and looked, but there is none—we forgot it.”

“Yellow-hammers,” said Bevis, turning to his journal again; “what are yellow-hammers?”

“Unknown birds,” said Mark. “We don’t know half the birds—nobody has ever put any name to them, nobody has ever seen them: call them, let’s see—gold-dust birds—”

“And greenfinches?”

“Ky-wee—Ky-wee,” said Mark, imitating the greenfinches’ call.

“That will do capital—Ky-wees,” said Bevis.

“There’s a horse-matcher here,” said Mark. The horse-matcher is the bold hedge-hawk or butcher bird. “The one that sticks the humble-bees on the thorns.”

“Bee-stickers—no, bee-killers: that’s down,” said Bevis. Besides which he wrote down nettle-creepers (white-throats), goldfinch, magpie, chaffinch, tree-climber, kestrel-hawk, linnets, starlings, parrots, and parrakeets. “I shall get up early to-morrow morning,” he said. “I’ll load the matchlock to-night, I want to shoot a heron.”

He loaded the matchlock with ball, and soon afterwards they let the curtain down at the door, and went to bed, Bevis repeating “Three o’clock, three o’clock, three o’clock,” at first aloud and then to himself, so as to set the clock of his mind to wake him at that hour. Not long after they were asleep, Pan as usual went out for his ramble.

Bevis’s clock duly woke him about three, and lifting his head he could see the light through the chinks of the curtain, but he was half inclined to go to sleep again, and stayed another quarter of an hour. Then he resolutely bent himself to conquer sleep, slipped off the bed, and put on his boots quietly, not to wake Mark. Taking the matchlock, he went out and found that it was light, the light of the moon mingling with the dawn, but it was misty. A dry vapour, which left no dew, filled the wood so that at a short distance the path seemed to go into and lose itself in the mist.

Bevis went all round the island, following the path they had made. On the Serendib side he neither saw nor heard anything, but as he came back up the other shore, a lark began to sing far away on the mainland, and afterwards he heard the querulous cry of a peewit. He walked very cautiously, for this was the most likely side to find a heron, but whether they heard his approach or saw him, for they can see almost as far as a man when standing, by lifting their long necks, he did not find any. When he reached the spot where the “blaze” began that led to Kangaroo Hill, he fancied he saw something move in the water a long way off through the mist.

He stopped behind a bush and watched, and in a minute he was sure it was something, perhaps a cluck. He set up the rest, blew the match, opened the lid of the pan, knelt down and looked along the barrel till he had got it in a line with the object. If the gun had been loaded with shot he would have fired at once, for though indistinct through the vapour he thought it was within range, but as he had ball, he wanted to see if it would come nearer, as he knew he could not depend on a bullet over thirty yards. Intent on the object, which seemed to be swimming, he began to be curious to know what it was, for it had now come a little closer, and he could see it was not a duck, for it had no neck; it was too big for a rat: it must be the creature that visited the island and took their food—the idea of shooting this animal and surprising Mark with it delighted him.

He aimed along the barrel, and got the sight exactly on the creature, then he thought he would let it get a few yards closer, then he depressed the muzzle just a trifle, remembering that it was coming towards him, and if he did not aim somewhat in front the ball would go over.

Now it was near enough he was sure—he aimed steadily, and his finger began to draw the match down when he caught sight of the creature’s eye. It was Pan.

“Pan!” said Bevis. He got up, and the spaniel swam steadily towards him.

“Where have you been, sir?” he said sternly. Pan crouched at his feet, not even shaking himself first. “You rascal—where have you been?”

Bevis was inclined to thrash him, he was so angry at the mistake he had almost made, angry with the dog because he had almost shot him. But Pan crouched so close to the ground under his very feet that he did not strike him.

“It was you who frightened the herons,” he said. Pan instantly recognised the change in the tone of his voice, and sprang up, jumped round, barked, and then shook the water from his shaggy coat. It was no use evidently now to think of shooting a heron, the spaniel had alarmed them and Bevis returned to the hut. He woke Mark, and told him.

“That’s why he’s so lazy in the morning,” said Mark. “Don’t you recollect? He sleeps all the morning.”

“And won’t eat anything.”

“I believe he’s been home,” said Mark. “Very likely Polly throws the bones out still by his house.”

“That’s it: you old glutton!” said Bevis.

Pan jumped on the bed, licked Mark, then jumped on Bevis’s knees, leaving the marks of his wet paws, to which the sand had adhered, then he barked and wagged his tail as much as to say, “Am I not clever?”

“O! yes,” said Mark, “you’re very knowing, but you won’t do that again.”

“No, that you won’t, sir,” said Bevis. “You’ll be tied up to-night.”

“Tight as tight,” said Mark. “Just think,” said Bevis. “He must have swum all down the channel we came up on the catamaran. Why it’s a hundred and fifty yards—”

“Or two hundred—only some of it is shallow. Perhaps he could bottom some part—”

“But not very far—and then run all the way home, and then all the way back, and then swim off again.”

“A regular voyage—and every night too.”

“You false old greedy Pan!”

“To leave us when we thought you were watching while we slept.”

“To desert your post, you faithless sentinel.” Pan looked from one to the other, as if he understood every word; he rolled up the whites of his eyes and looked so pious, they burst into fits of laughter. Pan wagged his tail and barked doubtfully; he had a shrewd suspicion they were laughing at him, and he did not like it. In fact, it was not only the flesh-pots that had attracted Pan from his post and led him to traverse the sea and land, and undergo such immense exertion, it was to speak to a friend of his.

They thought it of no use to go to sleep again now, so they lit the fire, and prepared the breakfast. By the time it was ready the mist had begun to clear; the sky became blue overhead, and while they were sitting at table under the awning, the first beams shot along over Serendib to their knees. Bevis said after breakfast he should practise with the matchlock, till he could hit something with the bullets. Mark wanted to explore the unknown river, and this they agreed to do, but the difficulty, as usual, was the dinner, there was nothing in their larder but bacon for rashers, and that was almost gone. Rashers become wearisome, ten times more wearisome when you have to cook them too.

Bevis said he must write his letter home—he was afraid he might have delayed too long—and take it to Loo to post that night, then he would write out a list of things, and Loo could buy them in the town, potted meats, and tongues, and soups, that would save cooking, only it was not quite proper. But Mark got over that difficulty by supposing that they fetched them from the wreck before it went to pieces.

So having had their swim, Bevis set up his target—a small piece of paper with a black spot, an inch in diameter, inked in the centre—on the teak, and fired his first shot at forty yards. The ball missed the teak-tree altogether, they heard it crash into a bramble bush some way beyond. Bevis went five yards nearer next time, and the bullet hit the tree low down, two feet beneath the bull’s-eye. Then he tried at thirty yards, and as before, when he practised, the ball hit the tree five or six inches lower than the mark. He tried four times at this distance, and every time the bullet struck beneath, so that it seemed as if the gun threw the ball low.

Some guns throw shot high, and some low, and he supposed the matchlock threw low. So he aimed the fifth time above the centre, and the ball grazed the bark of the tree on the right-hand side very much as Mark’s had done. Bevis stepped five yards nearer, if he could not hit it at twenty-five yards, he did not think it would be his fault. He aimed direct at the piece of paper, which was about five inches square, but the bullet struck three inches beneath, though nearly in a line, that is, a line drawn down through the middle of the paper would have passed a little to the left of the bullet hole.

This was better, so now he tried five yards closer, as it appeared to improve at every advance, and the ball now hit the paper at its lower right-hand edge. Examining the bullet holes in the bark of the tree, and noticing they were all low and all on the right-hand side, Bevis tried to think how that could be. He was quite certain that he had aimed perfectly straight, and as he was now so accustomed to the puff from the priming, that did not disconcert him. He kept his gaze steadily along the barrel till the actual explosion occurred, and the smoke from the muzzle obscured the view. It must be something in the gun itself.

Bevis put it on the rest unloaded, aimed along, and pulled the trigger, just as he would have done had he been really about to shoot. Nothing seemed wrong. As the heavy barrel was supported by the rest, and the stock pressed firm to his shoulder, pulling the trigger did not depress the muzzle as it often does with rifles.

He aimed again, and all at once he saw that the top sight must be the cause. The twisted wire was elevated about an eighth of an inch, and when he aimed he got the tip of the sight to bear on the paper, so that, instead of his glance passing level along the barrel, it rose slightly, from the breech to the top of the sight. The barrel was more than a yard long, so that when the top of the sight was in a line with the object, the muzzle was depressed exactly an eighth of an inch. An eighth of an inch at one yard, was a quarter at two yards, three eighths at three yards, at four half an inch, at eight it was an inch, at sixteen two inches, and at twenty-four three inches. This was very nearly enough of itself to account for the continual misses. In a gun properly made, the breech is thicker than the muzzle, and this greater thickness, like a slight elevation, corrects the sight; the gun, too, is adjusted. But the matchlock was the same thickness from end to end, and till now, had not been tried to determine the accuracy of the shooting.

Bevis got a file and filed down the sight, till it was only a sixteenth of an inch high, and then loading again, he aimed in such a way that the sight should cover the spot he wished to strike. He could see both sides of the sight, but the exact spot he wanted to hit was hidden by it. He fired, and the ball struck the paper about an inch below and two inches to the right of the centre. Next time the bullet hit very nearly on a level with the centre, but still on the right side.

This deflection he could not account for, the sight was in the proper position, and he was certain he aimed correctly. But at last he was compelled to acknowledge that there was a deflection, and persuaded himself to allow for it. He aimed the least degree to the left of the bull’s-eye—just the apparent width of the sight—and so that he could see the bull’s-eye on its right, the sight well up. He covered the bull’s-eye first with the sight, then slightly moved the barrel till the bull’s-eye appeared on the right side, just visible. The ball struck within half an inch of the bull’s-eye. Bevis was delighted.

He fired again, and the ball almost hit the very centre. Next time the bullet hit the preceding bullet, and was flattened on it. Then Mark tried, and the ball again went within a mere trifle of the bull’s-eye. Bevis had found out the individual ways of his gun. He did not like allowing for the deflection, but it was of no use, it had to be done, and he soon became reconciled to the concession. The matchlock had to be coaxed like the sailing-boat and our ironclads, like fortune and Frances.

Bevis was so delighted with the discovery, that he fired bullet after bullet, Mark trying every now and then, till the paper was riddled with bullet holes, and the teak-tree coated with lead. He thought he would try at a longer range, and so went back to thirty-five yards, but though he allowed a little more, and tried several ways, it was of no use, the bullet could not be relied on. At twenty yards they could hit the bull’s-eye, so that a sparrow, or even a wren, would not be safe; beyond that, errors crept in which Bevis could not correct.

These were probably caused by irregularities in the rough bore of the barrel, which was only an iron tube. When the powder exploded, the power of the explosion drove the ball, by sheer force, almost perfectly straight—point-blank—for twenty or twenty-five yards. Then the twist given by the inequalities of the bore, and gained by the ball by rubbing against them, began to tell; sometimes one way, sometimes another, and the ball became deflected and hardly twice the same way.

Bevis was obliged to be content with accuracy up to twenty, or at most twenty-five yards. At twenty he could hit an object the size of a sparrow; at twenty-five of a blackbird, after twenty-five he might miss his straw hat. Still it was a great triumph to have found out the secret, and to be certain of hitting even at that short range.

“Why, that’s how it was with Jack’s rifle!” he said. “It’s only a dodge you have to find out.”

“Of course it is; if he would lend it to us, we should soon master it,” said Mark. “And now let’s go to the unknown river.”

Volume Three—Chapter Seven.New Formosa—Sweet River Falls.The matchlock was slung up in the hut, and away they went to the raft; Pan did not want to come, he was tired after his journey in the night, but they made him. Knowing the position of the shoals, and where they could touch the bottom with the poles, and where not, they got along much quicker, and entered the channel in the weeds, which they had discovered beyond Pearl Island in the Pinta.The channel was often very narrow, and turned several ways, but by degrees trended to the south-eastwards, and the farther they penetrated it, the more numerous became the banks, covered with a dense growth of sedges and flags. Some higher out of the water than others, had bushes and willows, so that, after awhile, their view of the open sea behind was cut off. They did not see any wild-fowl, for as these heard the splash of the poles, they swam away and hid. Winding round the sedge-grown banks, they presently heard the sound of falling water.“Niagara!” said Mark.“No, Zambesi. There are houses by Niagara, so it’s not so good.”“No. Look!”The raft glided out of the channel into a small open bay, free from weeds, and with woods each side. Where it narrowed a little stream fell down in two short leaps, having worn its way through the sandstone. The water was not so much as ran over the hatch of the brook near home, but this, coming over stone or rock, instead of dropping nearly straight, leaped forward and broke into spray. The sides of the worn channel were green with moss, and beneath, but just above the surface of the water, long cool hart’s-tongue ferns grew, and were sprinkled every moment.The boughs of beech-trees met over the fall, and shaded the water below. They poled up so near that the spray reached the raft; Mark caught hold of a drooping beech bough, and so moored their vessel. They could not see up the stream farther than a few yards, for it was then overhung with dark fir boughs. On the firs there were grey flecks of lichen.“How sweet and clear it looks!” said Bevis. “Shall we call it Sweet River?”“And Sweet River Falls?”“Yes. It comes out of the jungle,” Bevis looked over the edge of the raft, and saw the arch of water dive down unbroken beneath the surface of the pool, and then rise in innumerable bubbles under him. The hart’s-tongue ferns vibrated, swinging slightly, as the weight of the drops on them now bore them down and now slipped off, and let them up.By the shore of the pool the turquoise studs of forget-me-nots, with golden centres, were the brighter for the darkness of the shade. So thick were the boughs, that the sky could not be seen through them; there was a rustle above as the light south-east wind blew, but underneath the leaves did not move.“I like this,” said Mark. He sat on the chest, or locker, holding the beech bough. “But the birds do not sing.”The cuckoo was gone, the nightingale silent, the finches were in the stubble, there might be a chiff-chaff “chip-chipping,” perhaps deep in the jungle, one pair of doves had not quite finished nesting on New Formosa, now and then parties of greenfinches called “ky-wee, ky-wee,” and a single lark sang in the early dawn. But the jungle here was silent. There was no song but that of the waterfall.Though there was not a breath of wind under the boughs, yet the sound of the fall now rose, and now declined, as the water ran swifter or with less speed. Sometimes it was like a tinkling; sometimes it laughed; sometimes it was like voices far away. It ran out from the woods with a message, and hastening to tell it, became confused.Bevis sat on the raft, leaning against the willow bulwark; Pan crept to his knee.The forget-me-nots and the hart’s-tongue, the beeches and the firs, listened to the singing. Something that had gone by, and something that was to come, came out of the music and made this moment sweeter. This moment of the singing held a thousand years that had gone by, and the thousand years that are to come. For the woods and the waters are very old, that is the past; if you look up into the sky you know that a thousand years hence will be nothing to it, that is the future. But the forget-me-nots, the hart’s-tongue, and the beeches, did not think of the ages gone, or the azure to come. They were therenow, the sunshine and the wind above, the shadow and the water and the spray beneath, that was all in all. Bevis and Mark were there now, listening to the singing, that was all in all.Presently there was a sound—a “swish”—and looking up, they saw a pheasant with his tail behind like a comet, flying straight out to sea. This awoke them.Bevis held out the palm of his hand, and Pan came nearer and put his chin in the hollow of it, as he had done these hundreds of times. Pan looked up, and wagged his tail, thump, thump, on the deck of the raft. If we could put the intelligence of the dog in the body of the horse, size, speed, and grace, what an animal that would be!“Lots of perch here,” said Mark; “I shall come and fish. Suppose we land and go up the Sweet River?”“It belongs to the king of this country, I expect,” said Bevis. “He sits on a throne of ebony with a golden footstool, and they wave fans of peacocks’ feathers, and the room is lit up by a single great diamond just in the very top of the dome of the ceiling, which flashes the sunshine through, down from outside. The swan belongs to him.”“And he keeps the Sweet River just for himself to drink from, and executes everybody who dares drink of it,” said Mark.Just then a bird flew noiselessly up into the beech over them, they saw it was a jay, and kept quite still. The next instant he was off, and they heard him and his friends, for a jay is never alone, screeching in the jungle. Looking back towards the quiet bay, it appeared as if it was raining fast, but without a sound, for the surface was dimpled with innumerable tiny circlets like those caused by raindrops. These were left by the midges as they danced over the water, touching it now and then.“Did you hear that?” It was the sound of a distant gun shorn of the smartness of the report by the trees.“The savages have matchlocks,” said Bevis. “They must be ever so much more dangerous than we thought.”“Perhaps we’d better go,” said Mark, casting off the beech bough.The current slowly drifted the raft out into the bay, and then they took their poles, and returned along the channel between the reeds and sedge banks. It took some time to reach New Formosa.“I wonder if the creature out of the wave has been,” said Mark. “Suppose we go very quietly and see what it is.”“So we will.”Keeping Pan close at their heels, they stole along the path to the stockade, then crept up behind it to the gateway, and suddenly burst in. “Ah!”“Here he is.”“Yow-wow!”“O! it’s the pheasant!”“Only the pheasant!”The pheasant, flying straight out to sea for the cornfields, halted on New Formosa, attracted by the glimpse he caught of the fence and hut. The enclosure seemed so much like that in which he had been bred, and in which he had enjoyed so much food, that he came down and rambled about inside, visiting even the cave, and stepping on the table.When they came in so unexpectedly on him, he rose up rocket-like, and at first made towards the jungle, but in a minute, recovering himself, he swept round and went to the mainland by the Waste. He did not want to return to the preserves—anywhere else in preference.While the dinner was preparing, Mark got out his fishing-rod, and fitted up the spinning tackle for pike, for he meant to angle round the island, and also some hooks for trimmers, if he could catch any bait, and hooks for nightlines, in case there should be eels. These trimmers and nightlines put them in mind of traps for kangaroos, they had no traps, but determined to set up some wires at a good distance from the knoll, so as not, in any case, to interfere with their shooting.After dinner, as Mark wanted to go fishing, Bevis watched for Charlie, and looking through the telescope, saw the herd of buffaloes on the green hill under the sycamore-trees. One cow held her head low, and a friend licked her poll. A flock of rooks were on the slope, and had he not known, he could have told which way the wind blew, as they all faced in one direction, and always walk to meet the breeze. When they flew up he knew Charlie was approaching. Charlie did not stay after making the signal, so Bevis went down and walked round the island till he found Mark.As yet, Mark had had no success, but he had fixed on a spot to set the nightlines. Returning along the other shore, fishing as he went, Bevis with him, they remembered that that night the letter must be taken to Loo to post, and thought they had better have a look at the channel through the weeds, or else by moonlight they might not get to the mainland so easily.The best tree to climb was a larch which grew apart from the wood, and rose up to a great height, balanced each side with its long slender branches. The larch, when growing alone, is a beautiful tree. It is too often crowded into plantations which to it are like the ‘Black Hole’ of Calcutta to human beings. Up they went, Mark first, as quickly as sailors up the ratlins, for the branches, at regular intervals, had grown on purpose for climbing, only they had to jam their hats on, and not look higher than the bough they were on, because of the dust of the bark they shook down.“There’s the reapers,” said Mark; “what a lot they have cut.”They could see the sheaves stacked, and the stubble, which was of a lighter hue than the standing wheat. Every now and then dark dots came to the golden surface of the wheat like seals to breathe. These dots were the reapers’ heads.“There’s the pheasant,” said Bevis, pointing to the Waste. The bird was making his way zigzag round the green ant-hills, towards the stubble. Sometimes he walked, sometimes he ran, now and then he gave a jump in his run. They lost sight of him behind a great grey boulder-stone, whose top was visible above the brambles and rush-bunches which surrounded its base.“Jack’s busy now up in the hills,” said Mark, looking the other way towards the Downs. “He might just as well let us have the rifle while he’s busy with the harvest.”“Just as well. I say, let’s explore the Waste to-morrow. It is a wilderness—you don’t know what you may not find in a wilderness.”“Grey stones,” said Mark. “They’re tombs—genii live in them.”“Serpents guarding treasures, and lamps burning; they have been burning these ages and ages—”“Awful claps of thunder underground.”“We will go and see to-morrow—I believe there are heaps of kangaroos out there.”“There’s the channel.”They could trace its windings from the tree, and marked it in their minds. At that height the breeze came cool and delicious; they sat there a long while silent, soothed by the rustle and the gentle sway of the branches. They could feel the mast-like stem vibrate—it did not move sufficiently to be said to bend, or even sway—so slight was the motion the eye could not trace it. But it did move as they could feel with their hands as the wind came now with more and now with less force.When they descended, Mark continued fishing till they came to the raft. They embarked and poled it round the island to the other side ready to start in the evening. Then Bevis wrote the letter dating it from Jack’s house up in the hills. It was very short. He said they were very well, and jolly, and should not come back for a little while yet, but would not be very long—this was in case any one should go up to see them. But when he came to read it through for mistakes, the deceit he was practising on dear mamma stood out before him like the black ink on the page.“I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s not nice.”“No; it’s not nice,” said Mark, who was sitting by him. “But still—”“But still,” repeated Bevis, and so the letter was put in an envelope and addressed. In the evening as the sun sank Mark tried for bait and succeeded in catching some, these were for the trimmers. Then they laid out the night-line for eels far down the island where the edge looked more muddy. To fill up the time till it was quite moonlight, they worked at a mast for the raft, and also cut some sedges and flags for the roof of the open shed, which was to be put up in place of the awning.They supposed it to be about half-past nine when they pushed off on the raft, taking with them the letter, a list of things to be got from the town to save the labour of cooking, and the flag-basket. The trimmers were dropped in as they went. Mark was going to wait by the raft till Bevis returned under the original plan, but they agreed that it would be much more pleasant to go together, the raft would be perfectly safe. They found the channel without difficulty, the raft grounded among the sedges, and they stepped out, the first time they had landed on the mainland.As they walked they saw a fern owl floating along the hedge by the stubble. The beetles hummed by and came so heedlessly over the hedge as to become entangled in the leaves. They walked close to the hedge because they knew that the very brightest moonlight is not like the day. By moonlight an object standing apart can be seen a long distance, but anything with a background of hedge cannot be distinguished for certain across one wide field. That something is moving there may be ascertained, but its exact character cannot be determined.As they had to travel beside the hedges and so to make frequent détours, it occupied some time to reach the cottage, which they approached over the field at the back. When they were near enough, Bevis whistled—the same notes with which he and Mark called and signalled to each other. In an instant they saw Loo come through the window, so quickly that she must have been sleeping with her dress on; she slipped down a lean-to or little shed under it, scrambled through a gap in the thin hedge, and ran to them.She had sat and watched and listened for that whistle night after night in vain. At last she drew her cot (in which her little brother also slept) across under the window, and left the window open. Her mind so long expecting the whistle responded in a moment to the sound when it reached her dreaming ear. She took the letter (with a penny for the stamp) and the list and basket, and promised to have the things ready for them on the following evening.“And remember,” said Bevis, “remember you don’t say anything. There will be a shilling for you if you don’t tell—”“I shouldn’t tell if there wurdn’t no shilling,” said Loo.“You mind you do not say a word,” added Mark. “Nobody is to know that you have seen us.”“Good-night,” said Bevis, and away they went. Loo watched them till they were lost against the dark background of the hedge, and then returned to her cot, scrambling up the roof of the shed and in at the window.They got back to the island without any difficulty, and felt quite certain that no one had seen them. Stirring up the embers of the fire, they made some tea, but only had half a cold damper to eat with it. This day they had fared worse than any day since they arrived on New Formosa. They were too tired to make a fresh damper (besides the time it would take) having got up so early that morning, and Bevis only entered two words in his journal—“Monday—Loo.”Then they fastened Pan to the door-post, allowing him enough cord to move a few yards, but taking care to make his collar too tight for him to slip his head. Pan submitted with a mournful countenance, well he understood why he was served in this way.

The matchlock was slung up in the hut, and away they went to the raft; Pan did not want to come, he was tired after his journey in the night, but they made him. Knowing the position of the shoals, and where they could touch the bottom with the poles, and where not, they got along much quicker, and entered the channel in the weeds, which they had discovered beyond Pearl Island in the Pinta.

The channel was often very narrow, and turned several ways, but by degrees trended to the south-eastwards, and the farther they penetrated it, the more numerous became the banks, covered with a dense growth of sedges and flags. Some higher out of the water than others, had bushes and willows, so that, after awhile, their view of the open sea behind was cut off. They did not see any wild-fowl, for as these heard the splash of the poles, they swam away and hid. Winding round the sedge-grown banks, they presently heard the sound of falling water.

“Niagara!” said Mark.

“No, Zambesi. There are houses by Niagara, so it’s not so good.”

“No. Look!”

The raft glided out of the channel into a small open bay, free from weeds, and with woods each side. Where it narrowed a little stream fell down in two short leaps, having worn its way through the sandstone. The water was not so much as ran over the hatch of the brook near home, but this, coming over stone or rock, instead of dropping nearly straight, leaped forward and broke into spray. The sides of the worn channel were green with moss, and beneath, but just above the surface of the water, long cool hart’s-tongue ferns grew, and were sprinkled every moment.

The boughs of beech-trees met over the fall, and shaded the water below. They poled up so near that the spray reached the raft; Mark caught hold of a drooping beech bough, and so moored their vessel. They could not see up the stream farther than a few yards, for it was then overhung with dark fir boughs. On the firs there were grey flecks of lichen.

“How sweet and clear it looks!” said Bevis. “Shall we call it Sweet River?”

“And Sweet River Falls?”

“Yes. It comes out of the jungle,” Bevis looked over the edge of the raft, and saw the arch of water dive down unbroken beneath the surface of the pool, and then rise in innumerable bubbles under him. The hart’s-tongue ferns vibrated, swinging slightly, as the weight of the drops on them now bore them down and now slipped off, and let them up.

By the shore of the pool the turquoise studs of forget-me-nots, with golden centres, were the brighter for the darkness of the shade. So thick were the boughs, that the sky could not be seen through them; there was a rustle above as the light south-east wind blew, but underneath the leaves did not move.

“I like this,” said Mark. He sat on the chest, or locker, holding the beech bough. “But the birds do not sing.”

The cuckoo was gone, the nightingale silent, the finches were in the stubble, there might be a chiff-chaff “chip-chipping,” perhaps deep in the jungle, one pair of doves had not quite finished nesting on New Formosa, now and then parties of greenfinches called “ky-wee, ky-wee,” and a single lark sang in the early dawn. But the jungle here was silent. There was no song but that of the waterfall.

Though there was not a breath of wind under the boughs, yet the sound of the fall now rose, and now declined, as the water ran swifter or with less speed. Sometimes it was like a tinkling; sometimes it laughed; sometimes it was like voices far away. It ran out from the woods with a message, and hastening to tell it, became confused.

Bevis sat on the raft, leaning against the willow bulwark; Pan crept to his knee.

The forget-me-nots and the hart’s-tongue, the beeches and the firs, listened to the singing. Something that had gone by, and something that was to come, came out of the music and made this moment sweeter. This moment of the singing held a thousand years that had gone by, and the thousand years that are to come. For the woods and the waters are very old, that is the past; if you look up into the sky you know that a thousand years hence will be nothing to it, that is the future. But the forget-me-nots, the hart’s-tongue, and the beeches, did not think of the ages gone, or the azure to come. They were therenow, the sunshine and the wind above, the shadow and the water and the spray beneath, that was all in all. Bevis and Mark were there now, listening to the singing, that was all in all.

Presently there was a sound—a “swish”—and looking up, they saw a pheasant with his tail behind like a comet, flying straight out to sea. This awoke them.

Bevis held out the palm of his hand, and Pan came nearer and put his chin in the hollow of it, as he had done these hundreds of times. Pan looked up, and wagged his tail, thump, thump, on the deck of the raft. If we could put the intelligence of the dog in the body of the horse, size, speed, and grace, what an animal that would be!

“Lots of perch here,” said Mark; “I shall come and fish. Suppose we land and go up the Sweet River?”

“It belongs to the king of this country, I expect,” said Bevis. “He sits on a throne of ebony with a golden footstool, and they wave fans of peacocks’ feathers, and the room is lit up by a single great diamond just in the very top of the dome of the ceiling, which flashes the sunshine through, down from outside. The swan belongs to him.”

“And he keeps the Sweet River just for himself to drink from, and executes everybody who dares drink of it,” said Mark.

Just then a bird flew noiselessly up into the beech over them, they saw it was a jay, and kept quite still. The next instant he was off, and they heard him and his friends, for a jay is never alone, screeching in the jungle. Looking back towards the quiet bay, it appeared as if it was raining fast, but without a sound, for the surface was dimpled with innumerable tiny circlets like those caused by raindrops. These were left by the midges as they danced over the water, touching it now and then.

“Did you hear that?” It was the sound of a distant gun shorn of the smartness of the report by the trees.

“The savages have matchlocks,” said Bevis. “They must be ever so much more dangerous than we thought.”

“Perhaps we’d better go,” said Mark, casting off the beech bough.

The current slowly drifted the raft out into the bay, and then they took their poles, and returned along the channel between the reeds and sedge banks. It took some time to reach New Formosa.

“I wonder if the creature out of the wave has been,” said Mark. “Suppose we go very quietly and see what it is.”

“So we will.”

Keeping Pan close at their heels, they stole along the path to the stockade, then crept up behind it to the gateway, and suddenly burst in. “Ah!”

“Here he is.”

“Yow-wow!”

“O! it’s the pheasant!”

“Only the pheasant!”

The pheasant, flying straight out to sea for the cornfields, halted on New Formosa, attracted by the glimpse he caught of the fence and hut. The enclosure seemed so much like that in which he had been bred, and in which he had enjoyed so much food, that he came down and rambled about inside, visiting even the cave, and stepping on the table.

When they came in so unexpectedly on him, he rose up rocket-like, and at first made towards the jungle, but in a minute, recovering himself, he swept round and went to the mainland by the Waste. He did not want to return to the preserves—anywhere else in preference.

While the dinner was preparing, Mark got out his fishing-rod, and fitted up the spinning tackle for pike, for he meant to angle round the island, and also some hooks for trimmers, if he could catch any bait, and hooks for nightlines, in case there should be eels. These trimmers and nightlines put them in mind of traps for kangaroos, they had no traps, but determined to set up some wires at a good distance from the knoll, so as not, in any case, to interfere with their shooting.

After dinner, as Mark wanted to go fishing, Bevis watched for Charlie, and looking through the telescope, saw the herd of buffaloes on the green hill under the sycamore-trees. One cow held her head low, and a friend licked her poll. A flock of rooks were on the slope, and had he not known, he could have told which way the wind blew, as they all faced in one direction, and always walk to meet the breeze. When they flew up he knew Charlie was approaching. Charlie did not stay after making the signal, so Bevis went down and walked round the island till he found Mark.

As yet, Mark had had no success, but he had fixed on a spot to set the nightlines. Returning along the other shore, fishing as he went, Bevis with him, they remembered that that night the letter must be taken to Loo to post, and thought they had better have a look at the channel through the weeds, or else by moonlight they might not get to the mainland so easily.

The best tree to climb was a larch which grew apart from the wood, and rose up to a great height, balanced each side with its long slender branches. The larch, when growing alone, is a beautiful tree. It is too often crowded into plantations which to it are like the ‘Black Hole’ of Calcutta to human beings. Up they went, Mark first, as quickly as sailors up the ratlins, for the branches, at regular intervals, had grown on purpose for climbing, only they had to jam their hats on, and not look higher than the bough they were on, because of the dust of the bark they shook down.

“There’s the reapers,” said Mark; “what a lot they have cut.”

They could see the sheaves stacked, and the stubble, which was of a lighter hue than the standing wheat. Every now and then dark dots came to the golden surface of the wheat like seals to breathe. These dots were the reapers’ heads.

“There’s the pheasant,” said Bevis, pointing to the Waste. The bird was making his way zigzag round the green ant-hills, towards the stubble. Sometimes he walked, sometimes he ran, now and then he gave a jump in his run. They lost sight of him behind a great grey boulder-stone, whose top was visible above the brambles and rush-bunches which surrounded its base.

“Jack’s busy now up in the hills,” said Mark, looking the other way towards the Downs. “He might just as well let us have the rifle while he’s busy with the harvest.”

“Just as well. I say, let’s explore the Waste to-morrow. It is a wilderness—you don’t know what you may not find in a wilderness.”

“Grey stones,” said Mark. “They’re tombs—genii live in them.”

“Serpents guarding treasures, and lamps burning; they have been burning these ages and ages—”

“Awful claps of thunder underground.”

“We will go and see to-morrow—I believe there are heaps of kangaroos out there.”

“There’s the channel.”

They could trace its windings from the tree, and marked it in their minds. At that height the breeze came cool and delicious; they sat there a long while silent, soothed by the rustle and the gentle sway of the branches. They could feel the mast-like stem vibrate—it did not move sufficiently to be said to bend, or even sway—so slight was the motion the eye could not trace it. But it did move as they could feel with their hands as the wind came now with more and now with less force.

When they descended, Mark continued fishing till they came to the raft. They embarked and poled it round the island to the other side ready to start in the evening. Then Bevis wrote the letter dating it from Jack’s house up in the hills. It was very short. He said they were very well, and jolly, and should not come back for a little while yet, but would not be very long—this was in case any one should go up to see them. But when he came to read it through for mistakes, the deceit he was practising on dear mamma stood out before him like the black ink on the page.

“I don’t like it,” he said. “It’s not nice.”

“No; it’s not nice,” said Mark, who was sitting by him. “But still—”

“But still,” repeated Bevis, and so the letter was put in an envelope and addressed. In the evening as the sun sank Mark tried for bait and succeeded in catching some, these were for the trimmers. Then they laid out the night-line for eels far down the island where the edge looked more muddy. To fill up the time till it was quite moonlight, they worked at a mast for the raft, and also cut some sedges and flags for the roof of the open shed, which was to be put up in place of the awning.

They supposed it to be about half-past nine when they pushed off on the raft, taking with them the letter, a list of things to be got from the town to save the labour of cooking, and the flag-basket. The trimmers were dropped in as they went. Mark was going to wait by the raft till Bevis returned under the original plan, but they agreed that it would be much more pleasant to go together, the raft would be perfectly safe. They found the channel without difficulty, the raft grounded among the sedges, and they stepped out, the first time they had landed on the mainland.

As they walked they saw a fern owl floating along the hedge by the stubble. The beetles hummed by and came so heedlessly over the hedge as to become entangled in the leaves. They walked close to the hedge because they knew that the very brightest moonlight is not like the day. By moonlight an object standing apart can be seen a long distance, but anything with a background of hedge cannot be distinguished for certain across one wide field. That something is moving there may be ascertained, but its exact character cannot be determined.

As they had to travel beside the hedges and so to make frequent détours, it occupied some time to reach the cottage, which they approached over the field at the back. When they were near enough, Bevis whistled—the same notes with which he and Mark called and signalled to each other. In an instant they saw Loo come through the window, so quickly that she must have been sleeping with her dress on; she slipped down a lean-to or little shed under it, scrambled through a gap in the thin hedge, and ran to them.

She had sat and watched and listened for that whistle night after night in vain. At last she drew her cot (in which her little brother also slept) across under the window, and left the window open. Her mind so long expecting the whistle responded in a moment to the sound when it reached her dreaming ear. She took the letter (with a penny for the stamp) and the list and basket, and promised to have the things ready for them on the following evening.

“And remember,” said Bevis, “remember you don’t say anything. There will be a shilling for you if you don’t tell—”

“I shouldn’t tell if there wurdn’t no shilling,” said Loo.

“You mind you do not say a word,” added Mark. “Nobody is to know that you have seen us.”

“Good-night,” said Bevis, and away they went. Loo watched them till they were lost against the dark background of the hedge, and then returned to her cot, scrambling up the roof of the shed and in at the window.

They got back to the island without any difficulty, and felt quite certain that no one had seen them. Stirring up the embers of the fire, they made some tea, but only had half a cold damper to eat with it. This day they had fared worse than any day since they arrived on New Formosa. They were too tired to make a fresh damper (besides the time it would take) having got up so early that morning, and Bevis only entered two words in his journal—“Monday—Loo.”

Then they fastened Pan to the door-post, allowing him enough cord to move a few yards, but taking care to make his collar too tight for him to slip his head. Pan submitted with a mournful countenance, well he understood why he was served in this way.

Volume Three—Chapter Eight.New Formosa—The Mainland.In the morning, after the bath, Mark examined the night-line, but it was untouched; nor was there a kangaroo in the wires they had set up in their runs. Poling the raft out to the trimmers they found a jack of about two pounds on one, and the bait on another had been carried off, the third had not been visited. Bevis wanted to explore the Waste, and especially to look at the great grey boulder, and so they went on and landed among the sedges.Making Pan keep close at their heels, they cautiously crept through the bramble thickets—Pan tried two or three times to break away, for the scent of game was strong in these thickets—and entered the wild pasture, across which they could not see. The ground undulated, and besides the large ant-hills, the scattered hawthorn bushes and the thickets round the boulders intercepted the view. If any savages appeared they intended to stoop, and so would be invisible; they could even creep on hands and knees half across the common without being seen. Pan was restless—not weary this morning—the scent he crossed was almost too much for his obedience.They reached the boulder unseen—indeed there was no one to see them—pushed through the bushes, and stood by it. The ponderous stone was smooth, as if it had been ground with emery, and there were little circular basins or cups drilled in it. With a stick Bevis felt all round and came to a place where the stick could be pushed in two or three feet under the stone, between it and the grass.“It’s hollow here,” he said; “you try.”“So it is,” said Mark. “This is where the treasure is.”“And the serpent, and the magic lamp that has been burning ages and ages.”“If we could lift the stone up.”“There’s a spell on it; you couldn’t lift it up, not with levers or anything.”Pan sniffed at the narrow crevice between the edge of the boulder and the ground—concealed by the grass till Bevis found it—but showed no interest. There was no rabbit there. Such great boulders often have crevices beneath, whether this was a natural hollow, or whether the boulder was the capstone of a dolmen was not known. Whirr-rr!A covey of partridges flew over only just above the stone, and within a few inches of their heads which were concealed by it. They counted fourteen—the covey went straight out across the New Sea, eastwards towards the Nile. From the boulder they wandered on among the ant-hills and tall thistles, disturbing a hare, which went off at a tremendous pace, bringing his hind legs right under his body up to his shoulder in his eagerness to take kangaroo bounds.Presently they came to the thick hedge which divided the Waste from the cornfields. Gathering a few blackberries along this, they came to a gate, which alarmed them, thinking some one might see, but a careful reconnaissance showed that the reapers had finished and left that field. The top bar of the gate was pecked, little chips out of the wood, where the crows had been.“It’s very nice here,” said Mark. “You can go on without coming to the Other Side so soon.”After their life on the island, where they could never walk far without coming in sight of the water, they appreciated the liberty of the mainland. Pan had to have several kicks and bangs with the stick, he was so tempted to rush into the hedge, but they did not want him to bark, in case any one should hear.“Lots of kangaroos here,” said Bevis, “and big kangaroos too—hares you know; I say, I shall come here with the matchlock some night.”“So we will.”There was a gap in the corner, and as they came idling along they got up into the double mound, when Bevis, who was first, suddenly dropped on his knees and seized Pan’s shaggy neck. Mark crouched instantly behind him.“What is it?” he whispered.“Some one’s been here.”“How do you know?”“Sniff.”Mark sniffed. There was the strong pungent smell of crushed nettles. He understood in a moment—some one had recently gone through and trampled on them. They remained in this position for five minutes, hardly breathing, and afraid to move.“I can’t hear any one,” whispered Mark.“No.”“Must have gone on.”Bevis crept forward, still holding Pan with one hand; Mark followed, and they crossed the mound, when the signs of some one having recently been there became visible in the trampled nettles, and in one spot there was the imprint of a heel-plate.“Savages,” said Bevis. “Ah! Look.”Mark looked through the branches and a long way out in the stubble, moving among the shocks of wheat, he saw Bevis’s governor. They watched him silently. The governor walked straight away; they scarcely breathed till he had disappeared in the next field. Then they drew back into the Waste, and looked at one another.“Very nearly done,” said Mark.“We won’t land again in daylight,” said Bevis.“No—it’s not safe; he must have been close.”“He must have got up into the mound and looked through,” said Bevis. “Perhaps while we were by the gate.”“Most likely. He came across the stubble, why he was that side while we were this.”“Awfully nearly done; why it must have been the governor who startled the partridges!”“Stupes we were not to know some one was about.”“Awful stupes.”They walked back to the raft, keeping close to the hedge, and crept on all fours among the ant-hills so as to pass the gateway without the possibility of being seen, though they knew the governor was now too far to observe them.The governor had been to look at the progress made by the reapers, and then strolled across the stubble, thinking to see what birds were about, as it was not such a great while till the season opened. Coming to the mound, he got up and looked through into the Waste, over which (as over the New Sea) he held manorial rights. At the moment he was looking out into the pasture they were idly approaching him along the hedge, and had he stopped there they would have come on him. As it was, he went back into the stubble, and had gone some fifty yards with his back turned when they entered the gap.“We might have been tortured,” said Mark, as they stepped on the raft. “Tied up and gimlets bored into our heads.”“The king of this country is an awful tyrant,” said Bevis. “Very likely he would have fixed us in a hollow tree and smeared us with honey and let the flies eat us.”“Unless we could save his daughter, who is ill, and all the magicians can’t do her any good.”“Now they are hoping we shall soon come with a wonderful talisman. We must study magic—we keep on putting it off; I wonder if there really is a jewel in the toad’s head.”“You have not inked the wizard’s foot on the gateway,” said Mark.When they got home Bevis inked it on the boards of the gate; he could not do it on the rough bark of the gate-post. They then worked at the shed, and soon put it up in place of the awning, which was taken down and carried to the raft. Next the mast was erected, and sustained with stays; it was, however, taken down again, so as to be out of the way till required, and stowed at the side by the bulwarks.The jack was cooked for dinner, and though not enough for such hungry people it was a pleasant change from the perpetual rashers and damper. After Charley had given the signal, they parted; Mark took his perch tackle and poled the raft out near Pearl Island, where he thought he might catch some perch. Bevis loaded the matchlock with ball, and went into ambush behind the ash-tree by Kangaroo Hill, to try and shoot a kangaroo.Mark took Pan and worked the raft along till he was within forty or fifty yards of Pearl Island, and on the windward side. The wind had been changeable lately, showing that the weather was not so settled as it had been; it blew from the eastward that afternoon, just strong enough to cause a ripple. When he had got the raft into the position he wished, Mark put the pole down and took his rod.The raft, as he had designed, floated slowly, and without the least disturbance of the water (such as his pole or oars would have caused) before the wind, till it grounded on a shoal ten yards from Pearl Island. Mark knew of the shoal, having noticed the place before when they were visiting the islets, and thought it would be a likely spot to find perch. The ripples breaking over the ridge of the shoal made a miniature surf there.On the outer or windward side the perch would be on the watch for anything that might come along on the wavelets, and inside for whatever might be washed from the shoal. There were weeds at a short distance, but none just there, and such places with a clear sandy bottom are the favourite haunts of perch in waters like these. First he fished outside to windward, and his blue float went up and down on the ripples till presently down it went at a single dive, drawn under at once by an eager fish.In a minute he had a perch on board about half a pound weight, and shortly afterwards another, and then a third, for when perch are on the feed they take the bait directly as fast as it can be put in to them. Now Mark, though excited with his luck, was cool enough to observe one little precaution, which was to use a fresh clean worm every time, and not to drop in one that had been in the least degree mauled. This required some self-control, for several times the bait was scarcely damaged, but it was a rule that he and Bevis had found out, and they always adhered to it.For fish have likes and antipathies exactly the same as other creatures, and if one approaches a bait and turns disdainfully away it is quite probable that three or four more may check their advance, whether from imitation, or taking the opinion of the first as a guide to themselves. So Mark always had a fresh, untainted bait for them, and in a very short time he had six perch on the raft. He put them in the locker.There was then a pause, he had exhausted that school. Next he tried fishing out towards the nearest weeds, a small bunch at the utmost limit of his throw, but as half an hour elapsed and he had no nibble he tried inside the shoal to leeward. In five minutes he landed a fine one, quite two pounds and a half, whose leaps went thump, thump on the deck like Pan’s tail. Ten minutes more and he caught another, this time small, and that was his last. There were either no more fish, or they had no more credence.He sat on the locker and watched his float till the sun grew low, but it was no use. He knew it was no use long before, but still he lingered. Gold-diggers linger though they know their claim is exhausted. The mind is loth to acknowledge that the game is up. Mark knew it was up; still he waited and let his float uselessly rise and fall, till he heard the report of the matchlock from the island, and then he poled homewards to see what Bevis had shot.In ambush, under the ash-tree, and behind the fringe of fern—one frond was scorched where Mark had fired through it—Bevis watched with the gun ready on the rest. He had purposely gone a little too soon, that is, before the shadow stretched right out across the glade, because if you do not arrive till the last moment a kangaroo may be already out, and will be alarmed. Then it is necessary to wait till the others recover from their fear; for if one runs in, the sound of his hasty passage through the tunnels in the ground conveys the information to all in the bury.Not far from him there was a bunch of beautiful meadow geraniums; some of their blue cups had already dropped, leaving the elongated seed-vessel or crane’s bill, something like the pointed caps worn by mediaeval ladies. The leaves are much divided; perhaps the wind-anemone leaves (but these had withered long since) are most finely divided, and if you will hold one so that its shadow may be cast by the sun on a piece of white paper, you cannot choose but admire it. While he sat there, now and then changing the position of a limb with the utmost care and deliberation, not to rustle the grass or to attract attention by moving quickly (for kangaroos do not heed anything that moves very slowly), he saw a brown furze-chat come to a tall fern and perch sideways on the flattened yellow stalk.Half an hour afterwards there came a sound like “top-top” from an oak on his left hand—not the ivy-grown one—and when he had by great exertion turned himself round, it is difficult to turn and still occupy the same space, he followed up all the branches of the oak cautiously till he found the bird. If you glance, as it were, broadcast up into a tree when it is in leaf, you see nothing, though the bird’s note may fall from just overhead. Bevis first looked quickly up the larger leading branches, letting his glance run up them; then he caused it to travel out along the lesser boughs of one great branch, then of another, till he had exhausted all. Still he could not find it, though he heard the “top-top.” But as he had now got a map of the tree in his eye, the moment the bird moved he saw it.It ran up a partly dead branch, then stopped and struck it with its beak, and though the bird was no larger than a sparrow the sound of these vehement blows could have been heard across the glade. He saw some white and red colour, but the glimpse he had was too short to notice much. The spotted woodpecker is so hasty that it is not often he is in sight more than half a minute. Bevis saw him fly with a flight like a finch across to the ivy-grown oak, and heard his “top-top” from thence. One of the tits has a trick of tapping branches so much in the same manner that if he is not seen the sound may be mistaken.There was now a little rabbit out, but not worth shooting. Restless as Bevis was, yet the moment he fixed his mind to do a thing his will magnetised the nerves and sinews. He became as still as a tree and scarcely heeded the lapse of time. Bees went by, which reminded him of the honey in the hollow ash, and he heard mice in the fern. The shadows had now deepened, and there were two thrushes and a blackbird out in the grass. Another little kangaroo appeared, and a third, and a long way off, too far to shoot, there was one about three parts grown, which he hoped would presently feed over within range.After a while, as this did not happen, he began to think he would try and shoot two of the smaller ones at once. With shot this could have been easily done, for they were often close together. As he was watching the young rabbits, and asking himself whether the ball would strike both, a sense of something moving made him glance again up into the oak on his left hand. He did not actually see anything go up into it, but the corner of his eye—while he was consciously gazing straight forward—was aware that something had passed.In a moment he saw it was a jay, which had come without a sound, for though the jay makes such a screech when he opens his bill, his wings are almost as noiseless as an owl’s. A wood-pigeon makes a great clatter, hammering the air and the boughs; a jay slips into the tree without a sound. The bird’s back was turned, and the white bar across it showed; in a moment he moved, and the blue wing was visible.“Frances would like it,” Bevis thought, “to put in her hat.” The ferns hid him on that side, and careless of the rabbits, he gently moved himself round; the little kangaroos lifted their heads, the larger one ran to his bury, for to bring his gun to bear on the oak Bevis was obliged to expose himself towards the knoll. Now he was round there was this difficulty, the jay was high in the oak, and the rest was too low.To aim up into the tree he must have extended himself at full length with his chest on the ground, that would be awkward, and most likely while he was doing it he should startle the bird. He gently lifted the heavy matchlock, sliding the barrel against the bark of the ash till he had it in position, holding it there by pressing it with his left hand against the tree. This gave some support while his wrist was fresh, but in a minute he knew it would feel the weight, and perhaps tremble. It was necessary to shoot quick for this reason, and because the jay never stays long in any one tree; yet he wanted to take a steady aim. He had not shot anything with the matchlock, though he had designed it.Bevis brought the barrel to bear, covered the jay with the sight, then moved it the merest trifle to the left, so that he could just see the bird, and drew the match down into the priming. The bird was struck up into the air by the blow of the ball and fell dead. The wing towards him and part of the neck had been carried away by the bullet, which, coming upwards, had lifted the jay from the bough. On the side away from him the wing was uninjured; this was for Frances. There was no chance of getting a rabbit now, so he returned towards the hut, and had not been there many minutes before Mark came running.When the jay and the perch had been talked about enough, they made some tea, and sat down to wait till it was moonlight. Bevis got out his journal and recorded these spoils, while the little bats flew to and fro inside the stockade, and even under the open shed and over the table just above their heads, having little more fear than flies.Later on, having landed on the mainland, as they were going through the stubble to meet Loo, they saw something move, and keeping quite still by the hedge, it came towards them, when they knew it was a fox. He came down the furrow between the lands, and several times went nosing round the shocks of wheat, for he looks on a plump mouse as others do on a kidney for breakfast. He did not seem to scent them, for when they stepped out he was startled and raced away full speed. At the whistle Loo brought the flag-basket, heavy with the tinned tongues and potted meats they had ordered. She was frequently sent into the town on errands from the house, so that there was no difficulty at the shop. Bevis inquired how all were at home; all were well, and then wished her good-night after exacting another promise of secrecy. Loo watched them out of sight.That evening they had a splendid supper on New Formosa, and sat up playing cards.“How ought we to know that your governor and the Jolly Old Moke are all right,” said Mark, “as we’re on an island seven thousand miles away? Of course we do know, but howoughtwe to find out? There was no telegraph when we lived.”“Well, it’s awkward,” said Bevis—“it’s very awkward; perhaps we had a magic ring and looked through it and saw what the people were doing, or, I know! there’s the little looking-glass in the cave, don’t you remember?”“We brought it and forgot to hang it up.”“Yes; we saw them in a magic mirror, don’t you see?”“Of course—like a picture. First it comes as a mist in the mirror, as if you had breathed on it; then you see the people moving about, and very likely somebody going to be married that you want, and then you cry out, and the mist comes again.”“That’s right: I’ll put it down in the journal. ‘Made magic and saw all the blokes at home.’”They fastened Pan up as before at the door-post before going to bed, and gave him several slices of rolled tongue. They slept the instant they put their heads on the hard doubled-up great-coats which formed their pillows.

In the morning, after the bath, Mark examined the night-line, but it was untouched; nor was there a kangaroo in the wires they had set up in their runs. Poling the raft out to the trimmers they found a jack of about two pounds on one, and the bait on another had been carried off, the third had not been visited. Bevis wanted to explore the Waste, and especially to look at the great grey boulder, and so they went on and landed among the sedges.

Making Pan keep close at their heels, they cautiously crept through the bramble thickets—Pan tried two or three times to break away, for the scent of game was strong in these thickets—and entered the wild pasture, across which they could not see. The ground undulated, and besides the large ant-hills, the scattered hawthorn bushes and the thickets round the boulders intercepted the view. If any savages appeared they intended to stoop, and so would be invisible; they could even creep on hands and knees half across the common without being seen. Pan was restless—not weary this morning—the scent he crossed was almost too much for his obedience.

They reached the boulder unseen—indeed there was no one to see them—pushed through the bushes, and stood by it. The ponderous stone was smooth, as if it had been ground with emery, and there were little circular basins or cups drilled in it. With a stick Bevis felt all round and came to a place where the stick could be pushed in two or three feet under the stone, between it and the grass.

“It’s hollow here,” he said; “you try.”

“So it is,” said Mark. “This is where the treasure is.”

“And the serpent, and the magic lamp that has been burning ages and ages.”

“If we could lift the stone up.”

“There’s a spell on it; you couldn’t lift it up, not with levers or anything.”

Pan sniffed at the narrow crevice between the edge of the boulder and the ground—concealed by the grass till Bevis found it—but showed no interest. There was no rabbit there. Such great boulders often have crevices beneath, whether this was a natural hollow, or whether the boulder was the capstone of a dolmen was not known. Whirr-rr!

A covey of partridges flew over only just above the stone, and within a few inches of their heads which were concealed by it. They counted fourteen—the covey went straight out across the New Sea, eastwards towards the Nile. From the boulder they wandered on among the ant-hills and tall thistles, disturbing a hare, which went off at a tremendous pace, bringing his hind legs right under his body up to his shoulder in his eagerness to take kangaroo bounds.

Presently they came to the thick hedge which divided the Waste from the cornfields. Gathering a few blackberries along this, they came to a gate, which alarmed them, thinking some one might see, but a careful reconnaissance showed that the reapers had finished and left that field. The top bar of the gate was pecked, little chips out of the wood, where the crows had been.

“It’s very nice here,” said Mark. “You can go on without coming to the Other Side so soon.”

After their life on the island, where they could never walk far without coming in sight of the water, they appreciated the liberty of the mainland. Pan had to have several kicks and bangs with the stick, he was so tempted to rush into the hedge, but they did not want him to bark, in case any one should hear.

“Lots of kangaroos here,” said Bevis, “and big kangaroos too—hares you know; I say, I shall come here with the matchlock some night.”

“So we will.”

There was a gap in the corner, and as they came idling along they got up into the double mound, when Bevis, who was first, suddenly dropped on his knees and seized Pan’s shaggy neck. Mark crouched instantly behind him.

“What is it?” he whispered.

“Some one’s been here.”

“How do you know?”

“Sniff.”

Mark sniffed. There was the strong pungent smell of crushed nettles. He understood in a moment—some one had recently gone through and trampled on them. They remained in this position for five minutes, hardly breathing, and afraid to move.

“I can’t hear any one,” whispered Mark.

“No.”

“Must have gone on.”

Bevis crept forward, still holding Pan with one hand; Mark followed, and they crossed the mound, when the signs of some one having recently been there became visible in the trampled nettles, and in one spot there was the imprint of a heel-plate.

“Savages,” said Bevis. “Ah! Look.”

Mark looked through the branches and a long way out in the stubble, moving among the shocks of wheat, he saw Bevis’s governor. They watched him silently. The governor walked straight away; they scarcely breathed till he had disappeared in the next field. Then they drew back into the Waste, and looked at one another.

“Very nearly done,” said Mark.

“We won’t land again in daylight,” said Bevis.

“No—it’s not safe; he must have been close.”

“He must have got up into the mound and looked through,” said Bevis. “Perhaps while we were by the gate.”

“Most likely. He came across the stubble, why he was that side while we were this.”

“Awfully nearly done; why it must have been the governor who startled the partridges!”

“Stupes we were not to know some one was about.”

“Awful stupes.”

They walked back to the raft, keeping close to the hedge, and crept on all fours among the ant-hills so as to pass the gateway without the possibility of being seen, though they knew the governor was now too far to observe them.

The governor had been to look at the progress made by the reapers, and then strolled across the stubble, thinking to see what birds were about, as it was not such a great while till the season opened. Coming to the mound, he got up and looked through into the Waste, over which (as over the New Sea) he held manorial rights. At the moment he was looking out into the pasture they were idly approaching him along the hedge, and had he stopped there they would have come on him. As it was, he went back into the stubble, and had gone some fifty yards with his back turned when they entered the gap.

“We might have been tortured,” said Mark, as they stepped on the raft. “Tied up and gimlets bored into our heads.”

“The king of this country is an awful tyrant,” said Bevis. “Very likely he would have fixed us in a hollow tree and smeared us with honey and let the flies eat us.”

“Unless we could save his daughter, who is ill, and all the magicians can’t do her any good.”

“Now they are hoping we shall soon come with a wonderful talisman. We must study magic—we keep on putting it off; I wonder if there really is a jewel in the toad’s head.”

“You have not inked the wizard’s foot on the gateway,” said Mark.

When they got home Bevis inked it on the boards of the gate; he could not do it on the rough bark of the gate-post. They then worked at the shed, and soon put it up in place of the awning, which was taken down and carried to the raft. Next the mast was erected, and sustained with stays; it was, however, taken down again, so as to be out of the way till required, and stowed at the side by the bulwarks.

The jack was cooked for dinner, and though not enough for such hungry people it was a pleasant change from the perpetual rashers and damper. After Charley had given the signal, they parted; Mark took his perch tackle and poled the raft out near Pearl Island, where he thought he might catch some perch. Bevis loaded the matchlock with ball, and went into ambush behind the ash-tree by Kangaroo Hill, to try and shoot a kangaroo.

Mark took Pan and worked the raft along till he was within forty or fifty yards of Pearl Island, and on the windward side. The wind had been changeable lately, showing that the weather was not so settled as it had been; it blew from the eastward that afternoon, just strong enough to cause a ripple. When he had got the raft into the position he wished, Mark put the pole down and took his rod.

The raft, as he had designed, floated slowly, and without the least disturbance of the water (such as his pole or oars would have caused) before the wind, till it grounded on a shoal ten yards from Pearl Island. Mark knew of the shoal, having noticed the place before when they were visiting the islets, and thought it would be a likely spot to find perch. The ripples breaking over the ridge of the shoal made a miniature surf there.

On the outer or windward side the perch would be on the watch for anything that might come along on the wavelets, and inside for whatever might be washed from the shoal. There were weeds at a short distance, but none just there, and such places with a clear sandy bottom are the favourite haunts of perch in waters like these. First he fished outside to windward, and his blue float went up and down on the ripples till presently down it went at a single dive, drawn under at once by an eager fish.

In a minute he had a perch on board about half a pound weight, and shortly afterwards another, and then a third, for when perch are on the feed they take the bait directly as fast as it can be put in to them. Now Mark, though excited with his luck, was cool enough to observe one little precaution, which was to use a fresh clean worm every time, and not to drop in one that had been in the least degree mauled. This required some self-control, for several times the bait was scarcely damaged, but it was a rule that he and Bevis had found out, and they always adhered to it.

For fish have likes and antipathies exactly the same as other creatures, and if one approaches a bait and turns disdainfully away it is quite probable that three or four more may check their advance, whether from imitation, or taking the opinion of the first as a guide to themselves. So Mark always had a fresh, untainted bait for them, and in a very short time he had six perch on the raft. He put them in the locker.

There was then a pause, he had exhausted that school. Next he tried fishing out towards the nearest weeds, a small bunch at the utmost limit of his throw, but as half an hour elapsed and he had no nibble he tried inside the shoal to leeward. In five minutes he landed a fine one, quite two pounds and a half, whose leaps went thump, thump on the deck like Pan’s tail. Ten minutes more and he caught another, this time small, and that was his last. There were either no more fish, or they had no more credence.

He sat on the locker and watched his float till the sun grew low, but it was no use. He knew it was no use long before, but still he lingered. Gold-diggers linger though they know their claim is exhausted. The mind is loth to acknowledge that the game is up. Mark knew it was up; still he waited and let his float uselessly rise and fall, till he heard the report of the matchlock from the island, and then he poled homewards to see what Bevis had shot.

In ambush, under the ash-tree, and behind the fringe of fern—one frond was scorched where Mark had fired through it—Bevis watched with the gun ready on the rest. He had purposely gone a little too soon, that is, before the shadow stretched right out across the glade, because if you do not arrive till the last moment a kangaroo may be already out, and will be alarmed. Then it is necessary to wait till the others recover from their fear; for if one runs in, the sound of his hasty passage through the tunnels in the ground conveys the information to all in the bury.

Not far from him there was a bunch of beautiful meadow geraniums; some of their blue cups had already dropped, leaving the elongated seed-vessel or crane’s bill, something like the pointed caps worn by mediaeval ladies. The leaves are much divided; perhaps the wind-anemone leaves (but these had withered long since) are most finely divided, and if you will hold one so that its shadow may be cast by the sun on a piece of white paper, you cannot choose but admire it. While he sat there, now and then changing the position of a limb with the utmost care and deliberation, not to rustle the grass or to attract attention by moving quickly (for kangaroos do not heed anything that moves very slowly), he saw a brown furze-chat come to a tall fern and perch sideways on the flattened yellow stalk.

Half an hour afterwards there came a sound like “top-top” from an oak on his left hand—not the ivy-grown one—and when he had by great exertion turned himself round, it is difficult to turn and still occupy the same space, he followed up all the branches of the oak cautiously till he found the bird. If you glance, as it were, broadcast up into a tree when it is in leaf, you see nothing, though the bird’s note may fall from just overhead. Bevis first looked quickly up the larger leading branches, letting his glance run up them; then he caused it to travel out along the lesser boughs of one great branch, then of another, till he had exhausted all. Still he could not find it, though he heard the “top-top.” But as he had now got a map of the tree in his eye, the moment the bird moved he saw it.

It ran up a partly dead branch, then stopped and struck it with its beak, and though the bird was no larger than a sparrow the sound of these vehement blows could have been heard across the glade. He saw some white and red colour, but the glimpse he had was too short to notice much. The spotted woodpecker is so hasty that it is not often he is in sight more than half a minute. Bevis saw him fly with a flight like a finch across to the ivy-grown oak, and heard his “top-top” from thence. One of the tits has a trick of tapping branches so much in the same manner that if he is not seen the sound may be mistaken.

There was now a little rabbit out, but not worth shooting. Restless as Bevis was, yet the moment he fixed his mind to do a thing his will magnetised the nerves and sinews. He became as still as a tree and scarcely heeded the lapse of time. Bees went by, which reminded him of the honey in the hollow ash, and he heard mice in the fern. The shadows had now deepened, and there were two thrushes and a blackbird out in the grass. Another little kangaroo appeared, and a third, and a long way off, too far to shoot, there was one about three parts grown, which he hoped would presently feed over within range.

After a while, as this did not happen, he began to think he would try and shoot two of the smaller ones at once. With shot this could have been easily done, for they were often close together. As he was watching the young rabbits, and asking himself whether the ball would strike both, a sense of something moving made him glance again up into the oak on his left hand. He did not actually see anything go up into it, but the corner of his eye—while he was consciously gazing straight forward—was aware that something had passed.

In a moment he saw it was a jay, which had come without a sound, for though the jay makes such a screech when he opens his bill, his wings are almost as noiseless as an owl’s. A wood-pigeon makes a great clatter, hammering the air and the boughs; a jay slips into the tree without a sound. The bird’s back was turned, and the white bar across it showed; in a moment he moved, and the blue wing was visible.

“Frances would like it,” Bevis thought, “to put in her hat.” The ferns hid him on that side, and careless of the rabbits, he gently moved himself round; the little kangaroos lifted their heads, the larger one ran to his bury, for to bring his gun to bear on the oak Bevis was obliged to expose himself towards the knoll. Now he was round there was this difficulty, the jay was high in the oak, and the rest was too low.

To aim up into the tree he must have extended himself at full length with his chest on the ground, that would be awkward, and most likely while he was doing it he should startle the bird. He gently lifted the heavy matchlock, sliding the barrel against the bark of the ash till he had it in position, holding it there by pressing it with his left hand against the tree. This gave some support while his wrist was fresh, but in a minute he knew it would feel the weight, and perhaps tremble. It was necessary to shoot quick for this reason, and because the jay never stays long in any one tree; yet he wanted to take a steady aim. He had not shot anything with the matchlock, though he had designed it.

Bevis brought the barrel to bear, covered the jay with the sight, then moved it the merest trifle to the left, so that he could just see the bird, and drew the match down into the priming. The bird was struck up into the air by the blow of the ball and fell dead. The wing towards him and part of the neck had been carried away by the bullet, which, coming upwards, had lifted the jay from the bough. On the side away from him the wing was uninjured; this was for Frances. There was no chance of getting a rabbit now, so he returned towards the hut, and had not been there many minutes before Mark came running.

When the jay and the perch had been talked about enough, they made some tea, and sat down to wait till it was moonlight. Bevis got out his journal and recorded these spoils, while the little bats flew to and fro inside the stockade, and even under the open shed and over the table just above their heads, having little more fear than flies.

Later on, having landed on the mainland, as they were going through the stubble to meet Loo, they saw something move, and keeping quite still by the hedge, it came towards them, when they knew it was a fox. He came down the furrow between the lands, and several times went nosing round the shocks of wheat, for he looks on a plump mouse as others do on a kidney for breakfast. He did not seem to scent them, for when they stepped out he was startled and raced away full speed. At the whistle Loo brought the flag-basket, heavy with the tinned tongues and potted meats they had ordered. She was frequently sent into the town on errands from the house, so that there was no difficulty at the shop. Bevis inquired how all were at home; all were well, and then wished her good-night after exacting another promise of secrecy. Loo watched them out of sight.

That evening they had a splendid supper on New Formosa, and sat up playing cards.

“How ought we to know that your governor and the Jolly Old Moke are all right,” said Mark, “as we’re on an island seven thousand miles away? Of course we do know, but howoughtwe to find out? There was no telegraph when we lived.”

“Well, it’s awkward,” said Bevis—“it’s very awkward; perhaps we had a magic ring and looked through it and saw what the people were doing, or, I know! there’s the little looking-glass in the cave, don’t you remember?”

“We brought it and forgot to hang it up.”

“Yes; we saw them in a magic mirror, don’t you see?”

“Of course—like a picture. First it comes as a mist in the mirror, as if you had breathed on it; then you see the people moving about, and very likely somebody going to be married that you want, and then you cry out, and the mist comes again.”

“That’s right: I’ll put it down in the journal. ‘Made magic and saw all the blokes at home.’”

They fastened Pan up as before at the door-post before going to bed, and gave him several slices of rolled tongue. They slept the instant they put their heads on the hard doubled-up great-coats which formed their pillows.

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