"Birds of paradise!" I exclaimed.
"Order Pa.s.seriforma, division Clystomora," Conseil replied.
"Partridge family?" Ned Land asked.
"I doubt it, Mr. Land. Nevertheless, I"m counting on your dexterity to catch me one of these delightful representatives of tropical nature!"
"I"ll give it a try, professor, though I"m handier with a harpoon than a rifle."
Malaysians, who do a booming business in these birds with the Chinese, have various methods for catching them that we couldn"t use.
Sometimes they set snares on the tops of the tall trees that the bird of paradise prefers to inhabit. At other times they capture it with a tenacious glue that paralyzes its movements.
They will even go so far as to poison the springs where these fowl habitually drink. But in our case, all we could do was fire at them on the wing, which left us little chance of getting one.
And in truth, we used up a good part of our ammunition in vain.
Near eleven o"clock in the morning, we cleared the lower slopes of the mountains that form the island"s center, and we still hadn"t bagged a thing. Hunger spurred us on.
The hunters had counted on consuming the proceeds of their hunting, and they had miscalculated. Luckily, and much to his surprise, Conseil pulled off a right-and-left shot and insured our breakfast.
He brought down a white pigeon and a ringdove, which were briskly plucked, hung from a spit, and roasted over a blazing fire of deadwood.
While these fascinating animals were cooking, Ned prepared some bread from the artocarpus. Then the pigeon and ringdove were devoured to the bones and declared excellent. Nutmeg, on which these birds habitually gorge themselves, sweetens their flesh and makes it delicious eating.
"They taste like chicken stuffed with truffles," Conseil said.
"All right, Ned," I asked the Canadian, "now what do you need?"
"Game with four paws, Professor Aronnax," Ned Land replied.
"All these pigeons are only appetizers, snacks. So till I"ve bagged an animal with cutlets, I won"t be happy!"
"Nor I, Ned, until I"ve caught a bird of paradise."
"Then let"s keep hunting," Conseil replied, "but while heading back to the sea. We"ve arrived at the foothills of these mountains, and I think we"ll do better if we return to the forest regions."
It was good advice and we took it. After an hour"s walk we reached a genuine sago palm forest. A few harmless snakes fled underfoot.
Birds of paradise stole off at our approach, and I was in real despair of catching one when Conseil, walking in the lead, stooped suddenly, gave a triumphant shout, and came back to me, carrying a magnificent bird of paradise.
"Oh bravo, Conseil!" I exclaimed.
"Master is too kind," Conseil replied.
"Not at all, my boy. That was a stroke of genius, catching one of these live birds with your bare hands!"
"If master will examine it closely, he"ll see that I deserve no great praise."
"And why not, Conseil?"
"Because this bird is as drunk as a lord."
"Drunk?"
"Yes, master, drunk from the nutmegs it was devouring under that nutmeg tree where I caught it. See, Ned my friend, see the monstrous results of intemperance!"
"d.a.m.nation!" the Canadian shot back. "Considering the amount of gin I"ve had these past two months, you"ve got nothing to complain about!"
Meanwhile I was examining this unusual bird. Conseil was not mistaken.
Tipsy from that potent juice, our bird of paradise had been reduced to helplessness. It was unable to fly. It was barely able to walk.
But this didn"t alarm me, and I just let it sleep off its nutmeg.
This bird belonged to the finest of the eight species credited to Papua and its neighboring islands. It was a "great emerald,"
one of the rarest birds of paradise. It measured three decimeters long.
Its head was comparatively small, and its eyes, placed near the opening of its beak, were also small. But it offered a wonderful mixture of hues: a yellow beak, brown feet and claws, hazel wings with purple tips, pale yellow head and scruff of the neck, emerald throat, the belly and chest maroon to brown. Two strands, made of a horn substance covered with down, rose over its tail, which was lengthened by long, very light feathers of wonderful fineness, and they completed the costume of this marvelous bird that the islanders have poetically named "the sun bird."
How I wished I could take this superb bird of paradise back to Paris, to make a gift of it to the zoo at the Botanical Gardens, which doesn"t own a single live specimen.
"So it must be a rarity or something?" the Canadian asked, in the tone of a hunter who, from the viewpoint of his art, gives the game a pretty low rating.
"A great rarity, my gallant comrade, and above all very hard to capture alive. And even after they"re dead, there"s still a major market for these birds. So the natives have figured out how to create fake ones, like people create fake pearls or diamonds."
"What!" Conseil exclaimed. "They make counterfeit birds of paradise?"
"Yes, Conseil."
"And is master familiar with how the islanders go about it?"
"Perfectly familiar. During the easterly monsoon season, birds of paradise lose the magnificent feathers around their tails that naturalists call "below-the-wing" feathers. These feathers are gathered by the fowl forgers and skillfully fitted onto some poor previously mutilated parakeet. Then they paint over the suture, varnish the bird, and ship the fruits of their unique labors to museums and collectors in Europe."
"Good enough!" Ned Land put in. "If it isn"t the right bird, it"s still the right feathers, and so long as the merchandise isn"t meant to be eaten, I see no great harm!"
But if my desires were fulfilled by the capture of this bird of paradise, those of our Canadian huntsman remained unsatisfied. Luckily, near two o"clock Ned Land brought down a magnificent wild pig of the type the natives call "bari-outang." This animal came in the nick of time for us to bag some real quadruped meat, and it was warmly welcomed.
Ned Land proved himself quite gloriously with his gunshot.
Hit by an electric bullet, the pig dropped dead on the spot.
The Canadian properly skinned and cleaned it, after removing half a dozen cutlets destined to serve as the grilled meat course of our evening meal. Then the hunt was on again, and once more would be marked by the exploits of Ned and Conseil.
In essence, beating the bushes, the two friends flushed a herd of kangaroos that fled by bounding away on their elastic paws.
But these animals didn"t flee so swiftly that our electric capsules couldn"t catch up with them.
"Oh, professor!" shouted Ned Land, whose hunting fever had gone to his brain. "What excellent game, especially in a stew!
What a supply for the Nautilus! Two, three, five down!
And just think how we"ll devour all this meat ourselves, while those numbskulls on board won"t get a shred!"
In his uncontrollable glee, I think the Canadian might have slaughtered the whole horde, if he hadn"t been so busy talking!
But he was content with a dozen of these fascinating marsupials, which make up the first order of aplacental mammals, as Conseil just had to tell us.
These animals were small in stature. They were a species of those "rabbit kangaroos" that usually dwell in the hollows of trees and are tremendously fast; but although of moderate dimensions, they at least furnish a meat that"s highly prized.
We were thoroughly satisfied with the results of our hunting.
A gleeful Ned proposed that we return the next day to this magic island, which he planned to depopulate of its every edible quadruped.