This was succeeded by a painful silence, and then Rodd raised his voice—
“Captain! Captain Chubb! Do you hear that? Are you there?”
“Oh yes, here I am, my lad,” came from out of the darkness. “And I should be precious deaf if I hadn’t heard it.”
“Well, ought we to take the boat and try and save her?” cried the boy passionately.
“How do you know it’s a her, my lad? I should say it was a him. It’s the cock birds and not the hens that shout like that.”
“Bird!” cried Morny. “It was a human being.”
“Ah, it do sound something like it, my lad, but that aren’t a human. It’s one of them great long-legged storky chaps with the big bills, calling to his wife to say he’s found frogs, or something of that kind. You wait a minute, and if she don’t come you will hear him call ‘Quanko!’—There, what did I say?” said the skipper, with a chuckle, as in trumpet tones came the cry of the great long-legged creature in a sonorous Quang, quang, quang, quang!
“Why, the captain seems to know everything,” said Morny admiringly. “I say, how did you know that, sir?”
“Oh,” said the skipper modestly, “one just picks up these sort of things a little bit at a time. Now then, do you hear that?”
The two lads did hear it—a peculiar musical (?) wailing cry which was repeated again and again and then died out, half-smothered by a chorus of croaking from the swampy river banks.