IIINTO THE JUNGLE
THE jungle of the mainland of Aru came down to the very water’s edge. A narrow strip of sandy beach, lined with nodding palms, was strewn with fallen trees, bare and sun dried, and whole colonies of hermit crabs on the beach told of the teeming life of tropical nature pushed to the very verge of the sea. Their party landed from the village key of old coral growth, and stepped ashore at the end of a native path that was a mere tunnel through the undergrowth. Never had they seen palms in such profusion or so tall and magnificent, the bare trunks rising through lesser growths a hundred feet high, where the great fronds of leaves spread green umbrellas far overhead. The tree ferns, their first in this Papuan land, rose feathery and beautiful, with stems thirty feet high, above which shot up the lacy fronds, giant replicas of our northern hot-house varieties. The ubiquitous banana waseverywhere, growing wild in the forest, generally in the open glades of pandanus palms, whose scraggly trees twisted high in the misty air, with spikes of leaves like century plants at their branch tips. And every now and then, through the dim vistas of vine and creeper, they could note a dense thicket where a giant fig tree grew, surrounded by its own forest of aërial root shoots a hundred feet in diameter.
Down on the jungle floor scuttled millions of silent hermit crabs, or great orange-and-red land crabs popped down their holes. One had but to look an instant to realize that the jungle was alive with lizards, black, green, and gray, all motionless on limb or root, staring at the explorers with bright beady eyes—to flash into a green streak of movement at the first motion to catch them.
It was early, with the faint light of dawn hardly penetrating the green depths all about them as they went silently along in single file, listening to the chorus of bird life in the tree tops. The shrill scream of lories and parakeets, the hoarse cry of the tree pigeons, and the incessant chirrup of smaller birds awoke the jungle with the voices of the bird world. Then the sun shot up ina flaming fire into the pale tropical heavens, and its rays lit up the glades, showing huge yellow-and-black spiders on thick ropy webs swung in every open spot, and gorgeous butterflies in metallic blues and greens sailing through the sunlit vistas, causing many a stop and chase.
A cry rang startlingly through the tree tops. “Wawk! Wawk! Wawk!—Wok, wok wok!” it said, remarkably like the caw of our northern crow.
The curator stopped and listened, his hand to ear to locate the direction of the sound. “The great bird of paradise, boys!” he exclaimed, exultingly.
“Why, it sounds exactly like a crow flying through our home woods!” cried Dwight.
“Sure! It’s the tropical crow. They all belong to the crow family, only this is what Nature can do with the crow when you give her plenty of heat and sunlight!” retorted the curator. “There he goes again, off to the left!”
“Him go-stop sacaléli tree,” put in Sadok, who had been listening, fumbling at the cover of his dart quiver.
“Yes? The sacaléli, the plumage dance,” agreed the curator. “They meet in somelarge tree, where the males dance and show off their plumes before the females. Baderoon, ask’m hunter-fellah if we go catch’m sacaléli tree, all right,” he said, turning to the negro.
There were a few grunts between the Papuan and the Aru hunter, who nodded stolidly and led on. The party quickened their pace as the path led upward through the hills. Then Sadok stopped and raised his long ironwood sumpitan. It poised for an instant, pointing up into a wide-branched bamboo clump, and, before their eyes could pick out the mark, came the soft plop! of the dart as it left the sumpitan like a streak of light. Followed the fall of a reddish bird, tumbling down through the leaves, and Baderoon dashed into the thicket to retrieve it. He brought back a jewel of fluttering fire in his hands. Of an intense metallic red, its throat was of deep orange, and from under the wings jutted out two little fronds of gray aigrettes tipped with broad bands of lustrous metallic green.
“The king bird of paradise!” cried the curator, holding the feathered beauty in his hands and examining it admiringly. “Great business, Sadok! What a wonderful bird!”
“Rare, too, isn’t it?” asked Dwight.
“You’re dead right it is! We’ll be lucky if we get two of them this expedition!” said the curator.
Just then Nicky, who had come back from a foray with his hands full of lizards and crabs, had a flash of inspiration. “Put him on a twig, quick!” he yelled. “I’ll get a colored photo of him!”
“Good idea, kid!” smiled the curator. “That will be something new.”
The bird was alive yet, only partly paralyzed by the poison, and his eyes were bright and open, and the little tufts on his breast still erect. He sat quietly on a twig in the sunlight, while Nicky set up a folding steel tripod and took three color plates as fast as he could change holders.
“That’ll be about worth the whole trip to me!” he cried. “Wait till the director of the Museum sees that print, eh, Mr. Baldwin?” he chuckled.
The curator grinned indulgently. He loved Nick’s intense enthusiasms, particularly when they led to something of scientific value. Sadok wrapped the prize carefully in a cone of pandanus leaf and they started out again. After about an hour’stravel they came to a high plateau where the creepers and hanging vines were less abundant and one could see for some distance under the forest floor. A grove of tall tree trunks loomed up ahead, with bare, scant-leaved branches. Each had a sort of leaf hut, built far up in the fork.
They skirted the grove, silently, the curator explaining how the native hunters secured paradise birds by lying in wait for them under the hut, aiming with a blunt-headed arrow at the males during the dance. Their own hunter paid no attention to the grove, but led on for a mile farther across the plateau. Then he stopped and pointed up into the trees. Here was a similar grove, but much smaller, and buried far deeper in the jungle. Evidently it was his own secret hunting ground. Grunting a few words to Baderoon, he undid the belt of woven fiber about his waist and made a loop of it around the tree. Then, alternately walking up it and shifting the belt, he ascended the bare trunk to the leaf screen built in its fork, and disappeared.
“Him stop, go-shoot’m goby-goby,” explained Baderoon in a stage whisper. “We-fellah go-hide and catch’m spec’men when he drop.”
They all sought hiding places in the underbrush and waited. After a time came a distant, “Wawk! Wawk! Wawk!” answered by another bird farther off in the jungle, and then by still another. Like a flock of crows calling to the assembly, the boys could hear the paradise birds gathering. Then, like a flash of shimmering light, a great golden bird, eighteen inches long, came dropping down from over the tree tops. He lit in the tree farthest off from the hunter’s, preened himself awhile, and then lifted up his voice in the call of his kind. An answering cry heralded the approach of another one, and soon he too dropped down and joined the other.
“That’s bad—they’re gathering in the wrong tree,” whispered Nicky to Dwight, who lay by his side.
“Wait,” cautioned his chum. “We can shoot and get a few, if worse comes to worst. I’d far rather get a nest or an egg. There’s not one in any museum in the world, the curator tells me. Look—there’s a female!”
Nicky looked up to see a dull, coffee-colored bird perch down quietly on a near-by branch. The two males at once began to ruffle and preen their long golden plumes.Peering through his glasses, Dwight could even see the pale-blue beak, the delicate straw yellow of head and neck, and the rich, scaly feathers of metallic emerald green on the throat. From under the wings came the long two-foot plumes of intense glossy orange-brown color, and they ruffled and spread in the breeze as the male bird shook them for the admiration of the female. A glorified crow, a crow raised to the most unimaginable hues of bottled sunlight and all the vivid splendor of the tropics, was the great bird of paradise! As Dwight looked, he began to dance, hopping up and down on the limb, each motion spreading the glorious plumes and letting them fall like down. His rival was dancing also, and three more males and another female joined them.
Dwight crawled over to the curator, who was watching the whole performance avidly through his glasses.
“Our native hunter’s out of luck, sir!” he muttered. “He’ll never be able to hit them from his tree, and if he misses one the whole flock will fly off. What’ll we do—shoot?”
“Presently,” whispered the curator. “Goget Nicky, and we’ll each pick a bird and fire. They may fly over to the hunter’s tree yet, but I can see that they’re all as suspicious as our own crows. The tree they are in seems to suit them all right.”
Another male flew in as he spoke, and the whole tree top was filled with hopping, flashing flames of golden color, a sight in itself that was worth traveling many miles to see. Dwight soon returned, with Nicky crawling behind him, and the three lay and watched the birds, far overhead.
“Well, boys, I guess we’d better fire,” said the curator, at length. “That native may try to shoot from his tree and spoil the whole thing. Dwight, you pick a female, and Nicky and I will each get one of the males, and then we’ll do what we can with the other barrel.”
They raised their guns and were about to shoot, when one of the male birds silently loosed his hold and came tumbling down!
“Wait! Sadok!” whispered the curator, restraining them energetically. “I’d quite forgotten about him and his sumpitan!” Another bird fell. Somewhere, deep in the jungle, that silent, deadly blowgun in Sadok’s hands was bringing them down. At longintervals two more birds fell, and then there was a slighttock!in the branches and they could see through the glasses the short dart sticking in the bark. The other birds raised alarmed cries at it and prepared to fly.
“Now!” cried the curator. “Get a couple of females!” The guns barked as the startled birds took wing, while two dull-colored hen birds and another male came tumbling down. Then they all rushed over to pick up the specimens.
The native hunter came dropping hurriedly down out of his tree, gave them one wild look of terror, and bolted incontinently into the forest, shrieking an unintelligible gibberish as he ran. Baderoon burst into a yell of laughter and tumbled on the ground with merriment.
“Nowwhatin the dickens ailshim?” grinned the curator, looking after the flying native from the bird in his hand. “Call him back, Baderoon.”
“Taboo!Yow-yowri!Bewitched! Debbil-debbil!” gasped Baderoon from the ground. “Him see plenty debbil-debbil! Bird, he go-dead—no see um arrow, no hear gun! Him no come back!” he cackled, squirming in an agony of mirth.
“Get up, fool! Go catch’m!” ordered the curator, sternly, kicking the helpless negro to his feet. Baderoon ran off, still howling with delight.
“He’ll never catch that coon in ten thousand years!” chuckled Nicky. “Sadok’s blowgun scared all the hair off his head. But—how are we going to get out of the jungle without him, though?”
“We’ll camp right here,” declared the curator. “It’s always home wherever we are, and there’s lots to do.”
“All right, and, as I have no camp to make, I’m going to find a nest or an egg if it takes all day!” declared Nicky. “I haven’t really begun to study this jungle yet, you know!”
“Not a bad idea,” agreed the curator, heartily. “Take Sadok along with you, so that you’ll turn up sometime,” he laughed. “Dwight and I will make camp and skin out the birds.”
The grove was an excellent one to camp in, clear and open under the great trees, and Dwight started his camp at once. Their system was an original and elastic one, each man for himself, each one eating or sleeping when and where he pleased. They hadlong ago discarded the old-fashioned camp where one man cooked for the crowd and all had to be in at mealtimes. Such a system was too rigid and conventional for such diverse tastes and occupations as these three.
Dwight opened his pack and unlimbered his steel pickax, driving down into the lava rock with its point to make holes for tent pegs and clear out rocks on his sleeping site. He chose a spot covered with small bushes like huckleberries, filled with a windfall of dried leaves. Here he spread out his sleeping bag, and over it went a light tent fly, on a rope stretched over two forked stakes. From the rope he hung a mosquito screen, with a small ring of cane cut in the jungle and bent into a hoop a foot in diameter, so as to hold the net gauze clear of his face. This hoop was tied inside the square of net about a foot below the central peak from which it hung, and the folds of the net draped over the head of the bag. Dwight’s sleeping bag was waterproof and insectproof, so that, with the net hung over his face and the fly over that, forming a sun and rain shade, he was well protected from insects and wet weather on very little weight—about five pounds all told for tent and bedding.
In front of his camp the lad built a small stone fireplace, with a row of his little food sacks hung handy around it on cross poles. He set about making a batter of flour, corn meal, dried egg powder, dried milk, and baking powder, and soon had cooked himself a pile of flapjacks. With the body of a paradise bird grilling on a forked stick, and a tin of tea steeping on the hearth, he was as well fed and comfortable as anywhere else in the world. After lunch he seized his pickax and went collecting for insects and beetles in the forest, the sharp pick point digging and prying into the bark of prone trees, where many a new form of jewel-bodied tropical beetle came to his collection box.
The curator had silently melted into the jungle, whence soon appeared the brown glint of sunlight from the tent fly spread over his hammock. A great bag of netting enveloped the latter, and it could be drawn in tight by a string after he had gotten inside. A handful of rockahominy washed down with a drink from his canteen and a bite of grilled bird satisfied him for lunch. After skinning out the paradise birds and hanging them in a row from a line stretchedbetween two trees to keep them from the ants, he disappeared into the jungle on his favorite occupation of studying bird life.
Dwight found a bewildering world of new entomology awaiting him. His pickax, net, and magnifying glass were busy every moment, and the boy quivered with excitement, rushing hither and yon through the jungle, now after a leaf-winged butterfly, which would disappear with maddening legerdemain; now stooping to watch a fight between two maleBrenthidæ, long armored beetles with fighting jaws at the end of a slender proboscis like a spear; now urged to frantic pursuit of the rare horned deer fly. The mystery of the leaf-winged butterfly was solved when he had examined a bush on which it lit more closely. One of the leaves turned out to be the creature itself, with wings folded, motionless on the stem, the under surface of its wings so closely resembling the leaves that only the closest scrutiny could detect the difference.
By late afternoon he returned to camp by compass, his box full of new and wonderful insects.
“Look at the day’s plunder, Mr. Baldwin!” cried the youth, enthusiastically. Hedrew out the cork slabs from his carrying tin, covered with the heterogenous collection impaled on pins.
“These horned flies are a real find!” exclaimed the curator, interestedly, after examining the butterflies and beetles. “They go to prove a great scientific fact—first propounded as a theory by Mr. Wallace, the English naturalist—that Aru was once part of New Guinea. Those little flies can be explained in no other way. Common in New Guinea, it would be impossible for them to travel the hundred and fifty miles from the New Guinea coast to Aru. To-morrow, if Nicky does not come back, we’ll go on a trip to see another curious phenomenon, the salt-water channels that divide the islands of Aru. They are true rivers, yet have no flow other than the tide at their mouths. How do you explain that, Dwight?”
The boy confessed that he could not. “Come to think of it, sir, these are the only islands in the world thathavesuch channels,” he cried out over the novelty of it.
As Nicky did not put in an appearance that night, they set out next morning northward, leaving Baderoon to skin out birds in camp. The curator did not worry overNicky. In his rucksack the lad had carried his odd nightgear, of an old bathing suit with the armholes sewed up to pull over his bed, a pair of extra socks to cover his arms and another for his feet. So dressing up to go to bed, Nicky would turn in on a leaf patch, secure from insects and snakes, and, with Sadok to guide him, would be abundantly able to care for himself.
After several hours’ travel to the north the going became more rocky and the vegetation sparse and thorny. Soon open skyline appeared ahead, and then they came upon the rocky cliffs of basic limestone that border the south bank of the river Majkor, which separates the Aru mainlands of Maykor and Kobror. The north bank was high jungle, and up and down its reaches it was a true river, a deep, narrow channel winding through the jungle as far as the eye could reach. Yet its waters were salt.
“That’s really wonderful, sir!” cried Dwight, enthusiastically, when he had grasped the full significance of it. “Lots of small islands like England, for instance, have rivers; but they are true rivers, rising in the mountains somewhere. Others have salt straits dividing them from the mainland,like Staten Island, at home. This channel can’t be a fissure, for it winds and turns just like a river. What is Wallace’s theory, Mr. Baldwin?” he asked, giving it up.
“The true one, I think,” replied the curator. “The west coast of Aru is deep water; the east, a shallow pearl sea, clear over to New Guinea. That sea was undoubtedly formed by gradual subsidence of the sea bottom. It is only three hundred feet deep; so that would not take long for geology to accomplish. The coast of New Jersey is rising two feet a century. At no very distant date, then, New Guinea and Aru were one big continent, with all the sea between lowlands—very like those that extend now back from the coast to the Great Precipice over where we are soon going. The rivers, then, like the Outanata and the Mimika, must have flowed through those lowlands, and these channels of Aru were part of them, emptying into the sea on the west coast of Aru. Can’t you see how important this little trip of ours is, now? This river can tell us something of the mineralogy of the unexplored interior of New Guinea! And without our ever going there, for that matter!”
“Sure it can—if we had a long line and agrappling hook to dredge with!” said Dwight, practically.
“We have the former!” smiled the curator, producing out of his rucksack a hank of strong green Banks line, “and we’ll make a grappling.”
Near by grew a tree of the Erythina family, its profuse scarlet blossoms a grand note of color against the gray cliffs. Thousands of swallows swooped about the latter, and the curator eyed them absorbedly.
“Eh?” he exclaimed. “Dwight, you cut a length from that Erythina, with a whorl of branches at one end, and make a grappling, while I go on a look-see.”
Dwight drew his pickax and fashioned a wooden grappling hook with its keen hatchet blade. When he got through the curator had returned from the cliffs, bearing a gelatinous bird nest.
“Here is the edible bird nest of China!” he exclaimed. “I heard that they got them on Aru, as well as in the cliff caves of Borneo. These banks must be the Aru collecting ground. Ever eat one?”
“No!” shuddered Dwight.
“Not half bad. We’ll have this one for dessert, to-day. And now le’s see that grappling.”
He bound on the end of the cod line, and they found a dead trunk which would form a tolerable raft. Dropping the grappling, with a heavy stone lashed to it, they waited for a short drift, paying out line, and then began to haul. It soon struck something solid. Pulling it in, a great frond of fan coral came to the surface, and attached to its roots was the stone it grew on. The curator cleaned it and examined its structure avidly.
“First news of New Guinea!” he chuckled. “This stone formed part of the river drift, long ago. It is—slate!” he barked, joyously. “And here is a small bit of fossil on one surface. See it? That means coal measures! It confirms my idea that an island three hundred miles wide and fourteen hundred miles longcan’tbe all volcanic, or all coral! Theremustbe stratified, geological formations in the interior, coal measures, iron ore—all that civilization needs. Try again!”
The next two casts brought up sea ferns, with more chunks of limestone and slate, but the third gave them a yellowish, heavy stone, sandy and streaked with brown.
“Ore! Iron ore!” yelled the curator, beforeeven the mud was washed off it. “Regular li’l’ scientific expedition of our own, eh, Dwight!”
The boy took the next cast. He brought up a heavy, reddish stone that the curator examined with the greatest interest. “That’s cinnabar, red oxide of mercury, unless I miss my guess. Itmaybe red iron ore, but seems too crystalline for that. We’ll keep this, Dwight, until I can get back to the bungalow and make some chemical tests.”
“Is it valuable?” asked the boy, curiously.
“Very!” replied the curator, abstractedly. He was off on one of his mental explorations—explorer’s dreams for the future welfare of the world that come to him who opens up new territory for mankind. His very silence awakened a strange presentment of wonders to come in the boy’s mind. Gee! it was great to delve into the world’s secrets, where no white man had ever been before! He longed for the time for the New Guinea trip to come. A few days more on Aru, and then—into a wild and dangerous country, in search of new discoveries that might prove of the greatest value to the civilized world. It was wonderful to be part of this expedition!