a crack from me."

Those fishing trips were an intense pleasure to Carey, for there was so
much that was novel. Now fish with scales as brilliant as the feathers
of humming-birds would be caught; now the blacks would be warning their
companions to beware of the black and yellow or yellow snakes.

"Mumkull--kill a fellow," Black Jack said, and to emphasise his meaning
he put out a hand in the water towards one of the basking serpents,
snatched it back as if bitten, and went through a regular pantomime
indicative of his sufferings. First he drew up one leg, then the other,
threw himself on his back in the bottom of the canoe, kicked out, threw
his arms in the air, straightened himself out, rolled over, and then,
with a wonderful display of strength, curved his spine and sprang over
back again, repeating the performance, which was wonderfully like the
flopping of a freshly caught roach in a punt, even to the beating of the
tail, which was here represented by the man's legs. By degrees this
grew more slow; then there was a flap at intervals, finishing with one
heavy rap, and he lay quite still as if dead.

"Dat a way," he cried, raising his head and grinning hugely. "Mumkull--
kill a fellow."

But Carey's greatest treats were upon the hunting expeditions made by
the beachcomber's blacks ashore to obtain fresh meat in the way of a
delicacy or two for their chief and something substantial for
themselves.

One day Carey was gazing rather disconsolately at the shore and
wondering when the time would come for him and his companions to be free
again, when Black Jack bounded to his side, making the boy start round,
to find the man in a menacing attitude, his teeth bare, eyes wide open
displaying scarcely anything but the whites, for he was squinting so
horribly that his pupils had disappeared behind his thick nose, while
the club he held was quivering as if he were about to strike. The
suddenness of the approach startled Carey for the moment, and he leaped
back, but the reaction came as quickly, and with doubled fist he rushed
at the black; but the latter was too quick, leaping aside, and Carey's
second attack, which took the form of a flying kick, was also
unsuccessful.

Black Jack's face was now covered with a series of good-tempered
wrinkles.

"Come 'long," he cried. "Kedge bird--wallaby. Be ticky-ticky, up a
tree."

"Be ticky-ticky?" said the boy, wonderingly.

"Ess. Come 'long; be ticky-ticky. Buzz-zz-uz