“What is it keeps making little splashes in the water, Naylor?”
His voice sounded strange in the midst of the croaking, chirping, and crying going on, but it started conversation directly.
“I was just going to speak about it, sir, to Mr Rob here. Fish—that’s what it is. They’re come up out of the deep holes and eddies where they lie when the river’s in flood, and spread all about to feed on the worms and insects which have been driven out by the water. If we only had the fishing-line there’d be no fear of getting a meal. Oh, there is no fear of that. We shall be all right till the water goes down, and be able to provide for the cupboard somehow.”
“Hush! what’s that?” whispered Rob, as a terrible and mournful cry rang out from somewhere among the trees—a cry which made the puma move uneasily.
“Monkey,” said Shaddy. “One of those long spider-like howlers. I daresay it was very pleasant to its friends—yes, hark: there’s another answering him.”
“And another, and another,” whispered Rob, as cries came from a distance. “But it does not sound so horrible, now that you know what it is.”
Then came the peculiar trumpet-like cry of a kind of crane, dominating the chirping, whistling, and croaking, while the shrieking sounds over the open lake-like flood and beneath the trees grew more frequent.
There was plenty to take their attention and help to counteract the tedium of the night; but it was a terribly weary time, and not passed without startling episodes. Once there was the loud snorting of some animal swimming from the river over the clearing toward the forest. It was too dark to make it out, but Shaddy pronounced it to be a hog-like tapir. At another time their attention was drawn to something else swimming, by the peculiar sound made by the puma, which suddenly grew uneasy; but the creature, whatever it was, passed on toward the trees.
Several times over Rob listened to and spoke of the splashings and heavy plunges about the surface.
“’Gators,” said Shaddy, without waiting to be questioned. “Fish ain’t allowed to have it all their own way. They came over the flooded land to feed, and the ’gators came after them.”