“I know, Jack. I’m coming this instant,” said Dennis.
The night was noisy with the croaking of frogs, the whirring and whizzing of insects, the cheeping of bats, and the distant cries of birds, but Dennis and Eileen were silent. Then she called out, “Good-bye, Jack, God bless you.”
“Good-bye, Miss Eileen, and God bless you,” said I, feeling nearly as miserable as if I were in love myself. And then we ran all the rest of the way to the stelling.
Alister was already on board, and the young officer was there to bid us God speed, and Dennis was cheerful almost to noisiness.
But when the shores of British Guiana had become a muddy-looking horizon line, I found him, with his cropped forehead pressed to the open housewife, shedding bitter tears among the new needles and buttons.
CHAPTER XVII.
“Zur tiefen Ruh, wie er sich auch gefunden.
* * * * * *
Sein Geist ist’s, der mich ruft.”
Wallenstein’s Tod.
Not the least troublesome part of our enlarged kit was the collection of gay-plumaged birds. Their preservation was by no means complete, and I continued it at sea. But between climate and creatures, the destructiveness of the tropics is distracting to the collector, and one or two of my finest specimens fell into heaps of mangled feathers, dust, and hideous larvæ under my eyes. It was Dennis O’Moore’s collection. He and his engineer friend were both good shots, and they had made an expedition on purpose to get these birds for Alister. There were some most splendid specimens, and the grandest of all, to my thinking, was a Roseate Spoonbill, a wading, fish-catching bird of all shades of rose, from pale pink to crimson. Even his long horny legs were red. But he was not a pleasant subject for my part of the work.
He smelt like the Water-Lily at her worst, before we got rid of the fish cargo.