The Ocean Wireless Boys on the Pacific

“Sorry,” sang out Jack, cheerfully, “but I’m doing the best I can. You see, I’m not used to the customs of the country yet. I don’t understand your way of bathing.”

“What do you mean zee bathing?”

“I’m trying to get a bath in this barrel that you sent me up.”

“Taking a bath!” shouted the landlord in a startled voice, “a bath at zees time of zee night. You must be crazee. Anyhow, you drop no more of zee water on me. I sleep zee room undaire.”

“Well, he doesn’t look as if a little water would hurt him,” commented Billy, as the landlord’s footsteps retreated down the passage.

The boys were soon in bed, but not to sleep. Their exciting day amid new scenes had rendered them wakeful and then, too, the beds of the Hotel Bomobori were not couches of roses. The sheets and pillows smelled abominably of camphor and mildew, and the latter appeared to have been, or so Billy declared, stuffed with corn cobs. The same applied to the mattresses. But as if this was not enough, there came a sudden shrill cry from somewhere in the room:

“Beck-ee! Beck-ee! Beck-ee!”

“What in the nation was that?” cried Billy, considerably startled.

“Somebody calling for 'Becky,’” laughed Jack, “but Rebecca won’t answer. Go to sleep, Billy, if you can, on these miserable beds. It must be some insect.”

“I hope it isn’t anything venomous,” muttered Raynor.

“Better keep your curtains close drawn and then it can’t get at you, anyhow,” advised Jack.

“But then it shuts out all the air and I almost suffocate,” complained Billy.

“Wow!” he yelled a moment later, in a tone that roused Jack, who was almost asleep.

“What’s the matter, Billy?” he asked anxiously.

“Ugh, something soft with legs on it just ran over my face,” cried Raynor. “For goodness’ sake get up and get a light. It may be something that bites or stings.”

Jack lost no time in getting hurriedly out of his bed, and as he shook the curtains something was dislodged from them and went whirring and banging round the room, blundering heavily against the ceiling.

“What the dickens – !” exclaimed the boy, considerably startled, when another cry from Billy split the air.

“Ouch, for the love of Mike. A light, quick. Something just nipped my toe.”

Jack fumbled for the matches; but, as is usual in such cases, he located every object in the room before he found them, finally colliding with the washstand and sending it with a crash to the ground floor. An instant later there was the noise of slamming doors below and the landlord came racing up the stairs to the boys’ room.

“Ciel! What is zee mattaire zees time? First you try drown me, zen you make zee beeg crash like zee tonnaire!”

“It’s all the fault of your old hotel,” exclaimed Jack angrily, going to the door. “This room is full of some kind of animals. It’s a regular menagerie.”

He opened the door and the landlord, with a curious-looking night-light, composed of a wick floating in a tumbler full of some strong-smelling oil that gave out a powerful odor of sandal wood, came inside. Instantly there was a mighty scuffling and several ugly looking lizards darted off across the floor and a huge bat (no doubt the creature that had vacated Jack’s bed-curtains with such a prodigious flapping) went soaring out through the open lattice-work doors which led out on the verandah, but which the boys had left open for coolness. There were also a dozen other specimens of unclassified insects, both winged and legged, which went scuttling off at the sight of the light. Then the landlord’s eye fell on the open doors.

“Sacre!” he cried, “nevaire did I such a foolishness see.”

“What’s the matter now?” demanded Jack. “The only foolishness I can see is in our coming to this hotel.”

The landlord shrugged his shoulders as if in despair.

“What else do you expect but zee bat, zee scorpion, zee centipede, zee leezard, zee chigre, zee – ”

“What makes a noise like 'becky, becky, becky’?” asked Billy, breaking in on the catalogue.

“Ah! Zee biting leezard 'ee do zat.”

“Then that fellow that nipped my toe and the one that sang out for Rebecca must be the same individual,” cried Billy indignantly, “but go on with your catalogue.”

The landlord looked puzzled.

“Zere was zee cat and zee dog 'ere, too?” he demanded.

“No, I said the catalogue. The list of insects you were rattling off.”

“Oh, well, I was going to say to you not to leave zee porch doors open in zee night. And also nevaire go to bed wizout lighting one of zees lights.” He tapped the peculiar-smelling night-light he held. “See, here eez one 'ere on zees table.”

“Well, you can’t blame us for not knowing what it was,” protested Jack, as he lighted it. “I thought it was some peculiar kind of drink. It’s the first time I ever saw light served in a tumbler.”

“Zee light veree good,” said the landlord, as he was leaving the room. “Zee animal no like zee light, also they no like zee smell.”

“I don’t blame them,” said Jack, after the man had left, and the odd tumbler lamp was burning with a sputtering, smoking flame, “especially the smell part.”

“Anyhow, anything is better than sharing your bed with you-don’t-know-what creepy-crawly things,” declared Raynor.

“Yes, and lizards that go round hollering girls’ names,” agreed Jack. “I fancy we’ll sleep better now. But, after all, we’ve got to get used to it all for we may meet worse in the jungle.”

CHAPTER XXII. – INTO THE JUNGLE

The next day was busily spent by the boys. Jack had his portable wireless to assemble. Raynor was assigned as “chief of baggage,” and Captain Sparhawk and Mr. Jukes, with Muldoon, who spoke the Papuan dialect after a fashion, occupied the time rounding up the native bearers and finding a suitable “head man.” The latter was very important to the success of the expedition, both to keep the other natives up to their work and to find trails and, if necessary, act as interpreter. Through the good offices of Jabez Hook, a “smart Yankee” who ran a “general store” at Bomobori, and was a warm friend of Captain Sparhawk’s, they finally found just the man they wanted. He was a tall, up-right Papuan with an exceptionally intelligent face, who spoke fair English, knew the country thoroughly and appeared about thirty years old. Salloo, as he called himself, agreed to have everything in readiness for a start into the interior by the next morning. He held out hopes that from some of the interior tribes they would get news of the lost ones, for among the natives news travels fast, and if ‘Bully’ Broom had conveyed prisoners into the inland some of the tribesmen would be sure to know about it.

When Jack returned from the Sea Gypsy, where he had set up his apparatus, he reported that all was well on board and everything going forward smoothly under the command of the first officer. Thurman appeared to be delighted with his chance to vindicate himself, but acting under Mr. Jukes’ advice, it had been deemed prudent to refuse him shore liberty till the party returned. Thurman did not seem to resent this, and told Jack that after all he had gone through, a “soft berth” and good meals on the yacht appealed to him. He had seen enough of the tropics, so he declared, to have no especial desire to go ashore at Bomobori.

It was not till eleven o’clock that night that they turned in. But when they did so it was with a satisfied feeling that every detail had been attended to. Not the least satisfactory result of the day had been Jack’s achievement of perfecting the portable wireless which would keep them at all times in touch with the yacht.

The next morning dawned bright and clear. The boys were up before any of the rest of the party, dressed in khaki suits, sun helmets and stout leggings, for much of the way would lie through ragged bush. Each lad carried a water canteen, a pocket filter, compass, knife, and wore a service revolver attached to a cartridge belt. In these “uniforms” they looked very business-like, and capable of giving a good account of themselves in any emergency. Soon after the other members of the party appeared somewhat similarly attired. Mr. Jukes’ pockets bulged with boxes of dyspepsia pills, and Muldoon wore his sailor uniform with the addition of leggings and a sun helmet.

“Shure I look like a sea soldier no liss,” was the way he summed up his appearance, and the boys couldn’t help agreeing with him.

While they were at breakfast, Salloo and his “bearers” presented themselves.

Salloo greeted them with a low “salaam,” and volunteered the information that:

“Him welly good day for makum start. Go many miles. Good trail for first part of journey.”

“Well, the further we go, the quicker we’ll get back,” commented Muldoon in true Irish style.

At eight o’clock they were off. Nobody in the town knew the true object of their expedition, but supposed they were off on a hunt for entomological specimens, for New Guinea swarms with rare forms of insect life and many intrepid collectors have found it a happy hunting ground, some of them paying for their devotion to science with their lives.

At first the question of traveling on horse-back had been mooted. But Salloo promptly vetoed this. The country was too rough and thickly grown to make horse-back travel feasible for more than a few miles, he declared. They might have used the river, but it was only navigable for a short distance when the swift current and the shoals made it dangerous for up-stream travel. Natives coming down it always abandoned their dugouts, which were simply hollow trees, at Bomobori, and went back to their villages on foot.