“Frightened to death by a humming bird!” he whooped. “_Yow-yowri!_ Well, it’s time I shoved along and accomplished something!” He pushed his way through the thickets, defiantly now, hoping that something _would_ turn up worth shooting at. Presently he came to a little open glade grown up with saw grass, with a small pond in the center of it. As he burst through the thicket two animals rose up out of the grass across the pond and went jumping off, sailing over the yellow field in long leaps that carried them twenty feet to the bound. Nicky did not have to be told that they were wallabys, the New Guinea species of kangaroo. He whipped out his long-barreled Officer’s Model and poised its fine sights on the rearmost wallaby. He had learned through long practice that his revolver was as good as a rifle at any range up to seventy-five yards, if well handled, and he depended on it for all big game. As the gun barked, the wallaby pitched down, rolling over and over like a rabbit in the saw grass, its long hind legs kicking convulsively. The other wallaby soared in a frantic series of hops, and reached the jungle before the wavering sights of the revolver could be steadied on it. Nicky started to dash through the grass around the pond after his prize, but the sudden soar of a small animal like a flying squirrel, but much larger, brought him to a full stop. It had left the topmost branches of a tall thorn tree on the edge of the jungle and had volplaned downward in a long flight across the opening. Nicky’s ready shotgun sprang to shoulder and he covered it in full flight and pulled trigger. The creature fell into the grass as he blew the smoke from his barrel and slipped in another shell. A single step forward developed more life, for a large green grasshopper like a katydid sprang from its depths, made a short flight, and lit near by. It had a peculiar shield like a leaf curved backward over its head. Nicky whipped off his helmet to capture it, for he recognized the great shielded grasshopper of New Guinea and he knew that Dwight would want it. He crept forward stealthily, when his eye was attracted by the bright flash of orange and black where a medium-sized bird was hopping from branch to branch in the thicket to his right. One glance at the quantity of long feathers of an intense orange hue that adorned its neck told him that it was the rare paradise oriole, closely allied to the true paradise birds and a specimen of the utmost value to the curator.