“Is that the sort of bird you mean?” I said.
“Hah!” he said, in a long-drawn cry, full of the satisfaction he felt, and both he and his wife chattered to me eagerly, Mapah shaking her head, though, and pointing at the bird’s tail with one dusky hand, before holding both out before me a yard apart.
“You’ve seen them with tails as long as that?” I said, placing my hand by the caudal feathers of our one specimen, and then slowly drawing it away till it was some distance off.
“Hah!” cried the Indian again, and he laughed and chatted, and pointed across the river to the south, while his wife took off her feather crown, held it before me, and drew each long feather through her hand as if stretching it to three feet in length, and then touched the golden-green plumage of our solitary specimen.
The trogon was carefully put away, the kingfisher laid to dry, and then I could hardly contain myself till my uncle’s return, well laden with ducks and a dusky bird that was evidently a half-grown turkey.
“Tired out, Nat,” he said, throwing down the birds, for Mapah and her husband to seize and begin to pluck for our evening meal. “We must make a fresh start.”
“Why?” I said quietly.
“Because we have shot the only trogon in the district, and we are wasting time here.”
“Nonsense,” I said; “there are plenty more.”
“If we could find them,” he replied wearily.