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Then the bull-frogs' lullaby begins, and you drift into dreamland listening to that deep chorus from the river banks. I passed four days like this, elysian days to me. Friday we went back home, and the next day she came. The household was astir very early that morning, as was natural and proper that it should be, considering the event which was to happen.
Bull-frogs, too, though not so numerous, help to vary the sound by croaking vociferously, as if they understood the value of bass, and were glad of having an opportunity to join in the universal hum of life and joy which rises everywhere, from the river and the swamp, the forest and the prairie, to welcome back the spring.
The future capital of the Lakes, the great central port of the continent, the town whose wharves were to be laden with the teas of China and the silks of Japan stood out on the rocky north shore of Lake Superior, the sorriest spectacle of city that eye of man could look upon-wooden houses scattered at intervals along a steep ridge from which the forest had been only partially cleared, houses of the smallest possible limits growing out of a reedy marsh, which lay between lake and ridge, tree-stumps and lumber standing in street and landing-place, the swamps croaking with bull-frogs and passable only by crazy looking planks of tilting proclivities over all, a sun fit for a Carnatic coolie, and around, a forest vegetation in whose heart the memory of Arctic winter rigour seemed to live for ever.
It will be bad for him, poor chap; and No, they don't. They are wheeling off to the left; but if they look this way they must see us, and if they had been English lads that's just what they would have done. Why, they couldn't help seeing us a set of bat-eyed bull-frogs; that's what I call them. Yah! Go on home! I don't think much of you.
The night was still and the voices of the contestants sounded clearly into the village, the piping of the smaller being construed into "Colonel Dyer," and the grumble of the bull-frogs into "Elderkin, too." The "frog scare" was a subject of pleasantry directed against Windham for years afterward.
There were two fine palm-trees, and a small scrub of oleanders and dwarf cedars that grew around a little fish-pond, where a small Triton in the middle, with distended cheeks, should have poured forth a refreshing jet of water, but his lips were dry, and his conch-shell empty, and the muddy tank at his feet a mere surface of broad water-lilies convulsively shaken by bull-frogs.
The moon was just appearing through the tops of the trees, and the animals and insects in an adjoining wood kept up a continued din of music. The croaking of bull-frogs, buzzing of insects, cooing of turtle-doves, and the sound from a thousand musical instruments, pitched on as many different keys, made the welkin ring.
She noted, as she spoke, his strange expression and Bluebell's heightened colour with quickening curiosity and pleasure. "I left Fane further down the river," said he; "and Miss Leigh and I sat listening to the bull-frogs." Here Jack cast a look half-imploring, half-furious, at Lilla, who had assumed a most Quakerish expression, and hummed the air, "A frog he would a wooing go."
The vultures and carrion-birds circled screaming above the huge caldron, or perched on the tops of the tall palms, which looked like enormous umbrellas, or like the roofs of Chinese summer-houses. Out of the swamp itself proceeded the yellings, snarlings, and growlings of the alligators, bull-frogs, and myriads of unclean beasts that it harboured.
The moon was hidden, but the stars shone down brightly, and I sat back, leaning against Sarah's big bundle, in which some of the arrows were still sticking, gazing up at the spangled heavens, listening to the bull-frogs, and thinking how far off they sounded as compared to when I had heard them at home.
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