Bunyip Land Part 24

"We shall not leave you alone, Penny," said the doctor, smiling. "It would not be fair."

So we stayed with him till day broke, and not having heard the slightest sound to intimate the neighbourhood of danger, and the dog lying quite still and content by his master, the doctor and I went to get a couple of hours' rest, just as the forest glades were beginning to echo with the screaming of birds of the parrot family, Jimmy bending over me and poking me with the b.u.t.t end of his spear, almost directly, so it seemed to me, that I had lain down.

"Jimmy hungry," he said; "gimmy damper--brackfa.s.s. Come long."

"Did you hear the bunyip any more, Jimmy?" I said, yawning.

"No. Bunyip go sleep all a morning--all a day! Come a night.

How-wow!"

He put his head on one side and gave so marvellous an imitation of the terrible cries I had heard during the night that I felt sure he must know the creature.

"What is it makes that noise, Jimmy?" I said eagerly.

"Bunyip--big ugly fellow bunyip!" he exclaimed; and I felt so cross and annoyed with his eternal bunyip that I was ready to kick him; but I refrained, and went instead to the fire, where the doctor was waiting breakfast, after sending Jimmy to wake me up.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

HOW JACK PENNY WAS PERSECUTED BY PIGS.

I have often thought since what a wild journey ours was, and how ignorant we must have been to plunge recklessly and in such a haphazard way into a country that, though an island, is a long way on towards being large enough to be called a continent.

Still we made the venture, and somehow as soon as a peril was pa.s.sed we all looked upon it as belonging to yesterday, and troubled ourselves about it no more.

I had risen on the morning after our nocturnal adventure feeling despondent and sleepy; but the bright suns.h.i.+ne and the tempting odour of roasting bird stuck on a stick close to the flame, soon made me forget the troubles of the night, and an hour later, with every one in the best of spirits, we made a fresh start, keeping near the river, but beneath the shade of the trees, for the sun seemed to be showering down burning arrows, and wherever we had to journey across the open the heat was intense.

In the shady parts the green of the undergrowth looked delicate and pale, but in the suns.h.i.+ne it was of the most vivid green; and bathing in it, as it were, flies and beetles hummed and buzzed, and beat their gauzy wings, so that they seemed invisible, while wherever there was a bare patch of stony or rocky earth lizards were hurrying in and out, and now and then a drab-looking little serpent lay twisted up into a knot.

The bearers stepped along lightly enough beneath their loads, and I observed that they never looked to right or left, or seemed to admire anything before them, their eyes being always fixed upon the earth where they were about to plant their feet.

Ti-hi in particular tried to warn me to be on the look-out, pointing over and over again to the spade-headed little serpents we saw now and then gliding in amongst the gra.s.s.

"Killum," said Jimmy upon one of these occasions, and he suited the word to the action by striking one of these little reptiles with his spear and breaking its back. After this he spat viciously at the little creature, picking it up by its tail and jerking it right away amongst the trees.

"No killum kill all a body," said Jimmy nodding; and he went through a sort of pantomime, showing the consequences of being bitten by a viper, beginning with drowsiness, continuing through violent sickness, which it seemed was followed by a fall upon the earth, a few kicks and struggles, and lastly by death, for the black ended his performance by stretching himself out stiffly and closing his eyes, saying:

"Jimmy dead; black fellow dig big hole and put um in de ground. Poor old Jimmy!"

Then he jumped up and laughed, saying: "Killum all um snake! No good!

No!"

"I say, Joe Carstairs," said Jack Penny, who had watched the performance with a good deal of interest; "don't that chap ever get tired?"

"Oh yes; and goes to sleep every time he gets a chance," I said.

"Yes! but don't his back ache? Mine does, horrid, every day, without banging about like that;" and as if he felt his trouble then Jack Penny turned his rueful-looking boy's face to me and began softly rubbing his long man's back just across the loins.

It was very funny, too, when Jack was speaking earnestly. In an ordinary conversation he would go on drawl, drawl, drawl in a ba.s.s voice; but whenever he grew excited he began to squeak and talk in a high-pitched treble like a boy, till he noticed it himself, and then he would begin to growl again in almost an angry tone; and this was the case now.

"Here, you're laughing!" he said savagely. "I can't help being tall and thin, and having a gruff voice like a man, when I'm only a boy. I don't try to be big and tall! I grew so. And I don't try to talk gruff."

"Oh yes! you do, Jack," I said.

"Well, p'r'aps I do; but I don't try to talk thin, like I do sometimes."

"I couldn't help laughing, Jack," I said, holding out my hand. "I did not mean to ridicule you."

He gave my hand quite an angry slap and turned away, but only to come back directly.

"Here, I say; I beg your pardon, Joe Carstairs," he said, holding out his hand, which I shook heartily. "I wish I hadn't got such a beastly bad temper. I do try not to show it, but it makes me wild when people laugh at me."

"Well, I won't laugh at you any more, Jack," I said earnestly.

"No, don't; there's a good chap," he said, with the tears in his eyes.

"It's partly why I came away from home, you know. I wanted to come and find the professor, of course, and I like coming for the change; but it's princ.i.p.ally that."

"Princ.i.p.ally _that_!" I said. "I don't understand you, Jack."

"Why, I mean about being laughed at! Everybody has always been laughing at me, because I grew so thin and long and weak-looking, and I got tired of it at last, and was precious glad to come out to New Guinea to stop till I had grown thicker. For I said to myself, I don't s'pose the savage chaps will laugh at me, and if they do I can drop on 'em and they won't do it again."

"It must have been unpleasant, Jack," I said.

"It's horrid, old fellow," he said confidentially; "and all the more because you are obliged to laugh at it all when you feel as if you'd like to double 'em up and jump on 'em."

"Well, there, Jack; I give you my word I won't laugh at you again."

"Will you?" cried Jack, with his face beaming, and looking quite pleasant. "Well, that is kind of you. If the doctor wouldn't laugh either I should be as happy as the day's long."

"I'll ask him not to," I said.

"Oh, no; don't do that!" he cried quickly then; "he'd leave off laughing at me just out of pity, and I'd rather he laughed at me than pitied me, you know. Don't ask him not."

"All right!" I said. "I will not."

"I'd rather he laughed at me," said Jack again thoughtfully; "for I like the doctor; he's such a brave chap. I say, Joe Carstairs, I wish I could grow into a big broad-chested brave chap with a great beard, like the doctor."

"So you will some day."

"Tchah!" he cried impatiently. "Look there--there's long thin arms!

There's a pair of legs! And see what a body I've got. I ain't got no looking-gla.s.s here, but last time I looked at myself my head and face looked like a small k.n.o.b on the top of a thin pump."

"You let yourself alone, and don't grumble at your shape," I said st.u.r.dily, and to tell the truth rather surprising myself, for I had no idea that I was such a philosopher. "Your legs are right enough. They only want flesh and muscle, and it's the same with your arms. Wait a bit and it will all come, just as beards do when people grow to be men."

"I sha'n't never have any beard," said Jack, dolefully; "my face is as smooth as a girl's!"

"I daresay the doctor was only a little smooth soft baby once," I said; "and now see what he is."