Great pearly-looking insects, whose wings gleamed with azure reflections, floated calmly down the glades, their wings fully eight inches across. Others were specked and splashed with scarlet, or barred with orange, or dashed with glistening green. Then, as if there was to be no end to the feast of beauty for their eyes, great quick-flying insects came darting among the sunny openings, butterflies with elongated, narrow, and pointed wings similar to those of the sphinx moths of our own land.
Mark could have sat down and watched the various gorgeously-coloured beauties for hours, but theirs was a business task, and he plodded on behind the major, both the monkey and the dog untiringly investigating everything they saw.
But there was no trace of large animal, no sound that suggested the neighbourhood of anything likely to be inimical, while the best test was the fearlessness with which their two companions kept by their sides.
“Ah!” ejaculated the major at last, as a low cooing noise fell upon their ears. “Now for something for dinner! You go first, Mark, and let them have both barrels sharply—one after the other.”
“Let what have them?”
“The pigeons. Creep on yonder softly, and you will soon come upon them—a flock of pigeons feeding in one of the trees.”
Mark went on as silently as he could, and the major kept back the two animals and waited a minute—five minutes, ten minutes—and then softly followed, to find the lad at the edge of a glade watching a flock of great lavender-hued and feather-crowned pigeons, as big as fowls, feeding in the most unconcerned manner.
The major did not hesitate for a moment, but fired at the spot where the birds were thickest, and again as they rose with whirring and flapping wings in a little flock.
Three went down at his first discharge, two at his second; and Mark started as if he too had been shot.
“You here, sir?” he said.