The curator lit his pipe and sat down to spy out the country, meanwhile, with his glasses. Presently Nicky passed him, carrying a long stick of lignum-vitæ with a length of string tied to its top. Just under it he had nailed a staple with the string looped through it. Nicky stalked along, jumping from rock to rock, his eyes intent below him. Presently he made a quick jab with the stick, pulled tight on the string, and then bore aloft a squirming red-and-black serpent, vainly winding itself around the end of the stick, while its head struck futilely at the empty air. “_Elaterus wallacei_--deadly poisonous,” announced Nicky, scientifically, holding up the creature for the curator to admire. “Isn’t he a beauty?” “Handsome!” agreed the curator, laughingly. “Not _quite_ so near, Nick--and I hope you’ve got tight hold of that string!” “Sure! Watch me make a specimen of him!” said the enthusiast, picking up a small club. He held the end of the snake stick down on a rock, where a few judgmatical raps reduced his captive to a scientific curiosity. Nicky dropped him in a small canvas bag which was pretty sure to have a few lizards and frogs and turtles in it, also, at any given time of day, and they set out upward again. A wide belt of century plants barred their way as they climbed higher. They grew in rank profusion, the great green leaves crossing in every direction, six feet high, and all armed with a dagger point at the tip and saw teeth along the blades. A man’s eyes would be worth nothing if he once got himself well into them. A detour of about a mile brought them around the century plants, and then came lava escarpments, steep and difficult to climb. Up them they swarmed, and found themselves on a gradually rising, arid table-land with sparse vegetation growing all about, and magnificent views out in every direction. Working southward, they finally came out on a bald knob that the curator had noted from the camp below and had determined to reach. Here the view was superb, wonderful--when you came to consider that all you looked at below was new and unmapped country. The curator’s pocket aneroid gave their height at a little over six thousand feet. Far over to the east could be made out the dim outlines of Geelvink Bay, with the limitless Pacific behind it. Below them, to the west, the slopes ran down sharply to the mangrove swamps that lined the shores fronting on the Banda Sea, with the long point of Cape Debelle jutting out as if on a small relief map directly below them. Beyond it, far over the sea, a bank of clouds on the horizon told them of Aru, a hundred miles away.