A Day in a Jungle Laboratory
I
‘OH, heavens! whose tongue is this?’
‘It’s Gilbert’s.’
‘Well, it ’s covered with ants. Come and chloroform it.’
‘Be there in a minute. Wait till I catch this louse.’
‘And when you come, bring over that leg of yours, and I ’ll do it.’
‘All right. Has anyone written to thank the major for the quart of queens he sent us?’
‘Yes, I did, and I asked him to send us some soldiers next time.’
(Sudden voice from a far corner) ‘Now, little dear, frog out your eye!’
No, reader, these are not remarks overheard in a lunatic asylum. Their proper and official title would be ‘Conversation in a Jungle Laboratory.’
Picture a long, narrow, raftered room, — half room, half verandah, — open on three sides to a view of broad waters and clumps of bamboo. Walking straight down this room, I pass through the laboratory into the library; two paces to the right, and I am in the dining-room, all without the exertion of opening and closing doors; for the partitions that divide working-, reading-, and dining-rooms are like the equator, in that they are purely imaginary lines, but their limits are strictly observed. There is an intricate system of closely packed shelves and tables, each one heaped high with a strange assortment of objects, and heads bending over them, absorbed in contemplation of many weird and marvelous things.
This laboratory is that of the Tropical Research Station of the New York Zoölogical Society, and the heads are those of the Lucky Seven who are at present established in this picturesque workshop in the interior of British Guiana. The outward and visible signs of its inward and scientific grace are a low, weather-beaten bungalow and a row of tents, in a triangular clearing bounded on two sides by broad rivers, and on the third by some hundreds or thousands of miles of practically unexplored South American jungle. We, tiny atoms clinging to the edge of this great wilderness, dip what we can from its inexhaustible supplies of wonder and mystery, and lament because the days are so short, and we so inadequately furnished with hands and strength and time.
Much has been said of the languor and peace of the tropics, and I had expected to have many long and sleepy hours in which to read and meditate and invite my soul. But from the moment when we spring more or less eagerly from our army cots, for a sunrise swim, till the hour, some time before midnight, when these cots squeakingly receive our exhausted frames again, our days are an unceasing and unsuccessful battle with the demon, Time; and here the unexpected happens with positively monotonous regularity.
We do not even wake in an ordinary manner. Lying half asleep in my tent the other morning, looking out over the misty river, and wondering if the gray light were dawn or moon, I was suddenly conscious of a deep, rumbling vibration, everywhere and nowhere; my cot swayed a little, then more and more, till it was shaking heartily from side to side. Instantly the sleeping jungle was as wide-awake as myself. With a sudden roar, a chorus of howling monkeys broke into concerted protest. Everywhere birds fluttered and cried out. For perhaps a minute came the vocal and physical response of animal life to the sound and movement of the earth; then the vibration diminished and ceased, and the rumble died away in a long, muttering roll like distant thunder. And I thought how pleasant it was, after humdrum New York wakenings to the sound of alarm clock or telephone bell, to be roused by a friendly earthquake giving one a gentle shake, as if to say, ‘Come, get up! There’s a lot to see to-day!’
While dressing, I heard some little commotion in the abode of the Budding Ornithologist, two tents away. Presently, when the black house-boy summoned us to breakfast by earnest bangings on a big iron triangle, I stopped in neighborly fashion on my way to the bungalow, to inquire the cause of the disturbance. A gory spectacle confronted me. Little pools of blood dotted the tent-floor, while the cot looked like the scene of a recent murder. Instead of a corpse stretched there, however, a very much alive youth was sitting on the edge, bandaging both feet, and rather pleasantly excited by his first encounter with vampire bats. It did not for a moment delay his response to the breakfast call.
As I said before, we are seven: the Director, the Camera-Man, — no, this is not a moving-picture company; let us call him the Photographer, — the Artist, the Other Artist, the Grasshopterist, and the Budding Ornithologist. I am the Supercargo: I don’t know what it means, but it has an unnecessary sound that seems, amid the competence with which I am surrounded, to fit me very well. The enumeration of the things the Photographer has at his finger-ends would read like an index to a work on entomology; while the Director can shoot a bird on the wing, make a new discovery in some form of microscopic life, chin himself twenty times running, catch an anaconda, and write a charming essay, all in the course of a casual morning.
Breakfast was enlivened by a hot argument over vampires and their methods of operation. This bat had behaved in a most unconventional manner. Not only had he failed to seal antiseptically the wounds he made, but the wounds themselves were all wrong, speaking impartially and not from the point of view of the victim. Instead of being neat punctures, hardly perceptible once the vampire had finished his grisly meal, these were long, oval gouges. There was much speculation as to whether this was an indication of a new species of bat, and interested plans were made to capture one the following night. A practically unanimous opinion prevailed that the first victim should expose himself again as bait, the one dissenting voice being that of the prospective bait. He painted a heart-rending picture of his enfeebled condition after being martyred to Science; and this led to an argument as to the probable amount of harm that could be caused to the human frame by vampires and their tricky little ways. The Director put an extinguisher on this discussion by remarking coldly that one session with a vampire bat would probably cause as much harm as one cigarette; whereat the cigarette smokers present were abashed and subsided.
II
Directly after breakfast each morning I go out to feed the menagerie. This duty has two aspects, for, besides caring for the live specimens in cages, I also plan and order meals for the human members of our small colony. I take the latter task lightly and hardheartedly; and when the Budding Ornithologist regards the chief dish mournfully and remarks that he never eats onions, I can answer coldly and without a pang, ‘No one will compel you.’ But it is a very different story when attempting to cater to the big iguanas, those brilliant green lizards with throat-pouches mottled in gorgeous shades of pink and yellow and blue, and with serrated ridges down their spines, which make them look like miniatures of some antediluvian epoch. No one can tell me definitely what they eat. The Director, appealed to for information, says lightly, ‘ Iguanas? Oh, they’re vegetarian’; and appears to think the matter is settled. The vegetable kingdom is a large one. Day after day passes while I anxiously proffer samples of every sort of leaf, berry, or fruit that grows within half a mile of us. The iguanas steadfastly refuse all forms of nourishment, while I age visibly. I am found at odd hours leaning over their cage, adjuring them to indicate some preference. They respond only by steady, baleful glares, and occasional vicious lashes of long, powerful tails. At last, one of them, broken in spirit by captivity and his long fast, gives up the hunger-strike and eats a bit of banana; I detect him in the very act and much rejoicing ensues. From then on, both iguanas eat largely of all sorts of things hitherto refused.
The monkey’s cage represents motion at its nearest approach to perpetuity, and the turtles’ pen is the opposite extreme. We have only one monkey at present — a slim-bodied little gray chap, with big eyes in a melancholy face, and an effect of elbow-length chamois gloves given by the yellow hair that covers half his legs. He is a timid beast, but is gradually becoming tame enough to leap upon my hand for a moment to snatch some proffered delicacy. This morning he held his saucer of oatmeal firmly between both hands, and then, in sudden fear lest I repent of my generosity and prove ‘Indian giver,’ he made doubly sure of his breakfast by grasping the saucer with one hind foot as well. Thus deprived of his balance, he sat down abruptly, but continued his meal, pausing after every mouthful of the luscious mass to look at me anxiously over the edge of the dish.
The turtles’ pen is called the Officers’ Mess. There are in it the captain, major, colonel, general, and field marshal, graded according to size. As is usually the case in life, the extremes of the social scale are more amusing than the middle strata. The captain has a way with him, partly on account of his tiny proportions; the field marshal is most intelligent, as befits his rank; and when I open the cage and call to him, he comes forth with the impressive quavering deliberation of the Benevolent Old Man of melodrama, and, standing high on his crooked legs, totters majestically toward the crust of bread that he knows will be the reward of his pilgrimage.
As I went the rounds of the cages, distributing all manner of strange provender to a variety of reptiles, amphibians, birds, fish, and insects, I glanced into the glass case where a row of chrysalids hung from a stick, and others lay half buried in the earth, each one with a metal tag bearing its identification number. One look and I ran shrieking into the laboratory.
‘Quick! the biggest Sphinx is hatching!’
The Photographer dropped his dissection of a fish, the Director sprang up from his writing, the Budding Ornithologist deserted the bird’s tongue he was drawing under the microscope, the Grasshopterist desisted from the preparation of a formalin bath for one of his little pets, the Artist abandoned her tree-frog, and the Other Artist her baby bird. There was a hubbub of dragging out the motion-picture camera, arranging the black-velvet background, adjusting and focusing; while over all, the voice of the Director rang out in anguish, ‘The matches! Who has the MATCHES?’
The stage prepared, the principal actor was brought on; magnesium ribbon, lighted and paid out as it burned, cast a dazzling white light over the miracle of a moth’s emergence from the chrysalid. There was an Egyptian suggestion about this strangely decorated chrysalid of orange and black; and the appearance of its gorgeous inhabitant was as startling as it would be to watch a mummy-case open, and to see an archangel step out. When the moth was at last spread out in his full glory of bronze and yellow and black, broad wings still trembling as the last of the moisture of his long entombment dried, a drop of chloroform made of him a perfect specimen, with not one of his minute scales marred by wind or weather. The concluding notes of his life history were set down beside the description of his previous caterpillar incarnation, and once more calm descended on the laboratory as we returned to our various tasks.
I created a momentary diversion by announcing in discouraged tones, ‘MacDuff is at it again!’ which elicited only a few bored groans. MacDuff is a weirdly camouflaged mantis, so named because through storm and stress, through rainy season and dry, she lays on, and on, and on. Rows of yellow, cornucopia-like egg-cases bear witness to her incurably maternal nature.
Scraps of conversation came to me as I sat making alcoholic specimens of various parts of a bird’s anatomy — sentences which, lacking context and background, sounded as wild as those of my introduction. Hear now their interpretation: the Budding Ornithologist had temporarily left his drawing of a bird’s tongue, and had gone out to investigate a bird’s nest; and the dissection, of which he was making a diagram, had been scented afar off by a horde of minute red ants. The Other Artist, working over the next microscope, announced the fact and called the Director to the rescue. His answer, so reminiscent of trench anecdotes, meant only that he was busily burrowing through the thick feathers of a tinamou, searching for parasites, of which he is making a study. The Other Artist requested him, when he had finished stalking his prey, to bring her a leg of this same tinamou, so that she might make the diagram of it for which he had been clamoring. As for the quart of queens, which next made their apparently inexplicable appearance in the conversation, they were a royal gift from a friendly English planter, who lives four miles down-river. He privately regards us as a collection of pleasant lunatics; but, entertaining only kindly feelings toward our harmlessness, he contributes now and then something ensnared on his plantation, which he thinks might be interesting to our peculiar minds. A large jar, almost filled with a seething mass of winged queen ants, had been the latest gift from this source, and I had written to thank him and to ask for some soldier ants from the same nest, in order to complete the identification of the species.
Behind me, in the corner from which came the sudden voice last quoted, sits the Artist, struggling to paint the portrait of a gigantic bright-green treefrog. I use the word struggling, not in disparagement of her artistic ability, but because of the cruel and unusual difficulties with which she must contend. The most temperamental prima donna could not prove a more trying subject, though this Artist has a choice of only two moods from her model. He sits on her palm, with strange, long, vacuum-cupped fingers wrapped round her hand in a clutch that suggests determined affection. She is trying to paint his eyes, wonderfully and intricately patterned with brown and gold; and here enter the unusual difficulties. Let us say that the mood in which freedom seems to him a good thing, worth fighting for, comes upon him; while he turns the project of escape over in his mind, his eyes protrude further and further, as if he were more and more astonished by the cleverness of his idea. The phrase ‘to frog out the eyes’ has become a popular one in our select jungle circle. Now the Artist paints with despairing speed, for she knows all too well what his next move will be — a violent and sudden plunge at an incalculable angle, and the soft, unresisting slip of a flabby body through her fingers. When his ambition is thwarted, his other mood overtakes him, and he becomes a sulky cynic. Then he is motionless, and withdraws his consciousness to some inner haven, where artists do not break through and paint — but he also withdraws his eyes to some mysterious recess of his anatomy! Then is the Artist heard, with imploring voice, adjuring him to frog out his eye, that it may be immortalized.
III
It was still early morning when from down-river was heard the regular beat of many paddles keeping time to a chorus of men’s voices. Without looking up, some one remarked, ‘More convicts,’ and the Director commented briefly, ‘Good. More trail.’ From His Majesty’s penal settlement, the boatload of more-or-less-black prisoners, in more-or-less-white garb, was approaching, loaned to us for the day by the head of the prison. This was the third or fourth time that gangs had been sent up; and beautifully wide, clear trails, slashed through the jungle behind us, are the results of their work. There is considerable competition among them to be included in such ‘bush parties,’ for they have rather the character of a picnic as a change from prison routine. Also, the free show that we and our strange ways afford them must be attractive, and they are fairly sure of a gift of cigarettes after the day’s work.
With a ringing shout at the end of a verse of their chanty, the boat grounded on the sandy beach before the laboratory, and ten burly convicts stepped out into the shallow water. They were in charge of one black warder, who perspired in the uncomfortable glory of dark-blue uniform, sun-helmet, and boots. To preserve these symbols of authority, he was tenderly lifted ashore in the arms of two of his charges. Leading the file of cheerful criminals up the steep bank, he presented himself for instructions.
The last man balanced on his head a square wooden box; he caught my eye over the warder’s shoulder, and with a preternaturally solemn face, significantly made with two fingers the gesture of one who removes a cigarette from his lips. Two of the others carried kettles and packages, so that presently they might have some mysterious mess cooking over a fire in the compound, for their eleven-o’clock breakfast.
With some care, my would-be smoker deposited his burden on the ground, and the warder ceremoniously announced ‘a gift brought to de Professor.’ The Director-Professor took one look under the cautiously lifted lid, and again there was agitation and scurrying. The motion-picture camera was hastily dragged out into the compound, to record the looks and manners of a rainbow boa — a huge red constrictor — which gleamed in the sunlight with unbelievable prismatic hues. Alas, that the movies cannot show the sheen of color that plays over those shifting coils! The big snake was carefully placed on the bare ground of the compound, and with leaps and shouts and gestures the Director endeavored to make him register some reptilian emotion. Surely never before was there an actor so anxious to give up the centre of the stage! His one idea was to seek the decent obscurity of private life; and it required the earnest efforts of four people, armed with brooms, sticks, and butterfly-nets, to keep him in the camera’s focus.
All this was watched from a respectful distance by a circle of stupefied convicts, watching our wild antics with uncomprehending wonder. When the pictures were taken, the next problem was to return the boa to confinement : watching for a favorable opportunity, the Director pounced upon the snake, seizing it with one hand just behind the head, to avoid its nonvenomous, but extremely vigorous bite, and grasping it with the other hand two-thirds of the way down the body, to prevent it from coiling. The head-hold was successful, but the body slipped from his left hand, and like a flash the boa whipped two coils round the man’s arm, lashed the rest of its body and tail upward, diagonally binding those coils, and began to squeeze.
‘Great!’ shouted the Photographer; ‘Hold it!’
So the Director held it, though whether he was holding it, or it was holding him, was a question open to argument. The veins on the hand grasping the snake’s head swelled and darkened, while the arm above the living tourniquet turned to a lovely pallor, and the camera ground on. When the hand had reached a satisfactory shade of livid purple, the grinding stopped without the formality of calling, ‘Cut,’ and the Photographer helped to pry off the bands of muscle — a task which took more force than seemed possible. Half an hour later the Director’s arm had lost some of its morgue-like hue, but two stripes across his forearm showed where the scaly folds had bruised the flesh. It is easy to imagine the collapse of a small animal’s flesh and bone under the merciless, unhurried squeeze of such a snake, on dinner bent.
The Artist had danced round this proceeding, gleeful at the prospect of painting the reptile’s portrait. To paraphrase the side-show barker’s inducement to step up and pay your dime, ‘She paints ’em alive’; and she was actually looking forward to the day when she would hold this prismatically scaled head in her hand, and, with the rest of the writhing body more or less firmly tied into a cloth bag, lovingly reproduce its features.
Mentally quoting the remark of the old lady who kissed the cow, I left the enthusiastic one leaning over the cage in which the boa had been placed, and went through the bungalow to the servants’ quarters, to find Bertie. Bertie is the dependable, the indispensable, the inimitable. Every time I look at his enormous black hands, I think of one of O. Henry’s characters, who is described as having hands that Armour and Company would have been wild about. But with those great hands Bertie can skin a hummingbird and scarcely ruffle one of its minute feathers.
At Kartabo we have no silken bellrope at which to tug, nor silver bell to tinkle; when we want service, we shout, or even shriek, for servitors. So I stood at the back door of the laboratory and lifted up my voice for Bertie. Presently he came across the compound, from the crazy shack where the servants sleep.
Having told Bertie to go out with the convicts and show the warder where we wanted the new trail cut, I noticed that he was limping as he turned away. He looked very serious as he replied to my question, ‘Dr. Blair, he operate on me last night, ma’am.’ The love of ‘stringing the tenderfoot’ knows no geographical limits. I was hearing for the first time the Creole nickname for the vampire bat, named after a Demerara doctor of years ago. Dr. Blair was of the good old school that believed in blood-letting as treatment for chilblains, smallpox, and all diseases between; and as ‘Colony Dr. Blair,’ the thirsty little bat will keep his name in the mouths of men for many years to come. Surely a quaint route by which to arrive at fame — perhaps even immortality!
IV
By the time I returned to the laboratory, two dugouts had come downriver, bringing the Indian hunters who are subsidized to keep our table supplied with fresh meat, and to bring in specimens. Their wobbly craft are quite the unsteadiest things afloat, even to one accustomed to a keelless canvas canoe; but the Indians stand up, change places, and walk the length of one of the sliding, tipping affairs, with cheerful unconcern.
They are a short people, these Guiana Indians, stockily built, with tiny hands and feet, and a curiously Oriental cast of countenance. Their almost daily arrival is as thrilling as Christmas morning, for there is no prophesying what they may bring of interest and excitement. We crowd around to see what will be produced from bags or bottles, and a varying chorus of exclamations greets each surprise package. The whole transaction must —• to the Indians — partake of the nature of a fantastic dream. Shooting for food is the only comprehensible part of the business. Why a lot of grown men and women should go into ecstasies of excitement over an insect or a bird’s egg is a mystery; and when the Director, with a cry of joy, pounces upon a tiny parasite lurking in the thick plumage of some jungle bird, the expressions on the faces of our aboriginal Nimrods are really worth seeing.
Little is known of the history of these Akawai Indians. Supposed to be an offshoot of the Caribs, that fierce and cannabalistic tribe whose name recalls tales of buccaneers on the Spanish Main, these modern descendants seem placid and friendly. But friendliness is not a good word to describe their passive attitude toward friendly advances. Nonresistant amiability expresses it better. They are rapidly disappearing, fading away in the mysterious fashion of aboriginal peoples when brought in contact with the ruthless, dominant strains of stronger races. Tuberculosis, that companion spirit of the white man, has fastened on the scattered Indian population, and is thinning it with great rapidity. There are deserted benabs and abandoned cassava clearings, where the vigilant wilderness has lost no time in laying reclaiming fingers on walls and furrows, and the progress of ‘letting in the jungle’ is discernible almost hour by hour.
To-day my housekeeping eye glittered at the sight of a big peccary carried to the kitchen on a bare brown back, and a brace of delicious game birds hung round the peccary’s neck with the same ingenious fastenings of rope-like bark that were used to lash together the feet of the wild pig. But my sordid satisfaction at seeing so many good meals in the raw was quite eclipsed by the scientific excitement over a tiny reptile that was among the specimens presently produced. This was a lizard, utterly snake-like in appearance until his four minute feet were discovered, on legs so rudimentary as to be almost invisible. So rare a thing as this — apparently a link between lizard and serpent — must be recorded in pictures; so once more the movie camera was set up.
There were many birds, too, in the Indians’ bags, and these had to be identified, described, measured, skinned, dissected, and catalogued. Before this task was finished, it was time for luncheon; and directly after the meal there was an expedition into the jungle for bats. Not that we need go that far afield if we desire merely bats, generically speaking. They patter and squeak overhead in the laboratory day and night, and at dusk they toboggan down the slope between ceiling-paper and roof, and shoot out into the twilight with a smooth rush. These are only ordinary house-bats, however, and there are many rare species to be captured and classified.
A few days before, I had chanced to find a miniature cave under an overhanging bank, where two bats seemed to have established themselves; but as I am not over proficient with either rifle or net, I had been unable to bring one back, dead or alive. This time, accompanied by one skilled in the use of both implements, we returned with the quick and the dead, having thoroughly devastated the happy home under the embankment. Mr. was neatly shot, while Mrs. flopped and struggled in the enveloping folds of the net. If her disposition in the home had been as bad as it was in the net, Mr. was surely better dead, for she raged and snarled, and when she could not reach us she bit and tore at her own wings in a perfect frenzy.
The pair proved to be an entirely new species, hitherto unknown to us, with extraordinarily long, thin tongues, apparently designed for the same purpose and on the same plan as the tongue of a hummingbird, which probes deepcalyxed flowers in search of insects. This discovery alone would have made the day noteworthy; but we also brought back a huge whip-scorpion, which measured a foot across its sprawling legs, and an enormous blind burrowing snake, very pale buff in color, and the largest of its kind that has ever been seen here. In addition, we had started a red deer, and had observed, and been observed by, two red howlers, the big monkeys of this jungle, whose deep-toned booming snarls are likely to be heard in thrilling chorus at any hour of the day or night.
The rest of the day was spent in feverish activity, squeezing every possible drop of information from the day’s specimens, before they should die, or dry, or decay. At high tide we all stopped long enough for a swim in the smooth water that was now reflecting sunset colors from tumbled cloudbanks. Our river is far from being the sluggish tropical stream of one’s imagination. Under the lash of the trade winds, it often gets up a quite respectable surf; and any person subject to mal de mer has a very poor time if caught out in a small boat in a storm.
When we came back into the compound, we discovered that, during our brief absence, the premises had been invaded by army ants. Hordes of them had appeared from nowhere, and were spreading in an ever-widening fan, from the river bank almost to the bungalow. We hurried to move our live creatures to places of safety, as otherwise, caged and helpless, they would have been killed by these merciless little carnivores. The lengthening sticks of their fan seemed to be creeping forward toward our tents, and the divergence of the lines was bringing the outermost ones perilously close to the laboratory. On the whole, it looked like a bad night, for there is no combating the army ant. It would be as wise to argue the right of way with a cyclone or a tidal wave. If the army ants discovered our abode, we should step courteously aside while they swept through it; and after the ravening swarms had passed on to fresh fields, we should humbly return, to find, as a reward for our discretion, that the premises had been cleaned of tarantulas, roaches, and every other creeping thing. So we meekly waited for the ants’ decision, in the meantime walking softly like Agag, stepping high, and taking care not to stand still long in one spot. Like policemen at an open-air Socialist meeting, ‘Keep moving’ was our motto for the evening. However, in an hour the hurrying swarms had disappeared as suddenly, as completely, as they had come, all impelled by a simultaneous instinct or obeying a mysterious command; and we gratefully decided that we might sleep in peace.
At dusk I went out to feed some of the nocturnal creatures, and was somewhat startled when two figures rose up before me, muttering something quite unintelligible in mellow negro voices. At last I made out that they wanted to see ‘de Chief.’ The Director also answers to calls for ‘de Professor’ or ‘de Doctor.’ The men were gold-diggers on their way to the back country above us. There is at present a tropical Klondike rush into the interior some eighty or a hundred miles away, where gold and diamonds have been discovered. Fortunately for our peace, we are on the opposite side of the river from most of the diggings, and the traffic up to them is chiefly by water. There is one trail, however, that runs back from the laboratory seventy miles into the jungle, in the general direction of the gold fields, and occasional parties of prospectors, too poor to pay for boathire, choose this route for their hopeful tramp toward possible wealth; or a disappointed fortune-hunter, whose money and supplies have been exhausted, wanders down the trail to seek employment — but only till he can save enough for another outfit. As soon as he can buy a few pints of rice and some powder and shot, he is off to Golconda again.
Such was the brief tale of these two negroes. They were both middle-aged men, in ragged cotton shirts, which they wore as a Chinaman wears his blouse, hanging outside the remains of tattered cotton trousers. One had a long, dejected moustache, which drooped down almost to his chest, giving him a look of utter misery. The other had a short, grizzled beard, which grew under his chin, but left his lips bare — a sort of decoration that I have heard referred to as ‘Galway sluggers.’ This, combined with a very long upper lip, made him look like a vaudeville Irishman in burnt cork. They had been ‘top-side Mazaruni’ some weeks before, but had returned to Bartica, the nearest settlement, to work for more supplies; and now they were starting back on their long tramp to the gold fields. I asked the depressed-looking one if they had found gold the last time. With an optimism that belied his moustache he replied, ‘No, ma’am, last time we find nothing, but next time surely we find gold, perhaps precious stones also.’ That willo’-the-wisp, Next-Time — the only beacon for prospector, gambler, or speculator!
They wanted to see ‘de Chief’ because they had heard that he had remedies for all sorts of bush perils — particularly fever and snake-bite. He was generous with quinine; but an antidote for snake-bite was another matter. He has a powerful serum for such emergencies, but it would be quite impossible to make its complicated use intelligible to men like these, even if the quantity were not limited. So, heartless as it seemed, the snake-bite remedy was refused them. As a matter of fact, their chances of being bitten by a venomous snake were about as great as those of being struck by lightning.
When they had been supplied with pills and directions for taking them, which they doubtless ignored, what was probably the real object of their visit was forthcoming. Bartica, the boom town of the gold-rush, had been bought out of everything in the way of ammunition, and these two wanted shells, so that they might have fresh meat on their journey. They did not offer to buy them. They merely stated their needs and waited to see what the Director proposed to do about it.
This was to him an old game. He began by being utterly confounded at their dreaming that we had any shells to spare. He explained how difficult it was to get powder and shot. He pictured our distress if, being no longer able to provide the Indian hunters with the means of getting game for us, we should be compelled to subsist on canned corned beef. They regarded him patiently and waited for the climax which they knew was coming. When at last he reached the point, ‘Well, if I give you shells, what are you going to do for me?’ they grinned and wriggled, and in so doing somehow managed to convey the answer, ‘Whatever you want.’ The bargain, when finally completed, was that, in return for half-a-dozen shells, they should keep their eyes open for frogs and snakes while in the bush, and bring back, on their next trip down-river, any that they might capture. They were supplied with a bottle of alcohol and formalin, for the preservation of these possible specimens, and given a parting injunction not to drink its contents either before or after using for this scientific purpose. Then permission was asked and granted for them to sling their hammocks for this one night under the alleged shelter of the servants’ quarters, and to cook their rice over the rekindled embers of the convicts’ fire. The next morning, as we sat at breakfast, they passed round the bungalow and struck into the Puruni trail, saluting us gravely from beneath the packs balanced on their heads.
The convicts had finished their trailcutting and returned to the penal settlement long ago; and now the tenor voice of our irrepressible cook was lifted up in song as he prepared our dinner. His singing is far from bad, and his cooking is better. We presently sat down to a meal that could not be bettered at the Ritz. In fact, you could not get it at the Ritz. Imagine saying to the purse-proud waiter, ‘Monkey cutlets and boiled papaws’! Let no sensitive soul shudder at the idea of such food. Monkey is delicious meat; and though we are all convinced of the truth of the doctrine of evolution, we feel no anticannibalistic scruples.
Later, we watched, through the arching bamboos, the moon rise above the jungle across the mile-wide river; and when it had risen so high that its silver track no longer trembled on the waves, I went back into the jungle a little way, alone. The flooding white light accentuated the beauty of every foot of the way. The night was so lovely and so breathlessly quiet that it seemed sacrilege to break the stillness by a crunching footstep.
I moved along very slowly, and as quietly as my clumsy human ways would permit, pausing after every few steps to listen and gaze and feel the perfection of it all. Occasionally a ‘who-are-you,’ that persistently curious cousin to the whippoorwill, would utter his challenging call and, swooping noiselessly past my head, would alight in the trail, keeping an even distance between us by springing along in a series of short, sidewise flights, and murmuring ‘What! What!’ in low, earnest tones.
Now and then a rustling scamper showed that I had disturbed some little creature of the night; and once there came a sudden loud grunt and a frantic galloping through the thickets. As I stood quietly, there was a movement close beside me, which had a sound different from the others. I crouched to peer under the low bushes that masked the sides of the cleared trail, and there, only a few feet away, was an ocelot, also crouching, also peering. He remained quite motionless, and so did I. I wish I could flatter myself that he felt one half of my excited interest and admiration; but I fear that his only sensation was that of curiosity.
We gazed thoughtfully at each other for some moments, and at last I cautiously rose and retreated in good order, feeling this the perfect climax to a thrilling day.