“_There’s_ one! Port your helm, Baderoon!” came from Nicky. They looked around, to see a sea snake swimming carelessly along, his head a foot out of the water. He was afraid of nothing and stuck out his tongue warningly as the proa sheered toward him. Then his oarlike tail flashed into swift motion and he shot along by their gunwale, but Nicky was too quick for him, and with a swift jab of his wand brought him aboard, squirming and striking furiously from the cleft in which he was caught. “Look out! He’s highly venomous!” warned Nicky, coming aft. “Watch out--he’s getting away!” The snake dropped to the bottom of the canoe and darted up its side. With a swift clip of the rod Nicky broke his neck, and the “specimen” lay squirming aimlessly in the bottom of the boat as they all watched it narrowly. “He’ll be ready for skinning out presently,” chirped Nicky, cheerily. “As a snakist I’ve got you fellows backed into the cellar!” The proa had now run down opposite the capes, and the swell of the open sea slid her about like an airplane. That mountainous coast is always windy and stormy, and it was making the usual squally weather now. The proa bucked and plunged like a racehorse, her lee outrigger buried in foam, the weather one clipping the tops of combers, while the three whites sat out on the bamboo wings that hung out from each side on the outrigger braces like a basket. It was a wild and exceedingly wet ride, the proa careening down the wave slopes like a hawk and soaring almost bodily out of water when lifted up on the white-capped combers. The land dropped swiftly astern; towering up into heavy banks of clouds rose the dark ranges of the Charles Louis Mountains, with the woolly pyramids of the afternoon thunderheads gathering in the sky back over the interior. It was their last look at Dutch New Guinea, for soon the cloud banks lowered and ugly squall clouds, like long dark cigars, swept across the horizon, shutting them in in the gray circle of the sea. A chip thrown over the side and timed by the curator’s watch showed a speed of nearly ten knots. At that rate they would reach Aru at night--a landfall that would be dangerous in the extreme until the stars came out and the sea went down. Accordingly, the curator shortened sail, reefing the lateen down to half its original bulk. The proa now labored and wallowed, keeping at least one of them bailing vigorously. She was an able boat in the eyes of her original owners, no doubt; but then water, more or less, was nothing in their naked philosophy!