As the sea was pounding heavily on the reef, a couple of men were left in the boat to keep it off shore, and the rest of us, jumping overboard, waded to the beach. Two or three other natives now arrived, and we showed our good intentions by slapping them on their backs, with broad grins, to the latter part of which process they responded most heartily.
It was too early in the day to get to work with the camera, so, after fetching my gun from the boat, I struck into the jungle and spent an hour with the more clothed of its inhabitants.
The jungle was of the kind that may perhaps be best described as forest: that is to say, it was fairly free from the usual superabundance of rattans, lianas, and all those creeping growths which close the intervals among the trees with a thorny network of vegetation, and compel the intruder to go where he can and not where he will. Mighty trees towered upwards, branches interlacing and shutting out the sun, while down below, in the aisles of tree-trunks, stood the smaller brethren and the saplings, waiting the fall of some neighbouring giant to give them in turn room to lift their branches towards the light.
Little blue fly-catchers, utterly fearless, flitted about in the lower bushes, and, higher up, golden-billed grackles hopped or flew from branch to branch, their loud clear whistles resounding through the forest, whilst from the tops of the biggest trees came the deep "boom, boom," of the great fruit-pigeons. However, although birds were fairly numerous, I got but few prizes--best among them, perhaps, a pretty little olive-green and yellow minivet (_Pericrocrotus andamanensis_), and a black racquet-tailed drongo (_Dissemuroides andamanensis_), a bird whose flight, as its long tail feathers stretch out behind, is extremely graceful, and who possessed one of the sweetest combination of notes heard in the jungle.
With such specimens in my bag, I presently came on a little stream, and after following its course to the sea, tramped along the shore, and so came back once more to the boat.
A large fire had been made on the beach, and near it, in spite of the hot sun, the men sat fraternising with the members of the native party--five men and boys, three women, and three children.