George Fenn - Jungle and Stream - or, The Adventures of Two Boys in Siam

"Charlie is my darling, my darling, my darling!" was sung in a good, clear, boyish tenor, and then the singer stopped, to say impatiently, —

"What nonsense it is! My head seems stuffed full of Scotch songs, – 'Wee bit sangs,' as the doctor calls them. Seems funny that so many Scotch people should come out here to the East. I suppose it's because the Irish all go to the West, that they may get as far apart as they can, so that there may not be a fight. I say, though, I want my breakfast."

The speaker, to wit Harry Kenyon, sauntered up to the verandah of the bungalow and looked in at the window of the cool, shaded room, where a man-servant in white drill jacket and trousers was giving the finishing touches to the table.

"Breakfast ready, Mike?"

"Yes, sir; coffee's boiled, curry's made."

"Curry again?"

"Yes, Master Harry; curry again. That heathen of a cook don't believe a meal's complete without curry and rice."

"But I thought we were going to have fried fish this morning."

"So did I, sir. I told him plainly enough; but he won't understand, and he's curried the lot."

"How tiresome!"

"I should like to curry his hide, Master Harry, but it's leather-coloured already. Never mind; there's some fresh potted meat."

"Bother potted meat! I'm sick of potted meat. Look here, next time I bring home any fresh fish you go into the kitchen and cook them yourself."

"What, me go and meddle there! Look here, Master Harry, I'll go with you fishing, and wade into that sticky red mud if you want me to; or I'll go with you shooting or collecting, and get my eyes scratched out in the jungle, and risk being clawed by tigers, or stung by snakes, or squeedged flat by an elephant's neat little foot; but I'm not going to interfere with old Ng's pots and pans. Why, he'd put some poison in my vittles."

"Nonsense!"

"He would, sir, sure as I stand here. He looks wonderful gentle and smiling, with that Chinese face of his; but I know he can bite."

"Poor old Ng; he's as harmless as his name. N. G. – Ng."

"Name? I don't call that a name, Master Harry. Fag end of a pig's grunt; that's about what that is."

"Here, I want my breakfast. Isn't father nearly dressed?"

"No, sir; he hasn't begun to shave yet, and he won't be down for another quarter of an hour."

"Call me when he comes," said the lad, and he went off down the garden again, towards the river which flowed swiftly at the bottom, where the bamboo landing-stage had been made, with its high-peaked attap, or palm-leaf roof. It was all bamboo. Big canes were driven into the mud for supports, others for pillars and beams, and the floor was of smaller ones, split and laid close together, and then bound in their places with long lengths of the rotan cane which grew so plentifully in the jungle, running up the great forest trees, and after reaching the top, going on growing till it swung down by the yard, and waited till the wind blew it into the next tree, where it held on by its thorns, and went on growing to any length.

The garden was beautiful in its wildness, the trees having been left for shade; and John Kenyon, the East India merchant, who had settled far up one of the rivers of Siam ten years before, after the death of his wife, had found out from long experience that he who tries to make an English garden in a tropical country has worry for crops, while he who encourages the native growths makes his home a place of beauty.

So Harry Kenyon sauntered down, keeping out of the hot rays of the early morning sun – hot enough, though it was only six, for people rise early in the East – and made his way to the bamboo platform beneath which the river, here about a hundred yards wide, looked like a stream whose waters had been transformed into a decoction of coffee and chicory, with the milk left out, or, as Harry once said, muddy soup.

The creepers, crowded with many-coloured blossoms, hung down from the trees and ran over the roof, forming, with the dry palm-leaves, nesting and hiding places for plenty of natural history objects from the neighbouring jungle. Birds nested there, and rats and snakes came birds'-nesting, while lizards of various kinds, from the little active fly-catchers to the great shrieking tokay, found that roof an admirable resting-place.

There were sundry rustlings overhead as Harry stepped on to the slippery, squeaking, yielding bamboos; but use is second nature, and ten years in such company, without reckoning the inhabitants of the jungle, had made the boy so familiar with many of these things that he looked upon them with a calm contempt.

As a matter of course he would have swarmed up a tree fast enough at the sight of a tiger or elephant in either of the forest tracks, or, to use Mike's expression, have made himself scarce if he had encountered a cobra, or seen one of the great boas swaying to and fro from the gigantic limb of a tree. Even at the moment of stepping upon the covered-in summerhouse-like landing-stage, with its fishing-rods laid up overhead in the bamboo rafters, he shrank a little, and then angrily bared his teeth as he stood gazing down at the water a dozen yards away.

"You beast!" he hissed. "Oh, if you'd only stay there while I fetched a gun! Oh, yes, it's all very well to wink one eye at me; I'd make you wink both."

It seemed odd that the lad should address himself like that to a piece of rugged, gnarled tree-trunk floating slowly down the flashing river; but, as aforesaid, Harry Kenyon had been up the country in Siam ever since he was quite a little fellow, and had been accustomed to have the wild creatures of the forest for pets and companions. Where boys at home had had cats or dogs, Harry had more than once petted a tiger cub; lizards had been as common with him as white mice with English lads. Then he had kept squirrels, snakes, monkeys, and birds to any extent. Moreover, he had once contrived to keep alive, until it became wild instead of tame a hideous-looking creature which lived in a fenced-in patch of sand with half a sugar hogshead sunk level with the ground, provided with a central heap formed of an old tree-root, and filled up with water. This creature strangely resembled the efts or newts so common in some ponds, but magnified many times, so that there was no cause for surprise that the boy should speak as he did to the tree-trunk, for his experienced eyes had seen at a glance that this was no half-rotten stem torn out from the bank by the flooded river. He had recognised the two horny prominences over the eyes, and their furtive, ugly gleam, so that he was not at all surprised when one end of the trunk moved slowly, in a wavy fashion, and the object began to part the water.

"Yes, I thought you'd soon go," said Harry. "Stop a minute, though."

He stepped gently back into the garden and snatched up a piece of stone about as big as two fists, from a heap of rockwork, stole back to the bamboo floor till he could just see over the edge, keeping his movements hidden, and launched out the heavy piece of spar with so good an aim that, after curving through the air just above the surface of the water, it fell with a dull thud right in the centre of the trunk.

The effect was instantaneous. A long muzzle with gaping jaws rose out of the water for a moment, there was a tremendous wallowing which made the water foam, and then a great serrated tail rose several feet above the surface, quivered in a wavy way, delivered a sounding slap on the top of the water, and disappeared.

"I thought that would make you wag your tail, old gentleman. What a whopper! Nearly twenty feet long, and as thick as thick. Pull a man in? Why, it would pull in a young elephant. Oh, how I do hate crocs!"