The next minute a couple of shots from my double gun rang out, and the huge serpent was writhing and twining among the bushes, and beating them flat by blows from its powerful tail.
Cross skinned it when it was dead, saying that he must have it for a curiosity if we did not, and probably it stretched a little in the process, for it proved to be a python, twenty feet in length and enormously thick.
It was the very next day when we were about to move, the visit of the python and the possibility of one from its mate having decided our immediate change, after a final tramp round in search of the birds we wanted.
But we had no more luck than usual. We could have shot plenty of specimens, but not those we sought, and we were nearing our camp when all at once what I took to be a pigeon dashed out of a tree, and meaning it for a roast, my gun flew to my shoulder, I fired hastily, and the bird fell.
“Uncle!” I cried, as I picked it out dead from among a clump of ferns.
“A quetzal!” shouted my uncle excitedly, for it was a scarlet-breasted bird, with back and wing, coverts of a glorious golden-green.
“But you said that they had tails three or four feet long.”
“Yes,” said my uncle; “the kind I want to find have, while this is only short; but here is proof that we are working in the right direction.”
“Then we must stop here, uncle,” I cried.
“Yes, Nat, it would be madness to leave. We must wait till the right ones come.”