“You may call it ‘husk’ if you like, sir: I calls it ‘hucks.’ Then they hangs head downwards, and goes to sleep like that, I believe. Wonderful thing a monkey’s tail is. Why I’ve seen the young ones hold on to their mother by giving it a turn round the old girl’s neck. They’re all like that out here. Ring-tail monkeys we call ’em.”
While they were talking the last two monkeys had swung themselves to and fro, and then lowered themselves down among the branches to get close to the river and watch the boat, like a couple of tiny savages stricken with wonder at the coming of the strange white men, and chattering away to each other their comments on all they saw.
The progress made was very slow, for the boat was constantly being anchored, so to speak, by the men rowing in and holding on by the hanging boughs of trees, while Brazier cut and hacked off bulb and blossom in what, with glowing face, he declared to be a perfect naturalist’s paradise.
They had been floating down a few miles when, right ahead, the stream seemed to end, the way being blocked entirely by huge trees, and as they drew nearer there appeared to be a repetition of the entrance from the great river, where they passed along through the dark tunnel overhung by trees.
“Oh, it’s all right, sir,” said Shaddy, on being appealed to. “Dessay we shall find a way on.”
“Of course,” replied Brazier, who only had eyes for the plants he was collecting and hardly looked up; “this great body of water must go somewhere.”
“Look sharp round to the left!” cried Rob, standing up in the boat as they glided round a bend where the stream nearly turned upon itself and then back again, forming a complete S; and as they moved round the second bend Rob uttered a shout of delight, for the banks receded on either hand, so that they appeared to have glided into a wide opening about a mile long, floored with dark green dotted with silver, through which in a sinuous manner the river wound. A minute later, though, the two lads saw that the river really expanded into a lake, the stream in its rapid course keeping a passage open, the rest of the water being densely covered with the huge, circular leaves of a gigantic water-lily, whose silvery blossoms peered up among the dark green leaves.
“Look at the jacanas!” cried Joe, pointing to a number of singular-looking birds like long-necked and legged moorhens, but provided with exaggerated toes, these being of such a length that they easily supported their owners as they walked about or ran on the floating leaves.
“Wouldn’t be a bad place for a camp, sir,” suggested Shaddy, when they were about half-way along the lake, and he pointed to a spot on their left where the trees stood back, leaving a grassy expanse not unlike the one at which they had first halted, only of far greater extent.
“Yes, excellent,” replied Brazier; “but can we get there?”