“What is it?” said Bevis.
“I saw a savage.”
“Where?”
“In the sedges on the shore there,” pointing across the weeds. “I saw his head—he had no hat on.”
“Quite sure?” Bevis looked, but could not see anything.
“Almost very nearly quite sure.”
They watched the sedges a long time, but saw nothing.
“Was it Charlie, or Val, or Cecil?”
“No, I don’t think so,” said Mark.
“They could not get round either,” said Bevis. “If they crossed the Nile like we did, they could not get round.”
“No.”
“It could not have been anybody.”
“I thought it was; but perhaps it was a crow flew up—it looked black.”
“Sure to have been a crow. The sedges do not move.”
“No, it was a mistake—they couldn’t get here.”
They went on again and found a wild bullace.
“This is the most wonderful island there ever was,” said Bevis; “there’s always something new on or about it. The swan—I shall shoot the swan. No, most likely it’s sacred, and the king of the country would have us hunted down if we killed it.”
“And tied to a stake and tortured.”
“Melted lead poured into our mouths, because we shot the sacred swan with leaden bullets.”
“Awful. No, don’t shoot it. There are currant-trees on the island too—I’ve seen them, and there’s a gooseberry bush up in the top of an old willow that I saw,” said Mark. “Of course there are bananas; are there any breadfruit-trees here?”
“Certain to be some somewhere.”
“Melons and oranges.”
“Of course, and grapes—those are grapes,” pointing to bryony-berries, “and pomegranates and olives.”
“Yams and everything.”
“Everything. I wonder if Pan will bark this time—I wonder if anything is gone,” said Bevis as they reached the stockade. Pan did not bark, and there was nothing missing.
They set to work now to make some tea and roast the moorhens, having determined to have tea and supper together. The tea was ready long before the moorhens, and by the time they had finished the moon was shining brightly, though there were some flecks of cloud. They could not of course play cards, so Bevis got out his journal; and having put down about the honey-bird, and the swan, and the discoveries they had made, went on to make a list of the trees and plants on the island, and the birds that came to it. They had seen a small flock of seven or eight missel-thrushes pass in the afternoon, and Mark said that all the birds came from the unknown river, and flew on towards the north-north-west. This was the direction of the waste, or wild pasture.
“Then there must be mainland that way,” said Bevis; “and I expect it is inhabited and ploughed, and sown with corn, for that’s what the birds like at this time of the year.”
“And the other way—where they come from—must be a pathless jungle,” said Mark. “And they rest here a moment as they cross the ocean. It is too far for one fly.”
“My journal ought to be written on palm leaves,” said Bevis, “a book like this is not proper: let’s get some leaves to-morrow and see if we can write on them.”
“Don’t shipwrecked people write on their shirts,” said Mark, “and people who are put in prison?”
“So they do—of course: but our shirts are flannel, how stupid!”
“I know,” said Mark, “there’s the collars.” He went into the hut and brought out their linen collars, which they had ceased to wear. Bevis tried to write on these, but the ink ran and sank in, and it did not do at all.
“Wrong ink,” he said, “we must make some of charcoal—lampblack—and oil. You use it just like paint, and you can’t blot it, you must wait till it dries on.”
“No oil,” said Mark. “I wanted to rub the gun with some and looked, but there is none—we forgot it.”
“Yellow-hammers,” said Bevis, turning to his journal again; “what are yellow-hammers?”
“Unknown birds,” said Mark. “We don’t know half the birds—nobody has ever put any name to them, nobody has ever seen them: call them, let’s see—gold-dust birds—”
“And greenfinches?”
“Ky-wee—Ky-wee,” said Mark, imitating the greenfinches’ call.
“That will do capital—Ky-wees,” said Bevis.
“There’s a horse-matcher here,” said Mark. The horse-matcher is the bold hedge-hawk or butcher bird. “The one that sticks the humble-bees on the thorns.”
“Bee-stickers—no, bee-killers: that’s down,” said Bevis. Besides which he wrote down nettle-creepers (white-throats), goldfinch, magpie, chaffinch, tree-climber, kestrel-hawk, linnets, starlings, parrots, and parrakeets. “I shall get up early to-morrow morning,” he said. “I’ll load the matchlock to-night, I want to shoot a heron.”
He loaded the matchlock with ball, and soon afterwards they let the curtain down at the door, and went to bed, Bevis repeating “Three o’clock, three o’clock, three o’clock,” at first aloud and then to himself, so as to set the clock of his mind to wake him at that hour. Not long after they were asleep, Pan as usual went out for his ramble.
Bevis’s clock duly woke him about three, and lifting his head he could see the light through the chinks of the curtain, but he was half inclined to go to sleep again, and stayed another quarter of an hour. Then he resolutely bent himself to conquer sleep, slipped off the bed, and put on his boots quietly, not to wake Mark. Taking the matchlock, he went out and found that it was light, the light of the moon mingling with the dawn, but it was misty. A dry vapour, which left no dew, filled the wood so that at a short distance the path seemed to go into and lose itself in the mist.
Bevis went all round the island, following the path they had made. On the Serendib side he neither saw nor heard anything, but as he came back up the other shore, a lark began to sing far away on the mainland, and afterwards he heard the querulous cry of a peewit. He walked very cautiously, for this was the most likely side to find a heron, but whether they heard his approach or saw him, for they can see almost as far as a man when standing, by lifting their long necks, he did not find any. When he reached the spot where the “blaze” began that led to Kangaroo Hill, he fancied he saw something move in the water a long way off through the mist.
He stopped behind a bush and watched, and in a minute he was sure it was something, perhaps a cluck. He set up the rest, blew the match, opened the lid of the pan, knelt down and looked along the barrel till he had got it in a line with the object. If the gun had been loaded with shot he would have fired at once, for though indistinct through the vapour he thought it was within range, but as he had ball, he wanted to see if it would come nearer, as he knew he could not depend on a bullet over thirty yards. Intent on the object, which seemed to be swimming, he began to be curious to know what it was, for it had now come a little closer, and he could see it was not a duck, for it had no neck; it was too big for a rat: it must be the creature that visited the island and took their food—the idea of shooting this animal and surprising Mark with it delighted him.
He aimed along the barrel, and got the sight exactly on the creature, then he thought he would let it get a few yards closer, then he depressed the muzzle just a trifle, remembering that it was coming towards him, and if he did not aim somewhat in front the ball would go over.
Now it was near enough he was sure—he aimed steadily, and his finger began to draw the match down when he caught sight of the creature’s eye. It was Pan.
“Pan!” said Bevis. He got up, and the spaniel swam steadily towards him.
“Where have you been, sir?” he said sternly. Pan crouched at his feet, not even shaking himself first. “You rascal—where have you been?”
Bevis was inclined to thrash him, he was so angry at the mistake he had almost made, angry with the dog because he had almost shot him. But Pan crouched so close to the ground under his very feet that he did not strike him.
“It was you who frightened the herons,” he said. Pan instantly recognised the change in the tone of his voice, and sprang up, jumped round, barked, and then shook the water from his shaggy coat. It was no use evidently now to think of shooting a heron, the spaniel had alarmed them and Bevis returned to the hut. He woke Mark, and told him.
“That’s why he’s so lazy in the morning,” said Mark. “Don’t you recollect? He sleeps all the morning.”
“And won’t eat anything.”
“I believe he’s been home,” said Mark. “Very likely Polly throws the bones out still by his house.”
“That’s it: you old glutton!” said Bevis.
Pan jumped on the bed, licked Mark, then jumped on Bevis’s knees, leaving the marks of his wet paws, to which the sand had adhered, then he barked and wagged his tail as much as to say, “Am I not clever?”
“O! yes,” said Mark, “you’re very knowing, but you won’t do that again.”
“No, that you won’t, sir,” said Bevis. “You’ll be tied up to-night.”
“Tight as tight,” said Mark. “Just think,” said Bevis. “He must have swum all down the channel we came up on the catamaran. Why it’s a hundred and fifty yards—”
“Or two hundred—only some of it is shallow. Perhaps he could bottom some part—”
“But not very far—and then run all the way home, and then all the way back, and then swim off again.”
“A regular voyage—and every night too.”
“You false old greedy Pan!”
“To leave us when we thought you were watching while we slept.”
“To desert your post, you faithless sentinel.” Pan looked from one to the other, as if he understood every word; he rolled up the whites of his eyes and looked so pious, they burst into fits of laughter. Pan wagged his tail and barked doubtfully; he had a shrewd suspicion they were laughing at him, and he did not like it. In fact, it was not only the flesh-pots that had attracted Pan from his post and led him to traverse the sea and land, and undergo such immense exertion, it was to speak to a friend of his.
They thought it of no use to go to sleep again now, so they lit the fire, and prepared the breakfast. By the time it was ready the mist had begun to clear; the sky became blue overhead, and while they were sitting at table under the awning, the first beams shot along over Serendib to their knees. Bevis said after breakfast he should practise with the matchlock, till he could hit something with the bullets. Mark wanted to explore the unknown river, and this they agreed to do, but the difficulty, as usual, was the dinner, there was nothing in their larder but bacon for rashers, and that was almost gone. Rashers become wearisome, ten times more wearisome when you have to cook them too.
Bevis said he must write his letter home—he was afraid he might have delayed too long—and take it to Loo to post that night, then he would write out a list of things, and Loo could buy them in the town, potted meats, and tongues, and soups, that would save cooking, only it was not quite proper. But Mark got over that difficulty by supposing that they fetched them from the wreck before it went to pieces.
So having had their swim, Bevis set up his target—a small piece of paper with a black spot, an inch in diameter, inked in the centre—on the teak, and fired his first shot at forty yards. The ball missed the teak-tree altogether, they heard it crash into a bramble bush some way beyond. Bevis went five yards nearer next time, and the bullet hit the tree low down, two feet beneath the bull’s-eye. Then he tried at thirty yards, and as before, when he practised, the ball hit the tree five or six inches lower than the mark. He tried four times at this distance, and every time the bullet struck beneath, so that it seemed as if the gun threw the ball low.
Some guns throw shot high, and some low, and he supposed the matchlock threw low. So he aimed the fifth time above the centre, and the ball grazed the bark of the tree on the right-hand side very much as Mark’s had done. Bevis stepped five yards nearer, if he could not hit it at twenty-five yards, he did not think it would be his fault. He aimed direct at the piece of paper, which was about five inches square, but the bullet struck three inches beneath, though nearly in a line, that is, a line drawn down through the middle of the paper would have passed a little to the left of the bullet hole.
This was better, so now he tried five yards closer, as it appeared to improve at every advance, and the ball now hit the paper at its lower right-hand edge. Examining the bullet holes in the bark of the tree, and noticing they were all low and all on the right-hand side, Bevis tried to think how that could be. He was quite certain that he had aimed perfectly straight, and as he was now so accustomed to the puff from the priming, that did not disconcert him. He kept his gaze steadily along the barrel till the actual explosion occurred, and the smoke from the muzzle obscured the view. It must be something in the gun itself.
Bevis put it on the rest unloaded, aimed along, and pulled the trigger, just as he would have done had he been really about to shoot. Nothing seemed wrong. As the heavy barrel was supported by the rest, and the stock pressed firm to his shoulder, pulling the trigger did not depress the muzzle as it often does with rifles.
He aimed again, and all at once he saw that the top sight must be the cause. The twisted wire was elevated about an eighth of an inch, and when he aimed he got the tip of the sight to bear on the paper, so that, instead of his glance passing level along the barrel, it rose slightly, from the breech to the top of the sight. The barrel was more than a yard long, so that when the top of the sight was in a line with the object, the muzzle was depressed exactly an eighth of an inch. An eighth of an inch at one yard, was a quarter at two yards, three eighths at three yards, at four half an inch, at eight it was an inch, at sixteen two inches, and at twenty-four three inches. This was very nearly enough of itself to account for the continual misses. In a gun properly made, the breech is thicker than the muzzle, and this greater thickness, like a slight elevation, corrects the sight; the gun, too, is adjusted. But the matchlock was the same thickness from end to end, and till now, had not been tried to determine the accuracy of the shooting.
Bevis got a file and filed down the sight, till it was only a sixteenth of an inch high, and then loading again, he aimed in such a way that the sight should cover the spot he wished to strike. He could see both sides of the sight, but the exact spot he wanted to hit was hidden by it. He fired, and the ball struck the paper about an inch below and two inches to the right of the centre. Next time the bullet hit very nearly on a level with the centre, but still on the right side.
This deflection he could not account for, the sight was in the proper position, and he was certain he aimed correctly. But at last he was compelled to acknowledge that there was a deflection, and persuaded himself to allow for it. He aimed the least degree to the left of the bull’s-eye—just the apparent width of the sight—and so that he could see the bull’s-eye on its right, the sight well up. He covered the bull’s-eye first with the sight, then slightly moved the barrel till the bull’s-eye appeared on the right side, just visible. The ball struck within half an inch of the bull’s-eye. Bevis was delighted.
He fired again, and the ball almost hit the very centre. Next time the bullet hit the preceding bullet, and was flattened on it. Then Mark tried, and the ball again went within a mere trifle of the bull’s-eye. Bevis had found out the individual ways of his gun. He did not like allowing for the deflection, but it was of no use, it had to be done, and he soon became reconciled to the concession. The matchlock had to be coaxed like the sailing-boat and our ironclads, like fortune and Frances.
Bevis was so delighted with the discovery, that he fired bullet after bullet, Mark trying every now and then, till the paper was riddled with bullet holes, and the teak-tree coated with lead. He thought he would try at a longer range, and so went back to thirty-five yards, but though he allowed a little more, and tried several ways, it was of no use, the bullet could not be relied on. At twenty yards they could hit the bull’s-eye, so that a sparrow, or even a wren, would not be safe; beyond that, errors crept in which Bevis could not correct.
These were probably caused by irregularities in the rough bore of the barrel, which was only an iron tube. When the powder exploded, the power of the explosion drove the ball, by sheer force, almost perfectly straight—point-blank—for twenty or twenty-five yards. Then the twist given by the inequalities of the bore, and gained by the ball by rubbing against them, began to tell; sometimes one way, sometimes another, and the ball became deflected and hardly twice the same way.
Bevis was obliged to be content with accuracy up to twenty, or at most twenty-five yards. At twenty he could hit an object the size of a sparrow; at twenty-five of a blackbird, after twenty-five he might miss his straw hat. Still it was a great triumph to have found out the secret, and to be certain of hitting even at that short range.
“Why, that’s how it was with Jack’s rifle!” he said. “It’s only a dodge you have to find out.”
“Of course it is; if he would lend it to us, we should soon master it,” said Mark. “And now let’s go to the unknown river.”