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Mother Carey's Chicken: Her Voyage to the Unknown Isle, a fiction by George Manville Fenn |
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Chapter 34. How Billy Widgeon Went Somewhere |
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_ CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR. HOW BILLY WIDGEON WENT SOMEWHERE The preparations were soon made, and directly after breakfast, in spite of Mr Morgan's desire to be of the company, the little band of half the occupants of the isle gathered for the start. Mr Gregory was obliged to remain and take charge of the camp, leaving the captain free to be the head, with the major for his lieutenant, Small, Billy Widgeon, and two other men. Mark was to be left behind, but a piteous appeal reversed the edict, and, armed with a gun, he took his place with the expedition folk ready for the start. They took a bag or two for fruit and game, a small amount of luncheon for each, and their arms and ammunition. Thus equipped and with the good wishes of those they left behind, the party set off for the creek where the nipah-palms grew, and up the path followed by Mark and the major before, but with the intention of turning off where the steam issued from the earth, as everyone seemed to select the jungle between that and the mountain-slope as being the spot from whence the roaring sounds were heard. Backed by the knowledge already gained, there was not much difficulty in reaching the scene of the fright with the supposed serpent; and here they paused to try the ground, which sent out puffs of steam with a loud hiss directly it was pierced. Billy Widgeon shook his head at it and looked at Small, who frowned, took off his cap, and scratched his head, as if he did not approve of the place as one for a walk. Just then there was a capital opportunity for a shot at the great pigeons; but shooting was forbidden until their return, the object being to trace the strange creature if possible and see what it was like. "It can't be a crocodile," said the major, "for there is no river up this way except this bit of a stream; great snake I can't believe it is; what is it, then?" "The only way is to examine every bit of soft ground for traces of footprints," said the captain. "Nearly every beast has its times for going to drink; so we ought to get some inkling of what it is like at the various springs." They were not long in coming to one in a hollow beneath a great pile of moss-grown rock down whose sides trickled the water to form at last a good-sized pool of the most limpid kind; but the mossy boggy earth around was untrodden, the water clear, and no trace to be seen of a single footprint other than their own. The water was delicious on that hot day in the steamy jungle, and the band was refreshed--Mark having hard work to refrain from chasing some gorgeous butterfly of green and gold, or with wings painted in pearl-blue, steel, and burnished silver. At other times some lovely kingfisher, with elongated tail, settled almost within reach. Then it would be a green barbet, with bristle-armed beak and bright blue and scarlet feathers to make it gay. Or again, one of the cuckoo trogons, sitting on some twig, like a ball of feathers of bronze, golden green, and salmon rose. But this was not a collecting trip. Earnest investigation was the order of the day; and after carefully taking their bearings the captain pressed on, with their way always on the ascent and growing wilder and more rocky. This had its advantages as well as its disadvantages; for though the path was from time to time one continuous climb, they were not compelled to force their way through tangled growth, with trees bound together by canes and creepers, as if nature were roughly weaving a stockade. Another stream was passed rising out of a boggy patch of ground, and here footprints were plentiful, but they were only those of birds that had been down to drink. Onward again, and to ascend a steep precipitous slope right before them they had to descend into a dank, dark, gloomy-looking gorge, whose vegetation was scarce, and yet the place seemed to grow hotter as they went down. A peculiar whistling sound came now from before them, and they stopped to listen, with the day evidently growing hotter, for down in the gorge there was not a breath of air; while as they listened the whistling grew louder and was accompanied by another in a different key, the two producing a curious dissonant sound for a few minutes, increasing rapidly, and then ceased, to be followed by absolute silence, and then a dull sound followed as if something had burst. "Steam--a hot spring, I should say," exclaimed the captain, going cautiously forward, parting the low growth as he went. His progress became slower, and at the end of a minute he stopped and stepped cautiously back. "Not safe," he said; "my feet were sinking in. We must go farther round." He led the way, and they forced their way through the sickly-looking bushes till they came all at once upon a glistening patch of whitish-looking mud some thirty or forty yards round, and above which the atmosphere seemed to be quivering, if it were not so much clear steam rising in the air. Here they found the cause of the noise, for as they approached there was a tiny jet of steam issuing from one side near the dense growth of a peculiar grass, and when this had been whistling for about a minute, another jet burst out on the other side, whistling in the different key, while in the middle of the mud-pool there was a quivering and rifting of the surface, followed by the formation of a huge bubble, which kept on rising up larger and larger till it was a big globe of quite two feet high, when it suddenly burst with a peculiar sound, as if someone had said the word _Beff_! in a low whisper. This occurred several times before they went on, having vainly searched the borders of the mud-pool for footmarks; and at the end of another few hundred yards loud hissing and shrieking noises led them to another pool, but, far from being so quiescent as that which they had left behind, this was all in commotion. The hot shining mud was bubbling furiously, rising in mud bladders, which were incessantly rising and dancing all over the surface, while one in the middle, larger than the rest, rose and burst with a loud puff. Very little steam was visible, and though here too the edge of the pool was examined, there was not even the footprint of a bird. Still ascending, and with traces of the volcanic action growing more frequent as they progressed, the mud springs were left behind, and an opening reached so beautiful, that all stopped to rest in the shade of a wild durian tree, whose fruit were about the size of small cricket balls, and chancing the fall of the woody spinous husk, all sat down to admire the beauty of the mountain rising before them, and to partake of some of the fallen fruit. They would not have been touched if the major had not pounced upon them, and declared that they were a delicacy; but as soon as he opened one with his knife, and handed it to Mark, that gentleman's nose curled, in company with his lip, and he threw the fruit down. "Pah! it's a bad one," he exclaimed. "Bad! you young ignoramus!" cried the major, taking up the fallen fruit, and beginning to pick out its seeds and custardy interior with his knife. "You have no taste." "But it smells so horrible!" cried Mark. "Bah! Don't think about the smell. Taste it." He opened another, and handed it to Mark, who, seeing that his father was eating one, proceeded cautiously to taste the evil-smelling object, and found in it so peculiarly grateful a flavour that he tried it again and again, and before he knew what he was about he had finished it. "Try another, Mark," said the major. "I learned to eat these at Singapore, where they cultivate them, and they are twice as big, often three times." Mark took another, and sniffed at it, to find when he had done that Billy Widgeon had been looking on with an air of the most profound contempt. "Haven't you had one, Billy?" said Mark eagerly. "Haven't I had one, Mr Mark, sir! No, I haven't; and how people of eddication can go and eat such things as them is more'n I can make out." "You try one," said Mark. "They're lovely." "Too lovely for me, Mr Mark, sir. I'm going to have a chew of tobacco!" Mark was so highly pleased with his experiment that he turned to Small, who was seated staring straight before him and listening. "Try one of these, Mr Small," he said. Small took the fruit, smelt it, and then jerked it away. "Don't you try to play larks on them as is older than yourself, young gentleman," he said so sourly that Mark walked away discomfited, and the boatswain went on listening till the sound he had heard increased in violence, and he found that everyone was on the _qui vive_. "It comes from over the other side of that rocky patch of hill," said the major, pointing. "It's a waterfall, and we did not hear it before on account of the wind." But if it was a waterfall, and that it sounded to be, it ceased flowing as rapidly and suddenly as it had begun, for once more all was still in that direction, and they sat resting and gazing with mingled feelings of awe and delight at the glorious landscape of black and brown rock and wondrous ferny growth rising before them from beyond a little valley at their feet right up to the summit of the mountain, about whose top the little cloud of smoke or vapour still hung. It was a never-to-be-forgotten scene of beauty that no one cared to leave, but the captain soon gave the word, for he was desirous of finding some sign of the strange creature that had caused so much alarm. They had climbed far above the spot whence the sounds seemed to come, but all felt that probably the beast would come down from the mountain and make that his home; and in this belief the party once more started, directing their course so as to go down and round the rocky eminence in face of where they stood, and then begin to climb the mountain where it steadily rose in one long slope to the summit. The major was leading as they went down, and he had no sooner reached a spot whence he could see beyond the long mass of rock than he waved his hand for the party to come on. Mark was the first to reach him, and as he did so it was to see a tall column of water as big as a man's body rush down a hole, which seemed to have been formed in the centre of a pale stony-looking basin. "Look, my lad, look!" cried the major. There was no occasion for him to speak, for Mark was already gazing with a feeling of shrinking awe at another of these stony basins, in which a quantity of clear hot water was boiling up and steaming. It rose from a hole in the middle, quite four feet in diameter, and simmered and bubbled and danced, and then suddenly disappeared down the hole with a hideous gurgling, rushing sound, followed by horrible rumblings and gurgitations in what seemed to be an enormous pipe of stone. Once more it rushed to the surface, and then disappeared again, leaving the opening clear of water, so that the major went to the stony bottom of the basin, or saucer, to try whether it was slippery; and finding it firm, he walked on to where he could gaze down the well-like hole. He did not stop many moments, but stepped back. "Horrid!" he said. "Right down into blackness. Come and look." Mark hesitated for a moment, and then took the hand his father extended, and they walked down the slope of the basin to where the opening gaped. As they reached it there was a puff of hot vapour sent up, followed by hollow roaring sounds, mingled with the gurgling of water. Then there was such a furious hissing rush that they started back, and had just stepped clear of the basin when a fount of boiling water rushed up with terrific violence, maintaining the shape of the tube through which it had risen to the height of a hundred feet in the air, and keeping to that height for a minute or two, looking like a solid pillar of water. Then the force which had ejected it seemed to be spent, and the huge fountain descended slowly lower and lower, with several other elevations, and finally descended below the surface with a hideous rushing turmoil, and was gone. They were about to advance and look down again, but there was a roar, and the water rushed to the surface just high enough to fill the basin, and for a portion to run gurgling over where the rim, which seemed to be formed of a curious deposit, was broken away, and trickle down toward the valley. "I say, aren't it hot?" said Billy Widgeon, who had thrust in his hands before the water ran back. "Why, you might cook in it. I say, bo'sun, look ye here; why if it aren't just like the stuff as my old mother used to scrape out of the tea-kettle at home." Small stooped and broke off a scrap of the deposit, and examined it, holding it out afterwards to Mark. "Yes," said the major, who examined it in turn, after Mark had taken it to him, "the man is quite right. It is a limy deposit from the boiling water, similar to what is found in kettles and boilers. Shows that the water is very hard, eh, captain?" "Yes, I suppose that's it," replied Captain Strong. "But all this is very interesting for travellers, and does not concern us. We've come to find out our noisy friend, so let's get on. Some day, when we've nothing to do, we may come here on a pleasure trip. To-day we must work." "Stop a few minutes longer, father," said Mark, as the men went to another of the geysers a little lower down, one which had just thrown a column of water up some forty feet, and then subsided--a column not a third of the size of that which they had just seen. "Very well," said the captain. "Want to see it spout again?" "I should like to, once," said Mark; and then, moved by that energetic spirit which is always inciting boys to do something, he ran to the other side of the basin, where a good-sized piece of rock lay half incrusted with the stony deposit of the hot spring. It weighed about three-quarters of a hundredweight, but of so rounded a shape that it could be easily moved, and Mark rolled it over and over into the basin of the geyser while his father was pointing out something to the major across the little valley, and just as the stone was close to the rock-like opening the captain turned. "I wouldn't do that, Mark," he said, as he realised his son's intention; but his warning came too late, for the final impetus had been given, and the stone disappeared in the hole. Mark looked up apologetically as his father and the major came closer, and were listening to hear what would be the result, and expecting to note a tremendous hollow-sounding splash from far below. What seemed to be a long time elapsed before there was any sign, and then with a roar up came the volley of water again so instantaneously that they had only just time to flee to the other side of the basin to avoid a drenching, possibly a scalding, while to the surprise of all there was a dull thud. The water descended with its furious hissing and gurgling, rose again to the top, and then, judging from the sounds, came up less and less distances in its vast stony pipe, and then all was silent once more, and they were gazing at the piece of rock Mark had thrown down, now lying in the basin about three feet from the well-like central hole. "That's the way to make it spurt," said the major, laughing. "The hot water-works don't approve of stones, Master Mark." The men were delighted with the hot springs, and after the fashion of sailors were pretty ready at giving them names according to their peculiarities. One was "The Grumbler;" another "The Bear-pit." A whistling hissing spring became "The Squealer." One that gurgled horribly, "The Bubbly Jock;" whilst others were, "The Lion's Den," from the roaring sound; "The Trumpet Major;" and the noisiest of all, from which a curious clattering metallic sound came up, "The Bull in the China-shop." All at once the investigating party were aroused by a tremendous burst of laughter, which came from behind a clump of bushes where the men had gathered to watch the action of one of the smaller geysers. The captain led the way toward the spot, for the noise was very boisterous, and as they approached it was to see the men rush away in the height of enjoyment, laughing again, for the spout of hot water, which seemed less steamy and hot, played up again and descended, while as it ran back with a low bellowing roar, the men followed quickly, evidently to watch its descent down the stony tube, just as so many boys might at play. But there was no play here, for the comedy of running away to avoid a wetting with the hot water, and rushing back to look down, turned into tragedy. Short-legged Billy Widgeon, in his eagerness to be first, tried to take long strides like leaps, and bounded with a hop, skip, and a jump right into the wet basin, when the men set up a wild cry as, to the horror of all, they saw the little sailor's feet glide from under him, his hands thrown up wildly to clutch at something to save himself, and then he seemed to glide down the narrow well-like hole and was gone. _ |
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