They erected a pole jerky frame that afternoon, and started a small drying fire under it, with long strips of the meat hanging in rows from the poles. Under the hot tropical sun the drying process went on apace, and soon the strips had become hard sticks of meat, greasy to the touch, hard and fibrous as wood. Steadily, also, the collections grew larger, box after box being filled with Dwight’s insects, Nicky’s reptiles, and the curator’s birds, while their big tin of bird skins was filled up and sealed. This main collection was to be a representative one of the whole region, after which only the rarer specimens need be sought for. On the third day the crate of collections boxes was cached, well hidden in a coral cave dug in the thickets. Meanwhile Sadok set about replenishing his supply of poisoned arrows, as his quiver of them had run low. He cut a quantity of the long thorns of the sago palm, and near the bottom of each he lashed a little cone of the corklike bark, so that it would just fit in the bore of the sumpitan, which was about three eighths of an inch in diameter. For poisoning the points he had a supply of the gummy juice of the upas tree, brought from Borneo and carefully kept in a small bamboo bottle which hung on his belt. Sadok was grouched. A faint but noisesome odor came from somewhere in the jungle, where his three heads were drying, but here, look you, had been two fights with the Outanatas since, and never a head for his personal collection! He was comforted, however, by the curator telling him that the upas vine, or some other representative of the strychnine family, grew in New Guinea, also, and that there would be plenty of ructions before he ever saw Borneo again. Their stay at this camp had given them not only a fair idea of the general features of the country, but of the weather as well. Under the west monsoon, its daily changes were as regular as clockwork. A fine cool dawn, followed by several hours of misty and clearing weather when it was good to be up and doing; then the heat of midday, when even the jungle people knew enough to take a siesta; and then, about four o’clock, a tropical thunderstorm of the utmost violence, lasting until eight at night, when the sky cleared off. They soon learned to plan their day according to these weather changes, and at length the party broke camp for the long trek into the mountains. They followed much the same trail as before, to the table-lands along the mountain flank, and stopped for lunch on the pebbly site of their capture by the war party of the Outanatas of the week before.