That bird’s wonderfully oily and tender skin was carefully stripped off in the evening, and it had a drying box all to itself, one made expressly by Cross, who confided to me that it was the finest bird he had ever seen.
“Some of they humming-birds is handsome enough,” he said, “but there’s nothing of ’em. This one’s grand. Now, if I could only find that there chopper as Pete lost—”
“Didn’t lose it,” growled Pete.
”—I should be,” continued the carpenter, severely, “a happy man. Aren’t you, sir?”
“No,” I said; “nor shall be till I shoot some with tails three feet long.”
The finding of this specimen completely, as I have said, changed our plans.
“It would be folly to go away now, Nat,” repeated my uncle, “for at any moment we may find quite a flock.”
This was one afternoon, when we had returned after an unsuccessful hunt, to take out our treasure and gloat over its wonderful plumage.
“Yes,” I said; “but it’s very tiresome, all this failure. Perhaps this is the only one for hundreds of miles.”
“Nonsense!” cried my uncle. “I daresay, if the truth were known, we pass scores of them every day, sitting after the fashion of these trogons, perfectly still like a ball of feathers, watching us, and with their green plumage so like that of the leaves that we might go by hundreds of times and not see them.”