“Yes,” said Brace excitedly, as he heard a long-drawn cry from out of the forest, one which was answered from a distance, while the last cry was replied to faintly from still farther away. “What’s that—a jaguar?”
“Monkey,” said the captain drily, “and that grunting just beginning and rising into a regular boom isn’t made by the pumas, for I don’t think there’d be any in these great forest-lands.”
“What then?” said Brace, in a low voice, as if awe-stricken by the peculiar sounds.
“Frogs, my lad, frogs.”
Quaaak! A peculiarly loud and strident hollow echoing cry, which was startling in its suddenness and resembled nothing so much as a badly-blown note upon a giant trombone.
“What’s that?”
“That?” said the captain, thrusting his hat on one side so as to leave ample room for scratching one ear. “That? Oh, that’s a noise I only remember hearing once before, and nobody could ever tell me what it was. There’s a lot of queer noises to be heard in the forest of a night, and it always struck me that there are all kinds of wild beasts there such as have never been heard of before and never seen.”
“I dessay,” said a voice behind them which made them both start round and stare at the speaker, who had been leaning over the bulwark unobserved.
“What’s that?” said the captain sharply.
“I said I dessay,” replied Briscoe; “but that thing isn’t one of them.”