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It tells, too, of the simple life spent in seclusion in contradistinction to the "envious court" of the roysterers in the glare of the leafless flame-tree. A final note in reference to the flame-tree may be permitted. As it is the popular rendezvous during September, pleasure was taken in cataloguing the greatest variety and number of birds congregated there at one and the same time.
It does not look like an inlet of the sea, but suggests rather a tranquil, winding river, shut in by high, steep ramparts of greenery, with here and there an opening to a beautiful lateral cove, where the dark masses of chaparral are relieved by clumps of graceful, white-stemmed palms and lighted up by the solid sheets of bright-red flowers which hide the foliage of the flamboyam, or flame-tree.
That night he rode silently out of the Dakoon's palace yard by a quiet gateway, and came, by a roundabout, to a point near the Residency. He halted under a flame-tree, and a man came out of the darkness and laid a hand upon his knee. "Ride straight and swift from the Kimar Gate.
The sun-bird flashes from raceme to raceme, sampling a dozen blooms, while his noisy rival sips with the air of a connoisseur at one. There is a spell in the nectar of the flame-tree as irresistibly attractive to taste of birds as the colour is to the sight of man. Although the tree bursts into bloom with truly tropical ardour, they await the coming banquet with unaffected impatience.
She had plenty to eat, as much tobacco as was good for her, and outer raiment that in gaudiness outrivalled the flame-tree and the yellow hibiscus. She was the favourite of two consorts, and only when her pride and scorpion-like attributes got the better of her was she corrected. It was quite a common occurrence for her to be sick.
The gold of the gin-gee, the reds of the flame-tree, the umbrella-tree, and of the single and double hibiscus are reflected from his shining feathers, as he flutters and darts among the blooms, often sipping on the wing after the habit of the humming-bird which he resembles even to the characteristic expansion of the tail feathers.
That night he rode silently out of the Dakoon's palace yard by a quiet gateway, and came, by a roundabout, to a point near the Residency. He halted under a flame-tree, and a man came out of the darkness and laid a hand upon his knee. "Ride straight and swift from the Kimar Gate.
This hour may seem late, in consideration of familiar habits, but the flame-tree is in the shadow of the highest peak of the island, and consequently does not receive the earliest of the benedictions of the sun. Birds come and go to it in irregular pulsations. Their presence is constant, but their number variable.
While the flame-tree few and confined to the beaches flashes into bloom an improvident blaze of colour, without a single atoning green leaf the umbrella-tree charms for several months with a combination of graceful foliage and a unique corollary of singular flowers.
When the clattering corcorax puts in an appearance the blacks lift up their eyes unto the hills, firm in the faith that the birds cause in them an increase in height, or to put it in the vernacular "Look out. Mountain jump up little bit!" When the flame-tree flowers, it is to tell of the coming of the nutmeg pigeon, when eggs and dainty young are to be obtained with little trouble.
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