As noon approached, the vines and the tree-trunks seemed to hold and radiate the heat like boiler-tubes. Gradually it rose and concentrated until the forest seemed to throb and pulsate like a furnace. Then a cicada began to sound. It began with a low, jarring note, something like the creaking of our ordinary katydid. This increased slowly in loudness and volume until at last it ended with an almost unendurable siren-whistle note which seemed to shake the very leaves of the trees. Again and again and again this performance was repeated, until Will, deafened and stunned by the noise, dizzy with the heat, and cramped and tired of standing on his narrow perch, thought with an almost unutterable longing of the dark, cool river and the shaded boat where the rest of the party were even now taking their noontide nap.
Suddenly, when it seemed to Will as if his tortured brain absolutely could not stand one more repetition of this song, the talented cicada, with one farewell screech that surpassed all previous efforts, lay off for the day. For a few minutes there was almost complete silence in the darkened forest. Many of the guardian herd had laid down, wallowing in the soft mold and fallen leaves, while others, although they stared redly up into the tree-tops, no longer moved around and around in a circle of which the trapped hunters were the center. Suddenly, from the depths of a near-by tree, a pure, sweet, contralto voice sounded, as if some boy were singing to himself. For a moment it rose and fell, and then followed a few plaintive notes almost like those of a tiny flute. Then a slow melody began, full of mellow notes, only to be broken off abruptly. After a pause, there came a few clicking notes like those made by a music-box as it runs down, and the performance was over. Although the song came from the dark, glossy leaves of the very next tree, stare as he would, Will could gain no sight of the singer. Twice more the same thing happened. Each time he listened with a feeling that this time the tune would be finished and would be such as no mortal ears had heard before; but each time the song would die away in futile clicking notes. When at last the silence was again unbroken, Will turned toward the Indian.
"What was it, Pinto?" he asked softly.
"That organ-bird."
"What does it look like?"
"Don't know. No one ever see it."
"How do you know it's a bird?"
"Professor Ditson say so," returned Pinto, conclusively.
"That settles it," broke in Jud, jealously, from his tree. "He never saw it; nobody ever saw it; but the professor calls it an organ-bird. If he said it was an angel, I suppose it would be an angel."
"Yes," returned the Indian placidly.