"Let us leave the shooting till our return, and be contented with
charging our memories and feasting our eyes, for no dried skins, however
carefully they are preserved, will ever display the beauties of these
birds' nature as we watch them here in life. But we must have a skin or
two of these touracoos, for I want to show you lads the wonders of that
vivid crimson upon their underparts."

"Oh, I can see it plainly enough, uncle," said Rodd.

"Yes," said Uncle Paul, "but you don't notice what I mean. Instead of
that crimson being a beautiful dye fixed in the feathers, it is a soft
red pigment which can be washed out into water and--I saw something
moving up that creek," he added, in a low voice.

"Niggers perhaps," said the Spaniard, without turning his head.

"Likely to attack?" asked Rodd.

"Pish!" said the Spaniard contemptuously. "Harmless. Fishing perhaps.
We shall see more, I expect, farther on."

He did not trouble himself to turn his head, though the rest in the boat
kept a sharp look-out for what had attracted the doctor's attention up a
narrow inlet arched over by the overhanging trees, but it was not until
close upon evening that, as they pursued their winding way, this side
stream opened out more into a reach, and then for the first time a
movement some hundreds of yards behind brought forth a warning from Joe
Cross, who was seated with the tiller in his hand.

"Just cast your eye back, Mr Rodd, sir," he said; "yonder there where
the stream opened out it seems to me there's a canoe with a couple of
Indians in it. Nay, I mean blacks."

"Yes; look, captain," said Rodd eagerly; and the Spaniard slowly raised
himself up from where he was leaning back, took his cigarette from his
lips, shaded his eyes, and then after a cursory glance replaced the
cigarette and sank back.

"Niggers," he said. "Fishing."

Then they rowed on, leaving the two occupants of the canoe behind, till,
coming to what he considered to be a suitable place, the Spaniard
suggested that they should stay there for their meal upon an open sandy
little beach some fifty yards across, beyond which the forest rose dark
and thick again.

"We can land and light a fire," he said, "and make coffee and stretch
our legs."

"It would not be safe," said the doctor, "to rig up a tent here, would
it?"

"Oh yes," said the captain. "The only thing to trouble us here might be
a leopard or two; but a shot would scare them away."

This was