The nightmare rides the dreaming ass,
And fairies trip it o’er the grass.”
Suddenly the Indians commenced to whisper, for even their sleep had been aroused by the wild screeching of the terrible didi, whose dreaded notes ended in a prolonged and mournful crowing. This unearthly sound seemed to be the climax, and soon the real silence of the night settled down.
“Now night it was, and everything on earth had won the grace
Of quiet sleep; the woods had rest, the wildered waters’ face;
It was the tide when stars roll on amid their courses due,
And all the tilth is hushed, and beasts and birds of many a hue,
And all that is in waters wide, and what the waste doth keep,
In thicket rough, amid the hush of night-tide, lay asleep.”
For three or four hours the silence lasted, only broken occasionally, and for a few minutes at a time, by the moan of a jaguar, or the fierce snappings of the small hunting tigers on the track of some peccaries, or of the night-loving tapir. Before dawn the concert was renewed; the monkeys howled, the mâams whistled piercingly, the honoquas and duraquaras gave endless repetitions of their own name, and with the first streak of daylight the parrots chattered from the tree tops. Day broke, and the camp was again alive.