Page:The land of enchantment (1907, Cassell).djvu/115

 a wheelbarrow for to hold the swag. We filled it with cocoanuts to keep our gills moist in the desert, likewise a gold-laced scarlet swallow-tailed coat, a cocked hat with feathers, fireworks, and cigars. Each of us carried, of course, shooting irons.

“The skipper landed us on the coral strand, and we at once began to push our way through mangrove-bushes and tree-ferns. The shore was fringed with monkey-trees, which were bowed down with the weight of monkeys, and the welkin, Master Charles, rang with the jabbering of these creatures mixed with the hoarse screams of parrots and cockatoos. Then we entered the forest, where the trees were a-growing a thousand feet high, so that it made your eyes fair ache to try and get a squint at the top of them. We hadn’t gone far before ‘Hist!’ says I to the niggers, and pointed forrud.”

“Why, Ben, whatever was it?” asked Charlie.

“Well, Master Charles, a little way down the forest glade, and just a p’int or so to starboard, rose a hillock of smooth chalk. Squatting on its haunches, with its back towards us, was a giant ape. It held in one of its paws a sharpened lump of plumbago, the which is common to them parts, and with it was a-drawing on the chalk the likeness of another of its kind. It was that busy that it didn’t notice us at first, but directly it did it ran to an india-rubber tree, close by, pounced upon some dried sap that had oozed from it, rubbed out the plumbago marks, and cut its stick before you could have said Jack Robinson. Now, I ventures to put it to you, Master Charles, as between man and man, wasn’t that there a clever monkey? ‘Yes,’ says you, and right you are, Master Charles.

“On the third day we entered the desert, and roamed the trackless waste. The sun blazed overhead like unto a flaming furnace, only a jolly sight more so, and there wasn’t a tree, or a shrub, or even a blade of grass. Victuals and drink ran short, and we carried our lives in our hands. We knew for sure that the heathen were a-raging around us there or thereabouts, likewise the ravening wild beasts. We killed one lion which was a thirsting for our blood, likewise some apes, and took their skins along with us.

“Sometimes the my-rage would set our mouths a-watering, and sometimes we grovelled in the sand while the sy-moon swep’ over us. More or less we were always on the jump; if ’twasn’t one dreadful danger, why, then, ’twas another, whereby we couldn’t complain of want of variety. One morning, howsomever, we claps our peepers on