“Breakfast is served, señor,” said Tranquid, gravely.
“I come,” I replied, with equal gravity, and rolled over twice and came up on my knees, Japanese fashion, beside my lowly table.
Just as I was going to plunge my fingers into the rice, a cock crowed loud and clear among the trees close at hand. A great ferocity of meat hunger swept over me.
“Give me the boom-boom, Justin!” I commanded. “We will have manuk del monte for breakfast.”
The cock crowed often while I stole through the undergrowth, as softly as the ferns and bristly creepers would let me.
As I drew near, the crowing ceased, and I was peering about the brush and shrub for a sight of the cock when—whir! From the lower branches of a tree, fifty feet above my head, a splendid bird shot out with a boom like a partridge and sailed away between the tree trunks, a dazzling vision of white and green and gold.
I was too startled to shoot, for I had never before seen chickens that roost like eagles and flew like pheasants and were as brilliant as humming-birds.
In a moment I heard his strong wings beating on the other side of the valley, and I went back and ate my rice quietly.
That incident began my acquaintance with the wild chickens, and they soon grew to be a very dear part of the forest life, bringing me an odd mixture of pleasant memory and homesickness as I listened to them.