I did not say much, but I felt very grateful at his thoughtfulness, and the very next morning we were off before it was day, tramping through the thick herbage and mounting the rising ground towards the south.
“I purpose trying to get right across the island to-day, Nat,” he said, “and if we are too tired to get back all the way we must contrive enough shelter and camp out for one night in the woods.”
“I shall not mind, uncle,” I said, and on we went.
This time we had provided ourselves with light small baskets, such as we could swing from a cord that passed over our right shoulders, and long and deep enough to hold a good many specimens. We all three bore these, Ebo’s being double the size of ours, as he had no gun to use, but trotted easily by our side with his spear over his shoulder.
Before we had gone two miles several lovely birds had fallen to our guns, principally of the thrush family, for our way was amongst bushes on the rising ground.
It is impossible to describe properly the beauty of these lovely softly-feathered objects. Fancy a bird of the size of our thrush but with a shorter tail, and instead of being olive-green and speckled with brown, think of it as having a jetty head striped with blue and brown, and its body a blending of buff, pale greyish blue, crimson, and black.
We kept on, taking our prizes from the baskets, where they lay in cotton-wool, to examine and admire them again and again.
No sooner had we feasted our eyes upon these birds than something as bright of colour fell to our guns. Now it would be a golden oriole or some glittering sun-bird. Then a beautiful cuckoo with crimson breast and cinnamon-brown back. Then some beautifully painted paroquet with a delicate long taper tail; and we were in the act of examining one of these birds, when, as we paused on the edge of a forest of great trees by which we had been skirting, my uncle grasped my arm, for, sounding hollow, echoing, and strange, there rang out a loud harsh cry: “Quauk-quauk-quauk! Qwok-qwok-qwok!”
This was answered from a distance here and there, as if there were several of the birds, if they were birds, scattered about the forest.
“There, Nat,” said my uncle; “do you hear that?”