Read Ebook: The monster-hunters by Rolt Wheeler Francis

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Ebook has 1523 lines and 60394 words, and 31 pages

here. It's a good thing for you that you're so far ahead in your school work."

Perry looked up surprisedly.

"How's that?" he asked.

His father smiled quietly.

"I saw your headmaster the other day," he answered. "You don't suppose you'd have had any chance to go if I found that you had been neglecting your school work during the winter, do you?"

"But the exams?"

"Are all arranged. The headmaster said your term marks were high enough to let an average examination pass you easily. The questions are to be given me in a sealed envelope, I shall hand them to your uncle, and at some convenient time, probably on board ship, you're to do the exams and your uncle will forward them to the school with a letter saying that they were done in his presence and without any assistance from him. A certain percentage is to be taken off for irregularity, but unless you fall down hopelessly on the papers, I feel sure that you will pass for the year."

"You've thought of everything, Father," rejoined the boy, gratefully.

"Well, son," was the response, "it's up to you to make the most of it. The arrangements are a little sudden, but you can be ready in a couple of weeks, can't you?"

"I could be ready in half an hour," Perry exclaimed enthusiastically.

"That's rather precipitate," his father commented, as they turned into the street leading to the office, near the corner where the two generally parted, "we won't ask anything as rapid as that. But two weeks from to-day, you're to start for New York, and there you'll board the steamer for the Mediterranean. It's a great chance for you, my boy."

During those two weeks Perry walked on air. He was the envy of all his boy chums and by the time he was ready to start he had been asked for so many fossil remains by his boy friends that he would have had to discover a prehistoric cemetery in order to fulfill all the requests. But the boy had been thoroughly trained not to make promises he could not keep, and thus he saved himself from many an awkward refusal later.

When the fated day came round, when he had seen his pith helmet and other parts of his tropical outfit safely packed, Perry was so excited that he could hardly talk, and his farewells were little more than stammering interjections. His mother was disappointed, for she expected some evidence of emotion, but the old merchant knew boy nature better and was well pleased over the lad's eagerness to be off. Indeed, despite his years, the financier envied his son and would have liked nothing better than to have been able to jump aboard the train with him. But he contented himself with a hearty handshake--quite a grown-up one, purposely--and stepped into his motor-car resignedly, as the departing train rounded a distant curve.

As the through express thundered past station after station, Perry had one swift pang of regret to think of the school commencement and the games he would miss, but when he thought of what was ahead of him, the thrill of doing real things came over him like a tornado and swept aside all thoughts of school. That his learning was not over, but only just beginning, he thoroughly realized, for along this line had been his father's parting words:

"In some fields, son," he had said to Perry, "you can succeed by making a bluff, but in scientific work you've got to know, and to know that you know. Science is real and big, all the way through."

Dr. Hunt met the boy at the New York terminal. Although uncle and nephew knew each other in the vague way that relatives do, neither had ever thought of the other as taking a place in his life, and each anticipated the meeting with great interest.

The professor's first thought was that the boy looked rugged and sturdy, and Perry's first thought was that there was far more of command in his uncle's manner than he remembered. Recalling his father's advice against "bluffing," Perry was careful in his statements as he chatted with his uncle on the way to the steamer and consequently gave a favorable impression.

"Your father tells me you know considerable paleontology," said the leader of the expedition.

"I've always been keen on fossils," the boy replied, "and so I've managed to pick up little bits about it. But of course I haven't really studied; not the way I hope to, some day."

"You know your geological periods, I suppose?"

"Backwards!" replied Perry confidently, for he knew that he really did know them, and his friend in the Museum had taught him to see how important was this groundwork in any fossil studies that he might do. So, when his uncle, in a few sharp questions, put him on the rack, Perry came out of the ordeal well, because he had only claimed to know exactly the things he did know. As a result, he won from the accurate and careful scientist the golden opinion:

"I shouldn't be surprised, lad, if we made a paleontologist out of you, after all."

To an inland boy, such as Perry, every detail of the steamer was of interest. Some of the members of the expedition, who had rather dreaded the idea of a boy as a member of their party, were most cordial to the lad when he showed himself at the same time quiet and eager to learn. To one of the younger men, Antoine Marcq, a Belgian scientist, Perry was especially attracted, and they chummed up right away. Antoine told him that he had a young brother, about Perry's age. The Belgian proved a most delightful companion, full of stories and with a true scientific imagination. Until the steamer drew clear of the harbor and began to meet the bobbles of a choppy sea, he regaled the lad with adventures from ports all over the world, all of which, it seemed from his yarns, he had visited at some time or other. But the afore-mentioned bobbles gave the ship a wriggling motion of which the boy, at first slightly, then seriously, disapproved, and for the next couple of days even Antoine's yarns lost their interest. It was the lad's first sea voyage.

The first morning that he got over his sea-sickness sufficiently to eat a hearty breakfast, which was the third day out, the lad's attention was attracted to a large gull which was swooping in circles about the masthead. He pointed to it.

"What is that, Antoine?" he asked. "A booby?"

For he remembered having read somewhere about a booby having been the name of a sea-bird and the word had stuck in his memory.

"A booby, oh no, oh no," said Antoine, with a doubling of the negative that was a marked characteristic in his speech, "no booby as far north as this! It is one of the sea-gulls, a black-backed gull."

"I thought all birds that flew over the sea were sea-gulls," remarked Perry.

"Not at all, not at all," replied the other. "I show you in a minute." He paused. "See?" he added, pointing to a bird a little smaller than the gull that had attracted Perry's attention. "That is a cousin of the 'booby.' It is a gannet. If you look, you can see that his neck is longer and that his chest looks different from the black-backed gull. That is because he has a long breastbone and the ribs are set in at a different angle, so, when he plunges into the water with a big splash after a fish, he does not hurt himself when he hits the water. You can dive?"

"Oh, yes," answered Perry, "I'm quite a decent swimmer."

"You know that when you dive, if you hit the water 'smack,' it hurts?"

"You bet it does."

"The gannet drops suddenly, and so the pointed breastbone does for the diving bird what you do when you put your hands in front of you. It divides the water."

"That ought to make them good fish-catchers, I should think."

"The very best, the very best," agreed Antoine. "The gannet is a relative of the cormorant, and you know the Chinese train the cormorants to go and fish for them."

"And bring back the fish?"

"Yes, yes."

"I should think the cormorant would eat the fish himself."

"No, no, he cannot. The Chinese put a ring around the bottom of his neck so that he cannot swallow."

"That's a great scheme," the boy commented. "But why doesn't the cormorant fly away?"

"He is trained. Why doesn't your dog run away?"

"Training, I guess," agreed Perry after a moment's pause. "But a big bird seems different, somehow. How do they train them, Antoine?"

"This way. They take the eggs of the cormorant, and set them to hatch under a hen."

"The ordinary hen--" interrupted the boy.

"Yes, yes, the hen. As soon as the little cormorants are big enough to feed, they take them to a pond where there are a lot of small fish. They tie a string to one leg of the bird. When a cormorant catches a fish, the trainer whistles very loudly and then pulls in the bird by the string. He takes the fish and lets him go again. After a little time, when the bird hears the whistle, he comes back to the boat. It is pleasanter to swim back or to fly back than to be tugged by a string.

"When the bird is big, they take him to the sea and he catches the fish, returning to the boat at the whistle. He cannot swallow the fish because of the ring. At the end of the day the cormorant gets all the fish he has caught that are not good for the market, and he keeps on catching all the day long because he is always hungry."

"Somebody ought to start a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Birds," put in Perry with a grin.

"Why? It does not hurt the cormorant. He gets plenty to eat. It is not cruelty to make a bird work, any more than to make a horse work. But if you want to see something in Nature that is like a bully, look there!"

The young scientist pointed over the port quarter of the steamer, where a flock of terns was wheeling and dipping.

"What are those?" the boy queried.

"Terns," the other answered. "Very much like gulls, only that they are slenderer and have forked tails."

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