“There’s a lovely bird there,” said the doctor, pointing to where there was a flash of dark purply orange, as the sun played upon the head and back of a bird nearly the size of a jay. “A regular Queensland bird. I’ve seen it there.”
“What is it?” said Carey.
“The rifle bird; a near relative, I believe, to the birds of paradise.”
“But it’s nearly black,” protested Carey. “Birds of paradise are all fluffy buff feathers.”
“Some of them,” said the doctor, “but there are many kinds, some much more ornamental than the kind you mean.”
He raised his gun to shoot the rifle bird, but lowered it again.
“I couldn’t preserve it if I shot it,” he said. “Come along.”
They continued the ascent, finding the heat in the sheltered valley rather more than they could bear, and Carey looked longingly down to his right at the placidly flowing river, thinking how pleasant a dip would be.
“I say,” he said at last, “what a little shade there is.”
“And unfortunately,” said the doctor, “it grows less the higher we get—a way with the growth on mountains; but we shall soon be high enough to feel the sea breeze, and after all it’s a wonderfully interesting tramp.”