"In front of us opened a glade, bordered by tall palm-trees."
"Their bite is more painful than that of the mosquitoes," answered the boy, from whose hand a drop of blood was trickling.
"That is because their proboscis is armed with lancets which are sharp enough to pierce the hides of bulls and horses."
During this voyage, Lucien amused himself by teaching the two parrots to repeat the names of his brother and sister; but the birds, with one foot held up and their heads bent down, although they paid great attention to the words repeated by the boy, as yet did not profit much by the lesson.
In the course of our voyage we were constantly losing trace of the current in some vast lagoon, and had often a long search till we found it. In one of these searches, I caught sight of such a picturesque bay that I proposed a halt. In front of us opened a tolerably deep glade, bordered by tall palm-trees. L'Encuerado pushed the raft to land over the aquatic plants, and I jumped ashore to moor our craft.
A fallen tree tempted us into the forest, and on the damp ground Lucien caught sight of a magnificent rattlesnake, seemingly torpid. Sumichrast discharged his gun at the reptile, which reared itself up, and then fell down dead. A noise immediately resounded in several directions, and two or three snakes of the same family appeared, one of them followed by three young ones. The snake killed by my friend measured more than a yard in length. Its skin was speckled with black, brown, and gray spots, and its flat, triangular head had a very repulsive look. Lucien, with a blow from his machete, cut off the rattles which give to the reptile its name. These horny appendages, of which there were seven, were given to l'Encuerado, who, like all his fellow-countrymen, believed them to be endued with miraculous virtues—among others, that of tuning guitars and preventing the strings from breaking.
A shot fired by the Indian led us back to the bivouac; our companion had just killed an ocelot, called by the Indians ocotchotli.
"You see this animal, Chanito?" cried l'Encuerado, who was stroking its black and brown spotted fur; "well, its tongue is poisonous. When it kills a stag or peccary, it buries its prey under some leaves, then climbs the nearest tree, and howls until it attracts all the carnivorous animals near. When they have feasted, it comes down and devours what is left."
"But why does it call the animals?" I asked.