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Updated: May 4, 2025
As the work went on Mapah helped, being wonderfully active and sure-footed on the rocks; and through her our prisoner grasped the meaning of what was going on, nodding and smiling when the time came for our start, and to my great satisfaction showing not the slightest shrinking from venturing into the cavern after being carefully lowered down.
The trogon was carefully put away, the kingfisher laid to dry, and then I could hardly contain myself till my uncle's return, well laden with ducks and a dusky bird that was evidently a half-grown turkey. "Tired out, Nat," he said, throwing down the birds, for Mapah and her husband to seize and begin to pluck for our evening meal. "We must make a fresh start." "Why?" I said quietly.
"I've been turning it over in my mind, Master Nat, about carrying that chap down to the boat, but the doctor says it would open his wound again and throw him back, so that won't do." "No; certainly not," I said. "Then I got a notion that I could knock up a sort of chair he could sit in, and me and Pete and Mrs Mapah could carry it strapped on our backs in turn." "Nonsense!
"Hah!" he said, in a long-drawn cry, full of the satisfaction he felt, and both he and his wife chattered to me eagerly, Mapah shaking her head, though, and pointing at the bird's tail with one dusky hand, before holding both out before me a yard apart. "You've seen them with tails as long as that?"
"I hope so," I said; "for if ever there was a beautiful home for a bird it ought to be here." We had hardly spoken before Mapah, who was some distance ahead, stopped, held up her hand, and stole back, signing for us to take her place and go forward.
Fortunately we had a sufficiency of stores, my uncle shot for provisions as well as science; I helped by sitting down in one particular spot by the rushing stream and catching fish almost as fast as I could throw in, and Mapah, as the woman's name seemed to be, went off every morning and returned loaded with wild fruit and certain roots, which she and her husband ate eagerly.
I had intended to keep him waiting longer, but I could not hold back what I felt certain I had discovered, and hurrying to the case I brought out the precious specimen and made Mapah and her husband go through the whole pantomime again.
Some very good specimens were brought in by my uncle, and the two Indians sat watching us curiously as we busily skinned them, filled them out, and laid them to dry, Mapah eagerly taking possession of the tail-feathers of some parrots intended to be cooked for the evening's meal, and weaving them into a band of plaited grass so as to form tiaras of the bright-hued plumes for herself and her husband, both wearing them with no little show of pride.
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