The curator grinned indulgently. He loved Nick’s intense enthusiasms, particularly when they led to something of scientific value. Sadok wrapped the prize carefully in a cone of pandanus leaf and they started out again. After about an hour’s travel they came to a high plateau where the creepers and hanging vines were less abundant and one could see for some distance under the forest floor. A grove of tall tree trunks loomed up ahead, with bare, scant-leaved branches. Each had a sort of leaf hut, built far up in the fork.
They skirted the grove, silently, the curator explaining how the native hunters secured paradise birds by lying in wait for them under the hut, aiming with a blunt-headed arrow at the males during the dance. Their own hunter paid no attention to the grove, but led on for a mile farther across the plateau. Then he stopped and pointed up into the trees. Here was a similar grove, but much smaller, and buried far deeper in the jungle. Evidently it was his own secret hunting ground. Grunting a few words to Baderoon, he undid the belt of woven fiber about his waist and made a loop of it around the tree. Then, alternately walking up it and shifting the belt, he ascended the bare trunk to the leaf screen built in its fork, and disappeared.
“Him stop, go-shoot’m goby-goby,” explained Baderoon in a stage whisper. “We-fellah go-hide and catch’m spec’men when he drop.”
They all sought hiding places in the underbrush and waited. After a time came a distant, “Wawk! Wawk! Wawk!” answered by another bird farther off in the jungle, and then by still another. Like a flock of crows calling to the assembly, the boys could hear the paradise birds gathering. Then, like a flash of shimmering light, a great golden bird, eighteen inches long, came dropping down from over the tree tops. He lit in the tree farthest off from the hunter’s, preened himself awhile, and then lifted up his voice in the call of his kind. An answering cry heralded the approach of another one, and soon he too dropped down and joined the other.
“That’s bad—they’re gathering in the wrong tree,” whispered Nicky to Dwight, who lay by his side.
“Wait,” cautioned his chum. “We can shoot and get a few, if worse comes to worst. I’d far rather get a nest or an egg. There’s not one in any museum in the world, the curator tells me. Look—there’s a female!”
Nicky looked up to see a dull, coffee-colored bird perch down quietly on a near-by branch. The two males at once began to ruffle and preen their long golden plumes. Peering through his glasses, Dwight could even see the pale-blue beak, the delicate straw yellow of head and neck, and the rich, scaly feathers of metallic emerald green on the throat. From under the wings came the long two-foot plumes of intense glossy orange-brown color, and they ruffled and spread in the breeze as the male bird shook them for the admiration of the female. A glorified crow, a crow raised to the most unimaginable hues of bottled sunlight and all the vivid splendor of the tropics, was the great bird of paradise! As Dwight looked, he began to dance, hopping up and down on the limb, each motion spreading the glorious plumes and letting them fall like down. His rival was dancing also, and three more males and another female joined them.
Dwight crawled over to the curator, who was watching the whole performance avidly through his glasses.
“Our native hunter’s out of luck, sir!” he muttered. “He’ll never be able to hit them from his tree, and if he misses one the whole flock will fly off. What’ll we do—shoot?”
“Presently,” whispered the curator. “Go get Nicky, and we’ll each pick a bird and fire. They may fly over to the hunter’s tree yet, but I can see that they’re all as suspicious as our own crows. The tree they are in seems to suit them all right.”