“You’re on,” rejoined Frank, “I think it will be perfectly safe to leave camp for a while anyhow and we may make some important discoveries.”
Accordingly an hour later the boys were making their first plunge into the practically unknown fastnesses of the Cordilleras of Nicaragua. Each carried a canteen full of water, a supply of roasted bread-fruit and several soup tablets besides matches in waterproof boxes and their revolvers and rifles. Of course a pair of field-glasses, and the axe also formed a part of their traveling equipment.
With all this paraphernalia it was hard work clambering up the rugged mountain-side more particularly as when their course required them to plunge into the jungle, they found their way impeded by huge snake-like creepers that hung from the trees and crawled over the ground in every direction. They had been climbing steadily for about an hour when Harry uttered an exclamation of delightful surprise.
“Look, Frank,” he cried, pointing to a magnificent bird that flashed through the jungle ahead of them. Both boys gazed admiringly at the marvelous splendor of its plumage. It was about the size of an eagle and its back was covered with a shimmering glossy mantle, so to speak, of emerald green. Its waistcoat was of a deep rich carmine and its long curved beak a bright yellow.
“Why,” cried Frank as, with a harsh unmusical cry, the bird vanished, “that’s a quesal.”
“A quesal?” demanded Harry much mystified.
“Yes, I was reading about them in that book on Nicaragua I got to read on our voyage down here,” rejoined Frank.
“They were the sacred birds of the ancient Toltecs who decorated their temples and religious houses with pictures of them,” he went on. “To lay hands on them meant death to the sacrilegious person so doing and the priests used to have great colonies of them in the groves round their temples.”
“You are as good as an encyclopedia, Frank,” laughed Harry, “I’d like to get a shot at one of them, Toltecs or no Toltecs. Or better still to have one alive. Just think what they’d say at home if we brought one back in a cage.”
Frank smiled.