“Yes. It comes out of the jungle,” Bevis looked over the edge of the raft, and saw the arch of water dive down unbroken beneath the surface of the pool, and then rise in innumerable bubbles under him. The hart’s-tongue ferns vibrated, swinging slightly, as the weight of the drops on them now bore them down and now slipped off, and let them up.
By the shore of the pool the turquoise studs of forget-me-nots, with golden centres, were the brighter for the darkness of the shade. So thick were the boughs, that the sky could not be seen through them; there was a rustle above as the light south-east wind blew, but underneath the leaves did not move.
“I like this,” said Mark. He sat on the chest, or locker, holding the beech bough. “But the birds do not sing.”
The cuckoo was gone, the nightingale silent, the finches were in the stubble, there might be a chiff-chaff “chip-chipping,” perhaps deep in the jungle, one pair of doves had not quite finished nesting on New Formosa, now and then parties of greenfinches called “ky-wee, ky-wee,” and a single lark sang in the early dawn. But the jungle here was silent. There was no song but that of the waterfall.
Though there was not a breath of wind under the boughs, yet the sound of the fall now rose, and now declined, as the water ran swifter or with less speed. Sometimes it was like a tinkling; sometimes it laughed; sometimes it was like voices far away. It ran out from the woods with a message, and hastening to tell it, became confused.
Bevis sat on the raft, leaning against the willow bulwark; Pan crept to his knee.
The forget-me-nots and the hart’s-tongue, the beeches and the firs, listened to the singing. Something that had gone by, and something that was to come, came out of the music and made this moment sweeter. This moment of the singing held a thousand years that had gone by, and the thousand years that are to come. For the woods and the waters are very old, that is the past; if you look up into the sky you know that a thousand years hence will be nothing to it, that is the future. But the forget-me-nots, the hart’s-tongue, and the beeches, did not think of the ages gone, or the azure to come. They were there now, the sunshine and the wind above, the shadow and the water and the spray beneath, that was all in all. Bevis and Mark were there now, listening to the singing, that was all in all.
Presently there was a sound—a “swish”—and looking up, they saw a pheasant with his tail behind like a comet, flying straight out to sea. This awoke them.
Bevis held out the palm of his hand, and Pan came nearer and put his chin in the hollow of it, as he had done these hundreds of times. Pan looked up, and wagged his tail, thump, thump, on the deck of the raft. If we could put the intelligence of the dog in the body of the horse, size, speed, and grace, what an animal that would be!
“Lots of perch here,” said Mark; “I shall come and fish. Suppose we land and go up the Sweet River?”