Through Forest and Stream Part 8

I was off after one of them directly, and, in utter disregard of Uncle d.i.c.k's warning shout, the boy was off after the other, but took some time to find it in the dense growth amongst which it had fallen.

"A beautiful little finch, uncle," I said, as I brought back my prize.

"Lovely!" he cried. "I never saw one like this before. It's a pity I did not stop that fellow. He will have spoiled the other."

But he was wrong, for the boy was just then coming from among the low bushes, carefully bearing the second bird upon the top of his cap, which he held between his hands like a tray.

"Is he all right, sir?" said the bearer excitedly. "I picked him up by his neb and never touched his feathers."

"Yes, in capital order," said Uncle d.i.c.k. "Come, you've begun well!"

The boy's eyes flashed with pleasure, and taking advantage of Uncle d.i.c.k being busy over the birds, he turned to me.

"Then we may stop with you, Master Nat?" he whispered.

"I suppose so, but you must wait and see what my uncle says. I say, though," I cried, "will you keep your face clean if you're allowed to stay?"

"Face? Clean?" he said, pa.s.sing his dirty hand over his dingy countenance. "Ain't it clean now?"

I burst into a roar of laughter, for the poor fellow's face was not only thoroughly grubby, but decorated with two good-sized smudges of tar.

"You mean it's dirty, Mr Nat," he said seriously. "All right; I'll go and scrub it."

The next minute he was down on his knee at the water's edge scooping up a handful of muddy sand and, as he termed it, scrubbing away as if he would take off all the skin, and puffing and blowing the while like a grampus, while the carpenter looked on as much amused as I. But he turned serious directly, and with an earnest look in his eyes he said:

"Thank you for what you said, Mr Nat, sir. You shan't find me ungrateful."

I nodded, and walked away to join my uncle, for I always hated to be talked to like that.

Uncle d.i.c.k had his small case open, with its knife; cotton-wire, thread, and bottle of preserving cream, and when I joined him where he was seated he had already stripped the skin off one of the birds, and was painting the inside cover with the softened paste; while a few minutes later he had turned the skin back over a pad of cotton-wool, so deftly that, as the feathers fell naturally into their places and he tied the legs together, it was hard to believe that there was nothing but plumage, the skin, and a few bones.

"Open the case," he said, and as I did so he laid his new specimen upon a bed of cotton-wool, leaving room for the other bird, and went on skinning in the quick clever way due to long practice.

"It doesn't take those two fellows long to settle down, Nat," he said, as he went on.

"No, uncle," I replied, as I turned my eyes to where the boy had given himself a final sluice and was now drying his face and head pounce-powder fashion. That is to say, after the manner in which people dried up freshly-written letters before the days of blotting-paper. For the boy had moved to a heap of dry sand and with his eyes closely shut was throwing that on his face and over his short hair.

"There's no question of right or wrong," said my uncle quietly. "If we do not take these fellows with us it means leaving them to starve to death in the forest, for they have neither gun, boat, nor fishing tackle."

"But it would be wrong not to take them," I said.

"Yes," replied my uncle drily. Then he was silent for a few minutes while he turned back the skin from the bird's wing joints, and all at once made me look at him wonderingly, for he said "Bill!" with the handle of the knife in his teeth.

"What about Bill?" I said.

"Bill--Cross," continued my uncle. "What's the other's name?"

"Boy," I said, laughing. "I never heard him called anything else.

Hadn't we better call the carpenter Man?"

"It would be just as reasonable," said my uncle. "Ask the boy his name."

By this time our new acquisition was dry, and I stared at him, for he seemed to be someone else as he dusted off the last of the sand.

It was not merely that he had got rid of the dirt and reduced the tar smudges, but that something within was lighting up his whole face in a pleasant, hearty grin as he looked up at me brightly in a way I had never seen before.

"Is my face better, Mr Nat?" he said.

"Yes," I said, "ever so much; and you must keep it so."

"Oh, yes," he said seriously; "I will now. It was no good before."

"What's your name?" I said.

He showed his white teeth.

"Name? They always called me Boy on board," he replied.

"Yes, but you've got a name like anyone else," I said.

"Oh, yes, sir," he replied, wrinkling up his forehead as if thinking deeply; "I've got a name somewheres, but I've never seemed to want it.

Got most knocked out of me. It's Peter, I know; but--I say, Bill Cross," he cried sharply, "what's my name?"

The carpenter smiled grimly, and gave me a sharp look as much as to say, "Wait a minute and you shall see me draw him out."

"Name, my lad," he said. "Here, I say, you haven't gone and knocked your direction off your knowledge box, have you?"

"I dunno," said the boy, staring. "I can't 'member it."

"Where was it stuck on--your back?"

"Nay, it was in my head if it was anywhere. Gahn! You're laughing at me. Here! I know, Mr Nat; it's Horn--Peter Horn. That's it."

"Well, you are a thick-skulled one, Pete, not to know your own name."

"Yes," replied the boy thoughtfully; "it's being knocked about the head so did it, I s'pose. What shall I do now, sir? Light a fire?"

"Yes, at once," I said, for the thought made me know that I was hungry.

"Make it now between those pieces of rock yonder by the boat."

The boy went off eagerly; Cross followed; and I went back, to find my uncle finishing the second skin.

"That's a good beginning, Nat," he said. "Now, then, the next thing is to see about breakfast."

"And after that, uncle?"

"Then we'll be guided by circ.u.mstances, Nat," he replied. "What we have to do is to get into the wildest places we can find where its river, forest, or mountain."