Panting, weary, and perfectly soaked with perspiration, I proposed to bivouac on the plateau. Indeed, the sun was setting, and we had only just time to collect the wood we required for the fire. This task finished, I went and sat down with Lucien on the highest point we could find. The mountains of the Terre-Tempérée showed against the horizon, although we were already at least fifteen leagues from them. We long looked down on the tree-tops of the forest we had just crossed, and the uniformity of the dark-green foliage had a most gloomy aspect; and, while close round us there were a number of birds fluttering about the trees, none of the feathered tribe ventured into the solitudes we had so lately traversed.
"I can not catch a sight of either rivulet or stream," said Lucien.
"Courage!" replied Sumichrast, who had seated himself by us. "The birds which are flying round us can not live without drinking, and their large number shows that there is plenty of water near."
"Hiou! hiou! Chanito."
"Ohé! ohé!" replied Lucien, darting to the place whence he heard the familiar cry.
The two friends went down the hill together, l'Encuerado carrying his enormous gourd.
"Can he have discovered water?" said I to my companion, and I approached the fire where the game was roasting under the inspection of Gringalet. Sumichrast remained to look after the cooking of the birds, and I overtook Lucien and the Indian just at the moment when they were bending over a plant with scarlet-red leaves, which grew encircling the stem of a magnolia. About a glassful of limpid fluid flowed from it into the calabash.
"Can we get water from this shrub by merely pressing it?" asked Lucien, with surprise.
"All that is needed is to bend it," I replied. "It treasures up the precious dew between its leaves, and l'Encuerado and I should have died of thirst in one of our expeditions if it had not been for this plant."
"Why doesn't it grow in every forest?" asked Lucien.