It was a peculiar broken spasmodic crow from some little distance in the jungle, and Ned turned upon the Resident’s son, laughingly: “Why, there must be a road there to that farm or cottage and back.”
There was an answering crow from farther away.
“Is there a village close by?” asked Murray.
“If there was a village, it would be here,” said Frank, showing his white teeth. “This is the high-road of the country, and the villages are all on the rivers.”
“But there must be people who keep fowls in there.”
“Yes,” said Frank, merrily; “Mother Nature does. Those are jungle cocks crowing. I say, look out. Don’t you want one of those?”
He pointed to where a lovely bluish bird, with a long tail ending in oval disks like tiny tennis racquets, was seated some distance ahead upon a bare branch; but almost as he spoke the bird took flight, and went right on, up the river like a flash of blue light.
“Never mind; you’ll have plenty more chances, and you’ll soon know as much about the place as I do.”
The guns were brought out of their woollen bags and charged, and the boat glided on, steered closer in to one bank now, so as to give the naturalist a better chance of a shot; with the result that he brought down in the course of the next two hours, as they followed the winding course of the river, shut in on both sides by the tall flower-decked trees, two brilliant racquet-tailed kingfishers, a pink-breasted dove, and a tiny sunbird, decked in feathers that seemed to have been bronzed and burnished with metallic tints of ruby, purple, and gold.
These were carefully picked up from the water in which they fell, laid in the sun to dry their feathers, and then put aside for preparation that evening. After this specimens were seen of gorgeously painted butterflies, one being evidently seven or eight inches across, but capture was out of the question, and Ned watched them longingly as they flitted across the stream.