unparalleled vocal powers. I had always heard them at a distance; here
they were gathered in scores, possibly hundreds--the whole araguato
population of the forest, I should think--close to me; and it may give
some faint conception of the tremendous power and awful character of
the sound thus produced by their combined voices when I say that this
animal--miscalled "howler" in English--would outroar the mightiest lion
that ever woke the echoes of an African wilderness.

This roaring concert, which lasted three or four minutes, having ended,
I lingered a few minutes longer on the spot, and not hearing the voice
again, went back to the edge of the wood, and then started on my way
back to the village.

CHAPTER IV

Perhaps I was not capable of thinking quite coherently on what had just
happened until I was once more fairly outside of the forest shadows--out
in that clear open daylight, where things seem what they are, and
imagination, like a juggler detected and laughed at, hastily takes
itself out of the way. As I walked homewards I paused midway on the
barren ridge to gaze back on the scene I had left, and then the recent
adventure began to take a semi-ludicrous aspect in my mind. All that
circumstance of preparation, that mysterious prelude to something
unheard of, unimaginable, surpassing all fables ancient and modern, and
all tragedies--to end at last in a concert of howling monkeys! Certainly
the concert was very grand--indeed, one of the most astounding in
nature---but still--I sat down on a stone and laughed freely.

The sun was sinking behind the forest, its broad red disk still showing
through the topmost leaves, and the higher part of the foliage was of
a luminous green, like green flame, throwing off flakes of quivering,
fiery light, but lower down the trees were in profound shadow.

I felt very light-hearted while I gazed on this scene, for how pleasant
it was just now to think of the strange experience I had passed
through--to think that I had come safely out of it, that no human
eye had witnessed my weakness, and that the mystery existed still to
fascinate me! For, ludicrous as the denouement now looked, the cause of
all, the voice itself, was a thing to marvel at more than ever. That it
proceeded from an intelligent being I was firmly convinced; and although
too materialistic in my way of thinking to admit for a moment that it
was a supernatural being, I still felt that there was something more
tha