After the camp had fed for the night, the curator came over to Nicky’s fly and squatted there, with his notebook spread out. He first laid off their base line in a small number of the blue-line squares on a page of the notebook. From the ends of this he drew the angles they had taken with the compass. They formed two thin, wedge-shaped triangles, slanting away from the base line in opposite directions. Counting the blue squares between the outer points of these two triangles gave the distance between the knob and the banyan tree compared with the base line, from which it was easy to figure the actual distance. Laying this out on his map, they were ready for the climb next day. It did not seem possible to Nicky that they could climb up a new mountain, clear up to that banyan tree, without a series of hair-raising adventures, but, strange to say, it was done! The boy began to study out this phenomenon, finally, so unusual did it seem, and he found the secret of it lay in the curator’s method. He was after a plane-table survey, now, and so he let all the wild creatures alone--and they let him alone! Cassowaries and brush turkeys ran off, squawking cackles through the swales of saw grass, but the curator heeded them not. Wallabys leapt for cover, and were let go free. They passed a high pandanus with a tree kangaroo crawling in its top, but no Nicky was detailed to go up after him. Snakes of high and low degree, fascinating in the extreme to Nicky, went squirming on their ways unchased. Even a cuscus of a new kind was passed by unmolested. Nicky perceived that trouble would not hunt you, if you did not seek it, in the New Guinea jungle. In a surprisingly short time they were at the foot of the banyan tree and truing up all the points on the map with intersecting lines drawn from their position. “Besides which, we have added a lot of stuff to the north which I can correct with coast surveys,” concluded the curator as he folded the pocket notebook. “I reckon this map will admit me to the Royal Geographic and entitle me to a whole alphabet tacked on after my name--much that I care!” he laughed. “The thing for us to do now is to push on and visit the pygmies, and then for Cinnabar Mountain! Sorry this survey did not show it up. Must be farther on to the south.”