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Updated: May 5, 2025
Handsome as was the appearance of the birds, they were none the less delicious in the eating. No doubt our open-air life had a good deal to do with the keen enjoyment we had in eating the birds we shot; but feeding as these pigeons did on spices, nuts, and other sweet food, the flavour given to their flesh was very fine. Dinner over, we were for an expedition; but Ebo protested loudly.
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.
"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 Dick was wrong, and savages were near. 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.
Seeing that I could do no more I fastened the tiller with a piece of cord and rapidly reloaded the guns, Ebo picking up his spear, and, to my horror, beginning to shout at and deride the savages.
It was plain enough that this was only a resting-place upon our way, for as soon as the sail was hoisted Ebo took the paddle and steered us south-west, leaving larger islands to right and left though nothing was visible ahead.
Every now and then we could hear the hoarse harsh cry; but though we went on and on for a tremendous distance, we seemed to get no nearer, till all at once Ebo stopped short, there was the hoarse cry just overhead, and I saw something sweep through the great branches a hundred and fifty feet away. I had not time to fire, for my uncle's gun made the forest echo, though nothing fell.
"So were mine, Nat, but I fired on the chance of getting the bird. It was a bird of paradise different to any I have seen. We must come again. I never had a chance at it." "But I did, uncle," I said dolefully, "and missed it." "Where was it when you fired?" "Down among those trees, uncle. I let it go too far." "Why, you hit it, Nat! There's Ebo."
My uncle's gun spoke out again the next moment, the second barrel following quickly, and Ebo ran and picked up another of the lovely kingfishers, and one of a different kind with a rich coral-red beak, short tail, and its back beautifully barred with blue and black like the ornamental feathers in the wings of a jay. "That is a bee-eater you have shot, Nat, and a lovely thing too.
There they lay wallowing in the mire, like immense turtles floundering in the sea, till Ebo desired them to rise.
"I missed it, Nat," he said, "for the branches were in my way; but I thought I would not let the slightest chance go by." "What was it, uncle?" I said. "One of your crows," he replied, laughing; and Ebo went on again.
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