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For some time they gazed up among the branches without seeing anything, but at last, in a place where the leaves seemed to have been thrust aside near the top of one of the highest trees, a great red hairy body was seen, and a huge black face gazed fiercely down at the hunters. Verkimier fired instantly, the branches closed, and the monster moved off in another direction.
At all events Verkimier had reason to believe in the truth of it at that time, for adventures came down on him, as it were, in a sort of deluge, more or less astounding, insomuch that his enthusiastic spirit, bathing, if we may say so, in an ocean of scientific delight, pronounced Sumatra to be the very paradise of the student of nature.
Men are sometimes killed by zis fruit. Here now ve vill dine." They sat down on a bank which was canopied by ferns. While the boy was arranging their meal, Verkimier drew a heavy hunting-knife from his belt and applying it with an unusually strong hand to the Durian laid it open. Nigel did not at all relish the smell, but he was not fastidious or apt to be prejudiced. He tasted and, like Mr.
They hurried home therefore with this information, and that day accompanied by the Dyak youths, Nigel, the hermit, and Moses Verkimier started off in search of the mias; intending to camp out or to take advantage of a native hut if they should chance to be near one when night overtook them.
"Stop, stop!" cried Professor Verkimier in a hoarse whisper at that moment; "look! look at zee monkeys!" Monkeys are very abundant in Sumatra, but the nest of them which the travellers discovered at that time, and which had called forth the professor's admiration, was enough as Moses said to make a "renocerus laugh."
It was a huge building composed largely of bamboo wooden-planks and wicker-work, with a high thatched roof, and it stood, like all the other houses, on posts formed of great tree-stems which rose eight or ten feet from the ground. "You have frunds here too, I zink," said Verkimier to the hermit, as they ascended the ladder leading to the door of the hall.
About once in every three years, and sometimes oftener, the crops of coffee, bananas, rice, etc., in this region are quite destroyed by sulphur-rain, which covers everything for miles around the crater." "Hah! it vould be too hote a place zis for us, if zat vas to happin joost now," remarked Verkimier with a smile. "It cannot be far off the time now, I should think," said Yan der Kemp.
"What have you got?" asked Nigel, doing his best to restrain a laugh. "A splendid Ornit'optera a day-flying moss'," said Verkimier as he cautiously rose, "vich mimics zee Trepsichrois mulciber. Ant zis very morning I caught von Leptocircus virescens, vich derives protection from mimicking zee habits ant appearance of a dragon-fly."
The tiger came indeed to the spot, but he came in precisely the opposite direction from that which the watcher expected, so that while Verkimier was staring over the goat's head at an opening in the jungle beyond the pond, the tiger was advancing stealthily and slowly through the bushes exactly behind the hole in which he lay. Suddenly the professor became aware of something!
"Now, we must remain here till our friend Verkimier arrives," said the hermit, turning to Nigel after they had watched the steamer out of sight. "I suppose we must," said Nigel, who did not at all relish the delay "of course we must," he added with decision.
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