Nat the Naturalist Part 33

My uncle laughed, and then, to Ebo's great delight, for he had been fidgeting about and wondering why it was that we stopped so long, we continued our journey in search of the birds of paradise, whose cries could be heard at a distance every now and then.

But though we kept on following the sounds we seemed to get no nearer, and to make matters worse, so as not to scare them uncle said it would be better not to fire, with the consequence that we missed shooting some very beautiful birds that flitted from tree to tree.

"We must give up the birds of paradise to-day, Nat," said my uncle at last. "I see it is of no use to follow them; they are too shy."

"Then how are we to get any?" I said in a disappointed tone; for we had been walking for some hours now and I was tired.

"Lie in wait for them, Nat," he replied smiling. "But come, we'll try and shoot a few birds for food now and have a good dinner. You will feel all the more ready then for a fresh walk."

By means of a little pantomime we made Ebo understand what we wanted, and in a very little while he had taken us to where the great pigeons thronged the trees, many being below feeding on a kind of nut which had fallen in great profusion from a lofty kind of palm.

If we had wanted a hundred times as many of the big pigeons we could easily have shot them, they were so little used to attack; but we only brought down a sufficiency for our present wants, and as soon as Ebo understood that these birds were not to be skinned but plucked for eating, he quickly had a good fire blazing and worked away stripping the feathers off so that they dropped on the fire and were consumed.

The plumage was so beautiful that it seemed to be like so much wanton destruction to throw it away, and I could not help thinking what delight it would have given me before I had seen Uncle d.i.c.k's collection, to have been the possessor of one of these n.o.ble birds. But as my uncle very reasonably said, we should have required a little army of porters to carry our chests, and then a whole vessel to take them home, if we were to preserve every specimen we shot. We could only save the finest specimens; the rest must go for food; and of course we would only, after we had obtained a sufficiency of a particular kind, shoot those that we required for the table.

Ebo was invaluable in preparing fires and food for cooking, and upon this occasion, as he placed the birds on sticks close to the hot blaze, I watched him with no little interest, longing as I did to begin the feast.

But birds take time to cook, and instead of watching impatiently for them to be ready, I saw that Uncle d.i.c.k had taken his gun down a narrow little glade between two rows of trees growing so regularly that they seemed to have been planted by a gardener.

But no gardener had ever worked here, and as I overtook my uncle he began to talk of how singular it was that so beautiful a place should be without inhabitants.

"The soil must be rich, Nat, to produce such glorious trees and shrubs.

Look at the beauty of what flowers there are, and the herbage, Nat. The place is a perfect paradise."

"And do you feel sure, uncle, that there are no savages here?"

"None but ourselves, Nat," said my uncle, laughing.

"Well, but we are not savages, uncle," I said.

"That is a matter of opinion, my boy. I'm afraid the birds here, if they can think about such things, would be very much disposed to look upon us as savages for intruding upon their beautiful domain to shoot one here and one there for our own selfish purposes."

"Oh! but birds can't think, uncle," I said.

"How do you know?"

Well, of course I did not know, and could produce no argument in support of my case. So I looked up at him at last in a puzzled way and saw that he was smiling.

"You can't answer that question, Nat," he said. "It is one of the matters that science sees no way of compa.s.sing. Still, I feel certain that birds have a good deal of sense."

"But you don't think they can talk to one another, do you, uncle?"

"No, it cannot be called talking; but they have certain ways of communicating one with the other, as anyone who has taken notice of domestic fowls can see. What is more familiar than the old hen's cry to her chickens when she has found something eatable? and then there is the curious call uttered by all fowls when any large bird that they think is a bird of prey flies over them."

"Oh! yes, I've heard that, uncle," I said.

"I remember an old hen uttering that peculiar warning note one day in a field, Nat, and immediately every chicken feeding near hurried off under the hedges and trees, or thrust their heads into tufts of gra.s.s to hide themselves from the hawk."

"That seems to show, uncle, that they do understand."

"Yes, they certainly comprehend a certain number of cries, and it is a sort of natural language that they have learned for their preservation."

"I know too about the chickens, uncle," I said. "Sometimes they go about uttering a little soft twittering noise as if they were happy and contented; but if they lose sight of their mother they pipe and cry and stand on their toes, staring about them as if they were in the greatest of trouble."

"I think I can tell you another curious little thing about fowls too, and their way of communicating one with the other. Many years ago, Nat, I had a fancy for keeping some very large fine Dorking fowls, and very interesting I found it letting the hens sit and then taking care of their chickens."

"But how is it, uncle," I said, interrupting him, "that a tiny, tender chicken can so easily chip a hole in an egg-sh.e.l.l, as they do when they are nearly ready to come out?"

"Because, for one reason, the egg-sh.e.l.l has become very brittle, and all the glutinous, adhesive matter has dried away from the lime; the other reason is, that the pressure of the bird's beak alone is sufficient to do it, because the pressure comes from within. There is a wonderful strength in an egg, Nat, if the pressure is from without; it will bear enormous weight from without, for one particle supports another, and in reason the pressure adds to the strength. The slightest touch, however, is sufficient to break a way out from within. I'll be bound to say you have often hammered an egg with a spoon and been surprised to find how hard it is."

"Yes, uncle, often," I said.

"Well, but to go on with my story, Nat. One day a favourite hen had eleven beautiful little yellow downy chickens, and for the fun of the thing I took one soft little thing out of the nest and carried it into the yard, where the great c.o.c.k was strutting about with his sickle-feathered green tail glistening in the sun, and, putting down the tiny yellow ball of down, I drew back, calling the old c.o.c.k the while.

"He ran up, thinking it was something to eat; but as soon as he reached the helpless little chick he stopped short, bent his head down, looked at it first with one eye, then with the other, and seemed lost in meditation.

"'Come, papa,' I said, 'what do you think of your little one?'

"Still he kept on staring intently at the little thing till it began to cry '_Peek, peek, peek_' in a most dismal tone, for it was very cold, and then the old c.o.c.k, who had been looking very important and big, suddenly began to cry '_Took, took, took_', just like a hen, and softly crouched down, spreading his wings a little for the chick to creep under him and get warm, and no doubt he would have taken care of that chicken and brought it up if I had not taken it back to the hen.

"But look! we are talking about barn-door fowls and losing chances to get lovely specimens of foreign birds and--what's that?"

For just then a shrill wild call rang down the lovely glade, and I thought that Uncle d.i.c.k was wrong, and savages were near.

CHAPTER THIRTY ONE.

LOST IN THE FOREST.

There was no occasion for alarm, the cry only coming from Ebo, who, as soon as he saw us, began making frantic signs to us to come.

"That means the pigeons are cooked, Nat," said my uncle, laughing; and this was the case, for, as soon as he saw us, the black came running up gesticulating and pointing behind him in the direction of the fire, where the delicious birds were waiting for us to eat.

Those were delightful meals that we had out in the shade of some grand wide-spreading tree, in whose branches every now and then a parrot would come shrieking, to be followed by others; and as we ate our dinner so would they busily find and eat theirs, hanging by their legs, perhaps head downwards, or perching on one leg and using the other with its soft clasping yoke toes like a hand to convey the food towards its beak.

I never felt tired of watching the parrots and paroquets, for besides their beauty of plumage of all kinds of soft tints of green, brightened with orange and scarlet and blue, they always looked such plump and delicately feathered birds. I have seen hundreds of them stuffed, and have admired the bird-mounters' skill, but they never get anywhere near nature and the soft and downy beauty of a bird in its native state.

The wonder to me was that they could keep themselves so prim, and with every feather in such perfect order. The paroquets, for instance, had the central feathers of their tail so long and thin and delicate, that it seemed that, flitting and climbing about the trees so much, they must get them broken, but they apparently never did, except when they were damaged by our shot.

It was the same with the lovely racket-tailed kingfishers and the fly-catchers, some of which had tails double the length of their own bodies, and of a delicacy that was beautiful in the extreme.

But I must go back to the rest of our adventures that day, for as soon as we had dined and had a rest, Uncle d.i.c.k signed to Ebo that he should make a rough hut beneath this tree, ready for our sleeping that night, and leaving him industriously at work, we started off together to try and explore a little more of the island.

Going as straight as we could, we were not very long before, from a bit of a hill, we could see the blue waters of the ocean spreading far and wide, and soon after we made out the great rollers falling over upon the sands, which spread right and left, of a dazzling whiteness, being composed entirely of powdered-up coral and madrepore.

There was no need, my uncle said, to go farther that day, for we had found out that it was no great distance across the island; the thing now was to discover its length.