"I feel as if I was eatin' a dragon," grumbled Jud, coming back for a third helping.
Followed a week of hard work for all. Under Pinto's directions, taking turns with Jud's ax, they cut down a yellow stonewood tree, which was almost as hard and heavy as its name. Out of the trunk they shaped a log some nineteen feet in length and three feet through, which, with infinite pains and with lianas for ropes, they dragged on rollers to the water's edge. Then, with enormous labor, working by shifts with Joe's hatchet, Jud's ax, and Hen's machete, they managed to hollow out the great log. At the end of the fourth day, Jud struck.
"I'll work as hard as any man," he said, "but I got to have meat. If I work much longer on palm-nuts I'm liable to go plumb nutty myself."
As the rest of the party felt the same craving, Pinto and Jud were told off to hunt for the rest of that day. It was Jud who first came across game, a scant half-mile from camp, meeting there an animal which is one of the strangest still left on earth and which, along with the duck-bill of Australia and the great armadillo, really belongs to a past age, before man came to earth, but by some strange accident has survived to this day.
In front of him, digging in a dry bank with enormous curved claws, was an animal over six feet in length and about two feet in height. It had great hairy legs, and a tremendous bushy tail, like a vast plume, curled over its back. Its head ended in a long, tapering, toothless snout, from which was thrust constantly a wormlike, flickering tongue, while a broad oblique stripe, half gray and half black, showed on either side.
"There ain't no such animal," murmured Jud to himself, examining the stranger with awe.
Pinto's face shone with pleasure when he came up.
"It giant ant-eater and very good to eat," he remarked cheerfully.
Upon seeing them, the great beast shuffled away, but was soon brought to bay, when it stood with its back against the bank, swinging its long snout back and forth and making a little whining noise. Jud was about to step in and kill it with a blow from his ax, but Pinto held him back.
"No get in close to ant-bear," he warned, pointing to the giant's claws. "He rip you to pieces. You watch."