And then we gave Carlos another turn of surprise. To see a bird fall, and no sound of the gun,—that was beyond reason. He snapped his finger at his ear to make sure he had not lost his hearing.
We showed him the silencers set on the rifles and tried to explain them, but he shook his head; his physics wasn't up to such juggling with sound.
The shadows were over everything when we stopped beside a brook to rest and make a meal. Carlos found wood that burned with little smoke, and we soon had a bird apiece, broiling. Out of a bag Carlos poured farine. With water he made a paste. Then came macadam—codfish stewed with rice. We topped off with bananas, and water from the stream.
The scene was like to have been the last to my eyes on this earth. A high peak towered some seven miles to the east. We could see the blue sea below, many miles to the north, with the golden-yellow horizon. Great tracts of forest were everywhere between, with bits of glades, and palm groves.
While we looked, the coast line darkened, the valleys blackened; the gloom crept up the slopes; swiftly it enveloped the three of us. Then for several minutes the mountain peaks glowed at the tops as if afire, and then they, too, went out, and it was night. The world was changed. The trees seemed like personalities now, come awake like the owls, with the going out of the light. Tree-ferns below us seemed to whisper with their greater neighbors—mysterious gossip. Night birds piped their solemn dirge, insects tweeked; tree toads shrilled in competition with the bellowing bull-frogs; owls hoarsely laughed, and called their "what-what-what."
A strange oppression crept over me and I yearned for the deck of the Pearl.
Suddenly Carlos sat erect—listening. I cocked my ear, but there was nothing but the usual night sounds. A minute passed. Then, ever so faintly I discerned the peculiar low rumble. It was something I had heard before. It rose and fell in waves of sound; and wave upon wave it swelled in volume.
"It's the voodoo drum!" I whispered Robert.
"That's over a mile away," he observed, listening.
"Seex mile!—maybe seven mile!" corrected Carlos.