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Updated: July 12, 2025
The hornbill darts with a succession of long bounding flights from one tall tree to another. The large woodpecker taps a hollow tree close by, his gorgeous plumage glistening like a mimic rainbow in the sun.
It was quite sunset by the time they had finished eating the roast hornbill, and as there is but little twilight under or near the equator, the darkness came down almost instantaneously. By the light of the blazing faggots they picked the bones of the bird, and picked them clean. But they had scarce dropped the drumsticks and other bones out of their fingers, when one and all fell violently sick.
They also brought a curious fighting ornament worn on the head, made of upper bills of the hornbill. We continued our march through some thick forest, and at length came to the banks of a river, where we suddenly crouched down. An armed man was crawling along the river bed, peering in all directions, and shouting out to his friends on the opposite bank. We were anxious to make a capture.
I fared well though the food was rough, and I subsisted chiefly on rice and papayas, together with pigeons, doves, parrots, and the smaller hornbill, called here "talactic," all of which fell to my gun. The surrounding country in these lower mountains was a mixture of forest and open grass-country, the grass often growing far over my head.
On the following day they returned with eight male companions, bringing a monkey, a hornbill, and a rare bird, all killed with their poisoned darts; and they enquired how much rubber they should bring in return for the tobacco.
Had only one been ill, they might have ascribed the illness to some other cause; but now, when all five were affected at the same time, and with symptoms exactly similar, they could have no other belief than that it was owing to what they had eaten, and that the flesh of the hornbill had caused their sickness perhaps poisoned them. Could this be?
Unlike the progeny of the megapodes, hatched in the hot sand, the infant hornbill was without the semblance of a feather upon its skin, which was all over of a green, yellowish hue. There was not even so much as a show of down upon it. For a moment Saloo held it in his hand, hissing as it was in his own tiny way.
Sunday had told them that they would understand him when they had understood the stars. He wondered whether even the archangels understood the hornbill. The six unhappy detectives flung themselves into cabs and followed the elephant sharing the terror which he spread through the long stretch of the streets.
"Perhaps anoder hornbill come and make her nest dere, den we catch her and her husband. Bery good chance of dat, I tink."
"No fear about Nub," observed the mate. "I hope that he may soon wring the necks of the hornbills and send them down to us." Nub was now near the hole where the female hornbill had been seen. She had drawn in her head; and her mate was either absent from home or was concealed among the thick foliage at the top of the tree.
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