have them bakedfor supper, and save more cooking.
The mushrooms were saved for breakfast, and the jack, which was abouttwo pounds' weight, would do for dinner. When he had finished thetable, Mark went to the teak-tree, and fetched the two poles that hadbeen set up there for the awning. These he erected by the table, andstretched the rug from them over the table, fastening the other twoedges to the posts of the hut.
They had found the nights so warm that more than one rug wasunnecessary, and the other could be spared for a permanent awning underwhich to sit at table. Some tea was put aside to be drunk cold, minerfashion, and it was then time to go shooting. Mark was to have the gun,but he would not go by himself, Bevis must accompany him.
They had to go some distance round to get at the glade, and made so muchnoise pushing aside branches, and discussing as to whether they weregoing the right way, that when they reached it if any kangaroos had beenout feeding, they had all disappeared.
"I will bring the axe," said Bevis, "and blaze the trees, then we shallknow the way in a minute."
Fixing the rest so that he could command the burries on that side of theknoll, Mark sat down under the ash-tree they had previously selected,and leaned the heavy matchlock on the staff. They chose this treebecause some brake fern grew in front of it and concealed them. Pan hadnow come to understand this manner of hunting, and he lay down at once,and needed no holding. Bevis extended himself at full length on hisback just behind Mark, and looked up at the sky through the ashbranches.
The flies would run over his face, though Mark handed him a frond offern to swish them with, so he partly covered himself with hishandkerchief. The handkerchief was stretched across his ear like thetop of a drum, and while he was lying so quiet a fly ran across thehandkerchief there, and he distinctly heard the sound of its feet. Itwas a slight rustle, as if its feet caught a little of the surface ofthe handkerchief. This happened several times.
The sun being now below the line of the tree-tops, the glade was in theshadow, except the top of the knoll, up which the shadow slowly roselike a tide as the sun declined. Now the edge of the shadow reached asand-heap thrown out from a burrow; now a thicker bunch of grass; then athistle; at last it slipped over the top in a second.
Mark could see three pairs of tiny, sharp-pointed ears in the grass. Heknew these were young rabbits, or kangaroos, too small for eating. Theywere a difficulty, they were of no use, but pricked up and listened, ifhe made the least movement, and if they ran in would stop larger onesfrom coming out. There was something moving in the hazel stoles acrossthe glade which he could not make out, and he could not ask Bevis tolook and see because of these minute kangaroos.
Ten minutes afterwards a squirrel leaped out from the hazel, and beganto dart hither and thither along the sward, drawing his red tail softlyover the grass at each arching leap as lightly as Jack drew the tasselof his whip over his mare's shoulder when he wished to caress and sootheher. Another followed, and the two played along the turf, often hiddenby bunches of grass.
Mark dared not touch Bevis or tell him, for he fancied a larger rabbitwas sitting on his haunches at the mouth of a hole fringed with fern.Bevis under his handkerchief listened to Pan snapping his teeth at theflics, and looked up at the sky till four parrots (wood-pigeons) cameover, and descended into an oak not far off. The oak was thick withivy, and was their roost-tree, though they did not intend to retire yet.
Presently he saw a heron floating over at an immense height. His wingsmoved so slowly he seemed to fly without pressure on the air--as slowlyas a lady fans herself when there is no one to coquet with. The herondid not mean to descend to the New Sea, he was bound on a voyage whichhe did not wish to complete till the dusk began, hence his deliberation.From his flight you might know that there was a mainland somewhere inthat direction.
Bang! Mark ran to the knoll, but Pan was there before him, and just intime to seize a wounded kangaroo by the hindquarter as he was paddlinginto a hole by the fore paws. Mark had seen the rabbit behind thefringe of fern move, and so knew it really was one, and so gently had hegot the matchlock into position, moving it the sixteenth of an inch at atime, that Bevis did not know he was aiming. By the new sight hebrought the gun to bear on a spot where he thought the rabbit's shouldermust be, for he could not see it, but the rabbit had moved, and wasstruck in the haunch, and would have struggled out of reach had not Panhad him.
The squirrel had disappeared, and the four parrots had flown at thereport.
"This island is full of things," said Bevis, when Mark told him aboutthe squirrel. "You find something new every hour, and I don't know whatwe shan't find at last. But you have had all the shooting and killedeverything."
"Well, so I have," said Mark. "The duck, and the jack, and thekangaroo. You _must_ shoot something next."
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End of Volume Two.
Volume Three, Chapter I.
NEW FORMOSA--BEVIS'S ZODIAC.
They returned to the hut and prepared the kangaroo and the fish forboiling on the morrow; the fish was to be coiled up in the saucepan, andthe kangaroo in the pot. Pan had the paunch, and with his great browneyes glaring out of his head with gluttony, made off with it to his ownprivate larder, where, after eating his full, he buried the rest. Panhad his own private den behind a thicket of bramble, where he kept somebones of a duck, a bacon bone, and now added this to his store. Here heretired occasionally from civilisation, like the king of the Polynesianisland, to enjoy nature, away from the etiquette of his attendance atcourt on Bevis and Mark.
Next, Mark with one of the old axes they had used to excavate thestore-room, cut a notch in the edge of the cave, where it opened on thehut, large enough to stand the lantern in, as the chest would berequired for the raft. They raked the potatoes out of the ashes, andhad them for supper, with a damper, the last fragment of a duck, andcold tea, like gold-diggers.
Bevis now recollected the journal he had proposed to keep, and got outthe book, in which there was as yet only one entry, and that a singleword, "Wednesday." He set it on the table under the awning, with thelantern open before him. Outside the edge of the awning the moon filledthe courtyard with her light.
"Why, it's only Thursday now," said Mark. "We've only been here onefull day, and it seems weeks."
"Months," said Bevis. "Perhaps this means Wednesday last year."
"Of course: this is next year to that. How we must have altered! Ourfriends would not know us."
"Not even our mothers," said Bevis.
"Nor our jolly old mokes and governors."
"Shot a kangaroo," said Bevis, writing; "shot a duck and a jack--No.Are they jacks? That's such a common name?"
"No; not jacks: jack-sharks."
"No; sun-fish: they're always in the sun."
"Yes; sun-fish."
"Shot a sun-fish: saw two squirrels, and a heron, and four parrots--"
"And a kingfisher--"
"Halcyon," said Bevis, writing it down--"a beautiful halcyon; made atable and a sun-dial. I must go up presently and mark the meridian bythe north star."
"Saw one savage."
"Who was that?"
"Why, Charlie."
"O yes, one savage; believe there are five thousand in the jungle on themainland."
"Seven thousand miles from anywhere. Put it down," said Mark.
"Twenty degrees north latitude; right. There, look; half a pagealready!"
"We ought to wash some sand to see if there's any gold," said Mark--"ina cradle, you know."
"So we did. We ought to have looked in the duck's gizzard; tiny nuggetsget in gizzards sometimes."
"Everything goes to the river beyond the weeds," said Mark; "that oughtto be written."
"Does everything go to the river?"
"Everything. While I was fishing I saw them all come back to Serendibfrom it."
"We must make haste with the raft."
"Like lightnin
g," said Mark.
"Let me see," said Bevis, leaning his arm on the table and stroking hishair with the end of the penholder. "There are blue gum trees, andpalms, and banyans."
"Reeds--they're canes."
"Sedges are papyrus."
"The big bulrushes are bamboos." He meant the reed-mace.
"Yes, bamboos. I've put it down. There ought to be a list ofeverything that grows here--cedars of course; that's something else.Huge butterflies--"
"Very huge."
"Heaps of flies."
"And a tiger somewhere."
"Then there ought to be the names of all the fossils, and metals, and ifthere's any coal," said Bevis; "and when we
Bevis: The Story of a Boy Page 64