“Snake,” cried Rodd, who just caught sight of the movement. “No. Who ever saw a snake with four legs? Why, it’s a great lizard of a thing! Why, uncle, that must be one of those queer chaps that turn all sorts of colours.”
“Yes,” said the doctor, “you are right, Pickle,” and he focussed upon it a little old-fashioned single opera-glass which he carried in his pocket. “That’s a chameleon, sure enough; and a big one too, I should say, though it’s the first one I ever saw alive.”
“What’s he after?” said Rodd.
“Having a game, catching butterflies, I think, sir,” suggested Joe Cross. “So he is, Joe.”
“Why, Master Rodd, it makes us chaps wish we was boys again and ashore there running after them butterflies with our caps; only one couldn’t run among the trees, and they fly too high. I never see flutterbies, as we used to call them, with colours like these, though. We used to catch white ’uns, and yaller ones, and sometimes what we used to call tortoiseshells. But I call all this ’ere— Look there, sir; there’s one as big as my hand—two—lots on ’em! Yes, I do call this ’ere dead waste both of the butterflies and the birds.”
“Why, my man?” said the doctor quietly.
“Why, sir, everything you see flying about in the air is as lovely as lovely, and no one to look at them. Why, if I had my way I’d have all these sort of things flying about in old England. Yes, sir, they are all wasted here.”
“That they aren’t, Joe,” cried Rodd. “We are looking at them, and enjoying them; and I say, uncle, isn’t it time we began to get some specimens?”
“Plenty of time yet, my boy. Why, captain, the country here on either side is very beautiful.”
“Satisfied, then?” said the Spaniard coolly.