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"I had a dream last night," he went on thoughtfully, his face slowly breaking into a glow. "It seemed that twenty-five nature men and nature women had just arrived on the steamer from California, and that I was starting to go with them up the wild-pig trail to the plantation."
An hour later, following along a wild-pig trail, Sheldon suddenly halted. The bloody tracks had ceased. The Tahitians cast out in the bush on either side, and a cry from Utami apprised them of a find. Joan waited till Sheldon came back. "It's Mauko," he said. "Kwaque did for him, and he crawled in there and died. That's two accounted for. There are ten more.
When the wild-pig, referred to in the last chapter, was first observed, it was standing on the margin of a thicket, from which it had just issued, gazing, with the profoundly philosophical aspect peculiar to that animal, at our four friends, and seeming to entertain doubts as to the propriety of beating an immediate retreat.
They were thus agreeably employed when an event occurred which changed the current of their thoughts, and led to consequences of a somewhat serious nature. This event, however, was in itself insignificant. It was nothing more than the sudden appearance of a wild-pig among the bushes close at hand.
The government has restricted him to a wild-pig trail which runs precipitously up the mountain. I climbed the trail with him, and we had to climb with hands and feet in order to get up. Nor can that wild-pig trail be made into a road by any amount of toil less than that of an engineer, a steam-engine, and a steel cable. But what does the Nature Man care?
Thrice, beyond the boundaries of Somo, he encountered the little black bushmen who were more like ghosts than men, so noiseless and unperceivable were they, and who, guarding the wild-pig runways of the jungle, missed spearing him on the three memorable occasions. As the wood-rats had taught him discretion, so did these two-legged lurkers in the jungle twilight.
The staple meat was buck of all kinds; sheep were wellnigh unknown, oxen were scarce and their meat tough; but no one need grumble at a diet of buck, wild-pig, koran, guinea-fowl, and occasionally wild-duck.
The large Indian civet-cat is not uncommon, but the spotted tiger-civet, a very beautiful and active creature, is rare. The jackal is not uncommon, and there is at least one species of wild-dog. These dogs hunt in packs and kill wild-pig, deer, goats, etc. A very peculiar and interesting animal is the cat-bear, which has the head and arms of a minute bear and the tail of a cat.
He had come over with the morning tide to ask us to spend the day, as his guests, wild-pig hunting. Of course we accepted with alacrity. I am not going to tell you how we found all the able-bodied men and dogs on the island awaiting us, how they beat the jungle with frantic yells and shouts while we waited on the opposite side, or even how many pigs we shot. It would all take too long.
One evening Tom was unusually brightly awake, and Frederick, joining the rapt young circle, sat and listened to his brother's serio-comic narrative of the night of wreck on the island of Blang; of the swim through the sharks where half the crew was lost; of the great pearl which Desay brought ashore with him; of the head-decorated palisade that surrounded the grass palace wherein dwelt the Malay queen with her royal consort, a shipwrecked Chinese Eurasian; of the intrigue for the pearl of Desay; of mad feasts and dances in the barbaric night, and quick dangers and sudden deaths; of the queen's love-making to Desay, of Desay's love-making to the queen's daughter, and of Desay, every joint crushed, still alive, staked out on the reef at low tide to be eaten by the sharks; of the coming of the plague; of the beating of tom-toms and the exorcising of the devil-devil doctors; of the flight over the man-trapped, wild-pig runs of the mountain bush-men; and of the final rescue by Tasman, he who was hatcheted only last year and whose head reposed in some Melanesian stronghold and all breathing of the warmth and abandon and savagery of the burning islands of the sun.
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