Rob Harlow's Adventures Part 2

"You're not nice-looking, Shaddy," said Rob, gazing at him thoughtfully; "but I never notice it now, and--well, yes, you are always very kind to me. I like you," added the boy frankly.

Shaddy's one eye flashed, and he did not look half so ferocious.

"Thank ye, my lad," he cried, stretching out his great hand. "Would you mind laying your fist in there and saying that again?"

Rob laughed, looked full in the man's eye, and laid his hand in the broad palm, but wished the next moment that he had not, for the fingers closed over his with a tremendous grip.

"I say, you hurt!" he cried.

"Ay, I suppose so," said Shaddy, loosing his grip a little. "I forgot that. Never mind. It was meant honest, and Mr Brazier shan't repent bringing me."

"I don't think he does now," said Rob. "He told me yesterday that you were a staunch sort of fellow."

"Ah! thank ye," said Shaddy, smiling more broadly; and his ruffianly, piratical look was superseded by a frank aspect which transformed him.

"You see, Mr Harlow, I'm a sort of a cocoa-nutty fellow, all s.h.a.ggy husk outside. You find that pretty tough till you get through it, and then you ain't done, for there's the sh.e.l.l, and that's hard enough to make you chuck me away; but if you persevere with me, why, there inside that sh.e.l.l is something that ain't peach, nor orange, nor soft banana, but not such very bad stuff after all."

"I should think it isn't," cried Rob. "I say, it would make some of our boys at home stare who only know cocoa-nut all hard and woody, and the milk sickly enough to throw away, if they could have one of the delicious creamy nuts that we get here."

"Yes, my lad, they're not bad when you're thirsty, nor the oranges either."

"Delicious!" cried Rob.

"Ay. I've lived for weeks at a time on nothing but oranges and cocoanuts, and a bit of fish caught just now and then with my hands, when I've been exploring like and hunting for gold."

"For gold? Is there gold about here?"

"Lots, my lad, washed down the rivers. I've often found it."

"Then you ought to be rich."

The man chuckled.

"Gold sounds fine, sir, but it's a great cheat. My 'sperience of gold has always been that it takes two pounds' worth of trouble to get one pound's worth o' metal. So that don't pay. Seems to me from what I hear that it's the same next door with dymons."

"Next door?"

"Well, up yonder in Brazil. I should say your Mr Brazier will do better collecting vegetables, if so be he can find any one to buy 'em afterwards. What do you call 'em--orkards?"

"Orchids," said Rob.

"But who's going to buy 'em?"

"Oh, I don't know," said Rob, laughing. "There are plenty of people glad to get them in England for their hothouses. Besides, there are the botanists always very eager to see any new kinds."

"Better try and get some new kinds o' birds. There's lots here with colours that make your eyes ache. They'd be better than vegetables.

Why, right up north--I've never seen any down here--there's little humpy birds a bit bigger than a cuckoo, with tails a yard long and b.r.e.a.s.t.s ever so much ruddier than robins', and all the rest of a green that s.h.i.+nes as if the feathers were made of copper and gold mixed."

"Mr Brazier hasn't come after birds."

"Well then, look here; I can put him up to a better way of making money.

What do you say to getting lots of things to send to the 'Logical Gardens? Lions and tigers and monkeys--my word, there are some rum little beggars of monkeys out here."

"No lions in America, Shaddy."

"Oh, ain't there, my lad? I'll show you plenty, leastwise what we calls lions here. I'll tell you what--snakes and serpents. They'd give no end for one of our big water-snakes. My word, there are some whackers up these rivers."

"How big?" said Rob, hiding a smile--"two hundred feet long?"

"Gammon!" growled Shaddy; "I ain't one of your romancing sort. Truth's big enough for me. So's the snakes I've seen. I've had a skin of one fellow six-and-twenty foot long, and as opened out nearly nine foot laid flat. I dessay it stretched a bit in the skinning, but it shrunk a bit in the drying, so that was about its size, and I've seen more than one that must have been longer, though it's hard to measure a twisting, twirling thing with your eye when it's worming its way through mud and water and long gra.s.s."

"Water-snakes, eh?" said Rob, who was beginning to be impressed by the man's truth.

"Ay, water-snakes. They're anti-bilious sort of things, as some folks calls 'em--can't live out of the water and dies in."

He laughed merrily as he said this.

"That's true enough, my lad, for they wants both land and water. I've seen 'em crawl into a pool and curl themselves up quite comfortable at the bottom and lie for hours together. You could see 'em with the water clear as cryschial. Other times they seem to like to be in the sun.

But wait a bit, and I'll show 'em to you, ugly beggars, although they're not so very dangerous after all. Always seemed as scared of me as I was of--hist! don't move. Just cast your eye round a bit to starboard and look along the sh.o.r.e."

Rob turned his eye quickly, and saw a couple of almost naked Indians standing on an open patch beneath the trees, each holding a long, thin lance in his hand. They were watching the water beneath the bank very attentively, as if in search of something, just where quite a field of lilies covered the river, leaving only a narrow band clear, close to the bank.

"Don't take no notice of 'em," said Shaddy; "they're going fis.h.i.+ng."

"Wish them better luck than I've had," said Rob. "Fis.h.i.+ng! Those are their rods, then; I thought they were spears."

"So they are, my lad," whispered Shaddy. "They're off. No fish there."

As he spoke the two living-bronze figures disappeared among the trees as silently as they had come.

"Of course there are no fish," said Rob wearily as he drew in his baitless line, the strong gimp hook being quite bare. "Hullo, here comes Joe!"

CHAPTER TWO.

CATCHING A DORADO.

For at that minute a slight sound from the schooner made him cast his eyes in that direction and see a lithe-looking lad of about his own age sliding down a rope into a little boat alongside, and then, casting off the painter, the boat drifted with the current to that in which Rob was seated.

"Had your nap?" said Rob.

"Yes," replied the lad in good English, but with a slight Italian accent, as he fastened the little dinghy and stepped on board. "How many have you caught?"

Rob winced, and Shaddy chuckled, while Giovanni Ossolo, son of the captain of the Italian river schooner _Tessa_, looked sharply from one to the other, as if annoyed that the rough fellow should laugh at him.

"Shall I show him all you've caught, sir?" said Shaddy.

"Haven't had a touch, Joe," said Rob, an intimacy of a month on the river having shortened the other's florid Italian name as above.