Fire Island Part 11

The mate laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"We've got them both out here," said Drew.

"Both bits, sir?" asked Smith eagerly.

"Both nonsense, my man: both serpents! There were two. Here they are, pretty well dead now."

Oliver forgot all about the sickening blow he had received, and his narrow escape, in his eagerness to examine the reptiles which had caused so much alarm, and his first steps were to ask the men to put a noose around each, and draw them out into the open.

There was a little hesitation, but the men obeyed, and the two long tapering creatures were soon after lying in the sun.

"Hadn't you better come and lie down for a bit?" said the mate.

"Oh, nonsense!" cried Oliver good-humouredly. "Just for a crack on the head? I'm right enough, and I want to take the measurement of these things before they are skinned."

"As you like," said the mate. "Then we may go back."

"That looks as if I were very ungrateful," cried Oliver, "and I'm not, Mr Rimmer, believe me."

"Believe you? Why, of course I do, my lad," cried the mate, clapping him warmly on the shoulder.

"And you don't want me to lie up for a thing like that, do you?"

"I want you to take care of yourself; that's all, sir. There, don't give us another fright. I daresay you'll find plenty of other dangerous places. But what did you say, Mr Panton--that great hole was a vent of the mountain?"

"Yes, undoubtedly."

"What mountain, sir?"

"The one that was in eruption."

"Yes, but we don't see one!"

"We see its effects," said Panton, "and I daresay we shall see it as soon as that line of vapour begins to clear away."

He pointed to the long misty bank in the distance, which completely shut off the view beyond the stretch of forest to the northward.

"Well then, gentlemen, as I have a great deal to do on board, I suppose I may leave you?"

"Unless you'd like to stop and help skin Lane's snakes?"

"Not I," said the mate merrily. "There, don't get into any more trouble, please."

"We'll try not," said Panton; and after the men had neatly coiled up the lines, they went back with the mate, all but Billy Wriggs, who offered to stop and help skin the snakes.

"You don't mean it, do you, Billy?" whispered Smith. "Thought you was too skeered?"

"So I am, mate; but I want to be long o' you to see their games. It's unnatural like to be doin' dooty aboard a wessel as ain't in the water."

"But you won't touch one of they sarpents?"

"Well, I don't want to, mate; but it's all in yer day's work, yer know.

I thought you said it was only one in two halves?"

"So I did, mate--so I did--and so it ought to ha' been, 'cording to my ideas, and the way I let go at it with a haxe. But there, one never knows, and it was in the dark now, warn't it?"

"Seventeen feet, five inches," said Oliver, just then, as he wound up his measuring tape, "and sixteen feet, four--extreme lengths," as Panton entered the sizes in Oliver's notebook for him.

"Hark at that now!" said Billy Wriggs in a hoa.r.s.e whisper. "Why, I should ha' said as they was a hundred foot long apiece at least."

"And, arter all, they ain't much bigger than a couple o' worms."

Five minutes later the two men were hard at work skinning the reptiles; the example set by Oliver in handling them shaming both into mastering the repugnance they felt, and first one skin and then the other was stretched over the limb of a tree to dry; while the bodies were dragged to the cavernous chasm, and tossed down "to cook," as Smith put it.

Meanwhile Drew had been busy examining the trees and plants around; and Panton had been fascinated, as it were, by the place, picking up fragments of stone and sulphur-incrusted lava--when he was not listening to a low hissing, gurgling sound, which told plainly enough that volcanic action was still in progress, somewhere in the depths below.

"There!" cried Oliver. "I'm ready. Where next?"

"Are you fit to go on?" asked Drew.

"Fit? Yes. Let's get to a pool and have a wash, and then I'm ready for anything."

"Some water over yonder, sir," said Smith, pointing to where the sun flashed from a spot beyond the trees.

"Then let's get to it," said Oliver. "What do you say to exploring onward toward the mist bank?"

"I say yes, and let's go through it," cried Panton. "I want to look at the mountain. What's the matter, Smith? See anything?"

The man held up his hand.

"Hinjun, sir," he whispered.

"Eh! Where?" cried Drew, c.o.c.king his piece.

"Just yonder, sir, past that lot of blocks like an old stone yard; I see one o' their heads peeping over, and they've got a fire, cooking something, I should say, for--phew! they can't want it to warm themselves, for it's hot enough without."

They looked in the direction pointed out, and there, plainly enough, was the light, fine, corkscrew-like wreath of a pale blue smoke, rising slowly up beyond quite a wilderness of coral rock, swept there by the earthquake wave.

CHAPTER SIX.

HOT SPRINGS.

"Tommy Smith, old matey," whispered Wriggs, "why warn't you and me born different?"

"That 'ere's a question for your G.o.dfathers and G.o.dmothers, Billy, as stood sponsors for you when you was born. But what d'yer mean?"

"Why, so as to be like these here gents and have plenty o' money to spend in tools o' all kinds."