Jack at Sea Part 67

"Not you, sir. You make me feel quite proud of you. Why, Bob Murray told me yesterday that you'd been right up all three masts as high as the sailors can get."

"Yes, I went up with my gla.s.s to look out for canoes. What of that?"

"What of that, sir? Well, fancy you trying to do such a thing a few months ago!"

"Perhaps I am a little stronger now," said Jack thoughtfully.

"Stronger, sir! I should just think you are. But I say, Mr Jack."

"Yes?"

"About my arm. I should get licked now. Think it will ever come right again?"

"Doctor Instow says it will, only it must have time. Do you feel any sensation in it now?"

"Not a bit, sir. Doctor asked me if he hurt me when he altered the bandages this morning, but I had to tell him he might do anything and I should not feel it. Just as if it was quite dead. Rum, ain't it, sir?"

"It's very sad, Ned."

"Oh, I don't know, sir. It's a nuisance; but the doctor says it will come right in time, so one's got to wait. He says he'll get the wound healed up, and then we can talk to the nerves and muscles with some good friction. Treat it like a lucifer, sir; give it a sharp rub and make it go off. But I shall be glad when he'll let me come on deck. Might do a bit o' fishing, sir."

"You shall, Ned, as soon as you can."

There were no signs of the savages' visit when they pa.s.sed inside the lagoon again, and, in the hope that they might remain now unmolested, the yacht steamed right away from the entrance and cast anchor nearly on the opposite side of the island, where the lagoon was at its widest, so as to give ample room for manoeuvring in case of attack, where the sh.o.r.e was more beautiful than in any part they had yet seen.

One of the tiny rivers ran down a precipitous gully in a series of fern-hung falls, to lose itself in the golden sands, and close at hand the sheltering trees were of the grandest in size and loveliness, overhung as they were with festoons of flowers, each tree affording ample study for Sir John and his friend; and the collecting went on apace from morn to eve, so that the boxes they had brought began to fill up and smell strongly of the aromatic gums and spices used to keep ants at a distance.

The sailors took the keenest delight in the birds, and were eager to learn to skin, and carefully laid them in the hot sunshine till they dried. They gloried too in the pickle-tub, as they called the spirit-cask, to which the abundant snakes and lizards were consigned.

Then of an evening they were always waiting for Jack to give the word for fishing, partly as an interesting sport, but after the first few times, for the sake of what Lenny called the pot, though in almost every case the capture was fried.

It needed a good deal of care and discrimination though, and the doctor's natural history knowledge was often called upon to decide whether some gorgeously-armoured creature would be wholesome or no, some of the tropic fish being poisonous in the extreme.

Then in addition there were the handsome birds which were collected; these, especially the fruit-pigeons, being very toothsome, though the larger parrots and c.o.c.katoos were, as Wrensler the cook said, not to be sneezed at, though he declared that they would have been far better if plucked instead of skinned.

So beautiful was the sh.o.r.e by the stream that the temptation was very great to erect a tent and live on the land, but it was considered too risky.

"Only fancy, Jack," said the doctor with a queer look, "our meeting with the same trouble out in this solitary island as we should in London."

"What trouble?" said Jack, laughing. "You don't mean the noise?"

"No, but I mean the blacks," said the doctor.

"Oh, I see," cried Jack; "but it does seem such a pity. I should like to have a tent ash.o.r.e."

"It would be delightful under one of those big trees, but canvas is a poor safeguard against the point of a spear. It wouldn't do."

"No," said Jack with a sigh, "it would not do."

Many excursions into the interior were made--the interior meaning a climb up the slope of the great mountain--and in all cases a grand selection of beautifully-plumaged birds was secured. Many of these were the tiny sun-birds, glittering in scales of ruby, amethyst, sapphire, and topaz; then too at the sides of the streams vivid blue-and-white kingfishers with orange bills were shot, many of them with two of the tail-feathers produced in a long shaft ending in a racket-like flat, giving the birds a most graceful aspect.

Then there were plenty of paroquets, rich in green, orange, and vermilion; rain-birds as the Malays call them, in claret and white, with blue and orange beaks; parrots without number, and finches, swallows, and starlings of lovely metallic hues; but the greatest prizes were the birds of paradise, of which several kinds were secured, from the grandly-plumaged great bird of paradise to the tiny king. Whenever one of these was shot in some great grove at daybreak, Jack hesitated to have it skinned for fear of injuring the lovely feathers, over which adornments Nature seemed to have done her best. Now it was one of the first-named, a largish bird, with its feathers standing out to curve over in a dry fountain of golden buff, ornamented with their beautifully flowing; wave-like shafts; and this would be of a prevailing tint of soft cinnamon red; while the smaller kinds were lavishly adorned with crests and tippets and sprays of feathers brighter than burnished metal.

"I don't know how it is," said Jack one day, "but every bird we find seems more beautiful than the last."

He had just picked up a fresh specimen which had fallen to the doctor's gun.

"Well, it is more novel than beautiful, Jack," said the doctor, as they turned over and re-arranged the dark purple, or dark-brown, or claret, or black, or green metallic plumage, for it might have been called either according to the angle at which it was viewed. "Come, this will help to make them believe that birds of paradise are of the crow family."

"No one ever saw a crow half as beautiful as that," cried the lad.

"At home--no. But look at the shape of this bird--its wings, claws, and build altogether; doesn't he look as if he could be a crow?"

"There is a slight resemblance, certainly," said Jack; "but this isn't a bird of paradise."

"It is next door to one, my lad, and I am surprised to find it here."

"You know what it is then?"

"I know there's a northern Australian bird almost like it, if not quite.

I think it is the rifle bird. We'll have a good look when we get back.

Take special care of that one, Lenny."

"Ay, ay, sir. I takes special care of all of 'em, when the bushes and thorns 'll let me."

They were well up the gully through which the stream off which the yacht was anch.o.r.ed ran, for, finding the place rich in specimens, they had toiled up higher and higher that morning.

Ned was for the first time of the party, on the condition that he would be very careful, for his arm was still stiff and numb, though otherwise he was much better; but he kept pretty close to his young master, and let the men with him carry the guns and ammunition, and in several ways made silent confession that he was not so strong as he was.

Jack noticed it, and made some allusion to the fact.

"Oh, don't you fidget about me, Mr Jack, I'm getting on glorious," said the man quietly. "I feel as if the sun and wind up here were doing me no end of good, drinking 'em in like. Doctor said I was to take it coolly; so coolly I take it, as the sun 'll let me, so as to get strong again as soon as I can. But, my word, what a place it is!"

"Lovely," said Jack. "It grows upon one."

"Ah, I should like to grow upon it," said Ned, grinning. "I don't feel as if I should like to go away again."

"There's no place like home, Ned," said Jack, who had stopped to watch a pair of vivid sun-birds probing the tiny trumpet blossoms of a white creeper with their beaks.

"They say so, sir; but I say there's no place like this. When are we going right up to the top?"

"When you are quite well, Ned. We should have started before now, but I asked my father to put it off till you were strong enough to carry my gun and wallet."

Ned said nothing, but he looked as if he thought a great deal, and when he next spoke as they went on mounting the gully, it was directly after the doctor had added a lovely kingfisher to the bag.

"I say, Mr Jack, sir, of course the doctor knows a deal, but do you think he is always right?"

"I suppose no one is always right, Ned. Why?"