Bunyip Land Part 9

"Help, help!" came hoa.r.s.ely from the poor wretch; and my hands grew wet inside, and a horrible sensation seemed to be attacking my chest, as I watched the struggles of the drowning man with starting eyes. For though he swam like a fish, the horror of his situation seemed to have unnerved him, and while he kept on swimming, it was with quick wearying effort, and he was sinking minute by minute lower in the water.

"For Heaven's sake, throw the poor wretch a rope, captain," said the doctor.

"What! to come aboard and knife some of us?" growled the captain.

"Better let him drown. Plenty of better ones than him to be had for a pound a month."

"Oh, captain!" I cried indignantly, for my feelings were too much for me; and I seized a rope just as the Malay went down, after uttering a despairing shriek.

"Let that rope alone, boy," said the skipper with a grim smile. "There, he's come up again. Ketch hold!" he cried, and he threw his line so that the Malay could seize it, which he did, winding it round and round one arm, while the slowly-sailing schooner dragged him along through the sea. "I'm only giving him a reg'lar good squencher, doctor. I don't want him aboard with a spark left in him to break out again: we've had enough of that. Haul him aboard, lads, and shove him in the chain locker to get dry. We'll set him ash.o.r.e first chance."

The Malay was hauled aboard with no very gentle hands by the white sailors, and as soon as he reached the deck he began crawling to the captain's feet, to which he clung, with gesture after gesture full of humility, as ha talked excitedly in a jargon of broken English and Malay.

"That's what I don't like in these fellows," said Jack Penny quietly; "they're either all bubble or else all squeak."

"Yes; he's about squenched now, squire," said the captain. "Here, shove him under hatches, and it's lucky for you I'm not in a hanging humour to-day. You'd better behave yourself, or you may be brought up again some day when I am."

As the captain spoke to the streaming, s.h.i.+vering wretch he made a noose in the rope he held, manipulating it as if he were really going to hang the abject creature, in whom the fire of rage had quite become extinct.

Then the sailors took hold of him, and he uttered a despairing shriek; but he cooled down as he found that he was only to be made a prisoner, and was thrust below, with Jimmy dancing a war-dance round him as he went, the said dance consisting of bounds from the deck and wavings of his waddy about his head.

As the Malay was secured, Jack Penny rose from his seat and walked to the side of the vessel, to spit into the water with every sign of disgust upon his face.

"Yah!" he said; "I wouldn't squeak like that, not if they hung me."

"Well, let's see," cried the captain, catching him by the collar; "hanging is the punishment for stowaways, my fine fellow."

"Get out!" said Jack, giving himself a sort of squirm and shaking himself free. "You ain't going to scare me; and, besides, you know what you said. I say, though, when are we going to have something to eat?"

The captain stared at Jack's serious face for a few moments, and then he joined with the doctor and me in a hearty laugh.

"I don't well understand you yet, my fine fellow," he said; "perhaps I shall, though, afore I've done. Here, come down; you do look as if a little wholesome vittles would do you good. Are you hungry then?"

"Hungry!" said Jack, without a drawl, and he gave his teeth a gnash; "why, I ain't had nothing but some damper and a bottle o' water since I came on board."

CHAPTER SIX.

HOW JIMMY WAS FRIGHTENED BY THE BUNYIP.

"Oh, I don't know that I've got any more to say about it," said Jack Penny to me as we sat next day in the bows of the schooner, with our legs dangling over the side. "I heard all about your going, and there was nothing to do at home now, so I said to myself that I'd go, and here I am."

"Yes, here you are," I said; "but you don't mean to tell me that you intended to go up the country with us?"

"Yes, I do," he said.

"Nonsense, Jack! it is impossible!" I said warmly.

"I say!"

"Well?"

"New Guinea don't belong to you, does it?"

"Why, of course not."

"Oh, I thought p'r'aps you'd bought it."

"Don't talk nonsense, Jack."

"Don't you talk nonsense then, and don't you be so crusty. If I like to land in New Guinea, and take a walk through the country, it's as free for me as it is for you, isn't it?"

"Of course it is."

"Then just you hold your tongue, Mister Joe Carstairs; and if you don't like to walk along with me, why you can walk by yourself."

"And what provisions have you made for the journey?" I said.

"Oh, I'm all right, my lad!" he drawled. "Father lent me his revolver, and I've got my double gun, and two pound o' powder and a lot o' shot."

"Anything else?"

"Oh, I've got my knife, and a bit o' string, and two fis.h.i.+ng-lines and a lot of hooks, and I brought my pipe and my Jew's-harp, and I think that's all."

"I'm glad you brought your Jew's-harp," I said ironically.

"So am I," he said drily. "Yah! I know: you're grinning at me, but a Jew's-harp ain't a bad thing when you're lonely like, all by yourself, keeping sheep and n.o.body to speak to for a week together but Gyp. I say, Joe, I brought Gyp," he added with a smile that made his face look quite pleasant.

"What! your dog?" I cried.

"Yes; he's all snug down below, and he hasn't made a sound. He don't like it, but if I tell him to do a thing he knows he's obliged to do it."

"I say, I wonder what the captain will say if he knows you've got a dog on board?"

"I sha'n't tell him, and if he don't find it out I shall pay him for Gyp's pa.s.sage just the same as I shall pay him for mine. I've got lots of money, and I hid on board to save trouble. I ain't a cheat."

"No, I never thought you were, Jack," I said, for I had known him for some years, and once or twice I had been fis.h.i.+ng with him, though we were never companions. "But it's all nonsense about your going with us.

The doctor said this morning that the notion was absurd."

"Let him mind his salts-and-senna and jollop," said Jack sharply.

"Who's he, I should like to know? I knowed your father as much as he did. He's given me many a sixpence for birds' eggs and beetles and snakes I've got for him. Soon as I heard you were going to find him, I says to father, 'I'm going too.'"

"And what did your father say?"

"Said I was a fool."

"Ah! of course," I exclaimed.

"No, it ain't 'ah, of course,' Mr Clever," he cried. "Father always says that to me whatever I do, but he's very fond of me all the same."