Chapter Sixty Eight.
A Fish-Cow at Pasture.
The Irishman was no wiser for Munday’s answer, “The juarouá.”
“But what is it?” he again asked, curious to learn something of the creature. “Is it a fish or a quadruped?”
“A peixe-boi,—a peixe-boi!” hurriedly answered the tapuyo. “That’s how the whites call it. Now you know.”
“But I don’t, though, not a bit betther than before. A pikes-boy! Troth, it don’t look much like a pike at all, at all. If it’s a fish av any kind, I should say it was a sale. O, luk there, Munday! Arrah, see now! If it’s the owld pike’s boy, yandher’s the young wan too. See, it has tuk howlt av the tit, an’ ’s sucking away like a calf! An’ luk! the old wan has got howlt av it with her flipper, an’ ’s kapin’ it up to the breast! Save us! did hever I see such a thing!”
The sight was indeed one to astonish the Irishman, since it has from all time astonished the Amazonian Indians themselves, in spite of its frequency. They cannot understand so unusual a habit as that of a fish suckling its young; for they naturally think that the peixe-boi is a fish, instead of a cetacean, and they therefore continue to regard it with curious feelings, as a creature not to be classified in the ordinary way.
“Hush!” whispered the Indian, with a sign to Tom to keep quiet. “Sit still! make no noise. There’s a chance of our capturing the juarouá,—a good chance, now that I see the juarouá-i (little one) along with it. Don’t wake the others yet. The juarouá can see like a vulture, and hear like an eagle, though it has such little eyes and ears. Hush!”
The peixe-boi had by this time got abreast of the dead-wood, and was swimming slowly past it. A little beyond there was a sort of bay, opening in among the trees, towards which it appeared to be directing its course, suckling the calf as it swam.