Rob Harlow's Adventures Part 52

"I shall try, Shaddy."

"Of course you will, and try means win, and win means making ourselves comfortable till we are taken off."

"Then you think we shall be some day?"

"Please G.o.d, my lad!" said Shaddy calmly. "Look! Yonder goes Mr Brazier. He's forgetting his troubles in work, and that's what we've got to do, eh?"

Rob shook his head.

"Ah, you're thinking about poor young Jovanni, sir," said Shaddy sadly, "and you mustn't. It won't do him no good, nor you neither. Bring that bow and arrows along with us. I'm going to try and get a bamboo to make a spear thing, with a bit of hard wood for a point, and it may be useful by-and-by."

Rob took up the bow and arrows, but laid the larger part of his sheaf down again, contenting himself with half a dozen, and following Shaddy along the edge of the forest to what looked like a clump of reeds, but which proved to be a fringe of bamboos fully fourteen feet high.

Shaddy soon selected a couple of these suitable for his purpose, and had before long trimmed them down to spear shafts nine feet in length.

"There, sir," he said, "we'll get a couple of heads fitted into these to-night. First thing is to get something else to eat, so let's try for fruit or a bird. Now, if we could only come upon a deer!"

"Not likely, as we want one," responded Rob, who was looking round in search of Mr Brazier, and now caught sight of him right at the far end of the clearing, evidently engaged in cutting down some of his favourite plants.

"Mr Brazier is busy," said Rob; "but isn't it a pity to let him waste time in getting what can never be wanted?"

"How do we know that?" replied Shaddy. "Even if they're not, I did it for the best."

"But is it safe to leave him alone?"

"Safe as it is for us to go out here alone into the forest."

"Are we going into the forest?"

"Must, my lad--a little way."

"But are there likely to be any Indians about?"

"I should say not, Mr Rob, so come along."

Shaddy led the way to where the clearing ceased and the dense growth of the primeval forest began, and after hesitating a little and making a few observations as to the position of the sun--observations absolutely necessary if a traveller wished to find his way back--the guide plunged in amongst the dense growth, threading his way in through the trees, which grew more and more thickly for a short distance and then opened out a little, whereupon Shaddy halted and began to reconnoitre carefully, holding up his band to enforce silence and at the end of a few minutes saying eagerly to Rob,--

"Here you are, my lad! Now's our chance. There's nearly a dozen in that big tree to the right yonder, playing about among the branches, good big ones, too. Now you steal forward a bit, keeping under cover, then lay all your arrows down but one, take a good long aim, and let it go. Bring one down if you can."

"What birds are they?" whispered Rob.

"Who said anything about birds?" replied Shaddy sourly; "I said monkeys."

"No."

"Well, I meant to, my lad. There: on you go."

"Monkey--a little man," said Rob, shaking his head. "No, I couldn't shoot one of them."

"Here, give us hold of the bow and arrow, then, my lad," cried the old sailor. "'Tisn't a time for being nice. Better shoot a monkey and eat it than for me and Mr Brazier to have to kill and eat you."

Rob handed the newly made weapons, and Shaddy took them grumblingly.

"Not the sort of tackle I'm used to," he said. "Bound to say I could do far better with a gun."

He fitted the notch of the arrow to the string and drew the bow a little as if to try it; then moving off a few yards under cover of the trees, Rob was about to follow him, but he turned back directly.

"Don't you come," he said; "better let me try alone. Two of us might scare 'em."

But Shaddy did not have any occasion to go further, for all at once, as if in obedience to a signal, the party of monkeys in the forest a short distance before them came leaping from tree to tree till they were in the one beneath which the two travellers were waiting, stopped short, and began to stare down wonderingly at them, one largish fellow holding back the bough above his head in a singularly human way, while his face looked puzzled as well as annoyed.

"Like a young savage Indian more than an animal," said Shaddy softly, as he prepared to shoot. "Now I wonder whether I can bring him down."

"Don't shoot at it, Shaddy!" said Rob, laying his hand upon his guide's arm.

"Must, my lad. Can't afford to be particular. There, don't you look if you don't like it! Now then!"

He raised the bow, and, after the fashion off our forefathers, drew the arrow right to the head, and was about to let it fly after a long and careful aim; but being, as he had intimated, not used to that sort of tackle, he kept his forefinger over the reed arrow till he had drawn it to the head, when, just as he had taken aim and was about to launch it at the unfortunate monkey, the reed bent and snapped in two.

Probably it was the sharp snap made by the arrow which took the monkey's attention, for it suddenly set up a peculiarly loud chattering, which acted as a lead to its companions, for the most part hidden among the boughs, and it required very little stretch of the imagination to believe it to be a burst of derisive laughter at the contemptible nature of the weapons raised against their leader's life.

"Oh, that's the way you take it, is it, my fine fellow?" cried Shaddy, shaking the bow at the monkey. "Here, give us another arrow, Mr Rob, sir; I'll teach him to laugh better than that. I feel as if I can hit him now."

Rob made no attempt to hand the arrow, but Shaddy took one from him, fitted it to the string, raised it to the required height, and was about to draw the reed to its full length, but eased it back directly and left go to rub his head.

"See him now, Mr Rob, sir?"

"No," said Rob, looking carefully upward among the branches; and, to his great satisfaction, not one of the curious little four-handed animals was visible.

"Right!" said Shaddy. "He has saved his skin this time. Here, take the bow again. It may be a bird we see next."

"Hadn't we better go back to the river?" said Rob. "Perhaps I should be able to shoot a duck if I saw one swimming about."

"Daresay you would, my lad," said the old sailor drily, "send the arrow right through one; but what I say is, if the 'gators want a duck killed they'd better kill it themselves."

"I don't understand you," said Rob.

"Understand, my lad? Why, suppose you shoot a duck, it will be on the water, won't it?"

"Of course!"

"Then how are you going to get it off?"

"I forgot that," said Rob. "Impossible, of course."

"Come on, then, and don't let's waste time. We'll keep along here and get some fruit, perhaps, and find birds at the same time."

Their journey through the forest was very short before they were startled by a sudden rush and bound through the undergrowth. So sudden was it that both stopped short listening, but the sound ceased in a few moments.