86 CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE ORNITHOLOGY OF INDIA. 



Captain, who admitted now that something must be wrong", had 

 become seriously uneasy, out came the moon and we saw our 

 boat with sail up, gliding* rapidly towards us. With a fair 

 and steady breeze and a first-rate sailor at the helm, that boat 

 cannot have been very long making the ship, but it seemed 

 to us an age. When it did come, D. was up the companion 

 ladder in a moment, and in another was on the poop ; he turned 

 neither to the right or the left ; he brushed through us without 

 a word, and walked straight to the Captain, who stood quietly 

 by the binacle, touched his cap and made the usual report 

 " come on board, Sir." The Captain on his part had never 

 moved an inch, he merely said ei why is the cutter detained ?" 

 Again the touch at the cap. " Dr. Stoliczka is lost, Sir /" 



It is impossible to explain the sudden start that these words 

 caused ; we had been for hours forboding some evil ; we knew 

 what these wandering Malays and Burmans were. The island 

 was barely a mile long by half a mile wide. Stoliczka was an 

 experienced jungle man, one who carried a compass at his 

 watch chain. How could he be lost ? and then who can explain 

 how our Philosopher had endeared himself ' to every one? 

 There was not one of us I think who did not feel at this 

 moment that we could have better spared any one else. Not 

 one in whose heart the tears did not gather. No one spoke 

 their thoughts, but every one felt that he must have been 

 murdered in some dark nook of that dense jungle by some of 

 those wretched reckless Malay robbers. 



Then D. told us that towards sunset the chief officer and 

 Mackay, (the executive engineer at Port Blair who had joined 

 pur party,) though already fairly worn out, had started in oppo- 

 site directions to round the island, a work of inconceivable 

 difficulty, cruel thorny jungle plunging down into the surf, 

 alternating with knife edge reefs of coral and deep pools that 

 had to be swam through, and had succeeded in all but meeting 

 on the opposite side, (one part was absolutely impassable) 

 and had steadily as they went fired their guns every two 

 hundred yards without eliciting any reply, and that they had 

 only succeeded in making their way back to the landing place 

 after D.'s arrival, their shoes and clothes cut to pieces, and 

 that he had left them exhausted on the beach, this being 

 their last attempt, after having previously made several fruit- 

 less efforts, in which they themselves were nearly lost, to force 

 their way into and through the jungle. 



D. had arranged with them to light a second fire at the 

 point in case Stoliczka turned up, but though we looked 



