"Then how did you know that?"
"Human natur", lad. Every one thinks just like that. Next you began thinking that them pretty creeturs you can hear singing like great cats would swim across and attack us, or some great splashing fish shove his head over the side to take a bite at one of us. Didn"t you?"
Rob was silent for a few moments, and then said,--
"Well, I did think something of the kind."
"Of course you did. It is your nature to think like that, but you may make your mind easy, for there"s only one thing likely to attack you out here."
"What"s that?" whispered Rob--"Indians who will swim out from the sh.o.r.e?"
"No, wild creeturs who will fly--skeeters, lad, skeeters."
"Oh," said Rob, with a little laugh, "they"ve been busy enough already, two or three of them. But what"s that?"
He grasped Shaddy"s arm, for at that moment there was a plunge in the river not very far-away in the darkness from where they were moored, and then silence.
"Dunno yet," said Shaddy in a whisper. "Listen."
Rob needed no telling, for his every nerve was on the strain. There came a peculiar grunting sound, very unlike any noise that might have been made by a swimming Indian, and Shaddy said quietly,--
"Water hog. Carpincho they calls "em; big kind of porky, beavery, ottery, ratty sort of thing; and not bad eating."
Rob pressed his arm again as a sharp, piercing howl came from far-away over the river, here about four or five hundred yards across.
"That"s a lion," said Shaddy quietly. "Strikes me they shout like that to scare the deer and things they live on into making a rush, and then they"re down upon "em like a cat upon a mouse."
"Lion? You mean a puma."
"Means a South American lion, my lad."
"There it is again," whispered Rob in an awe-stricken voice, "only it"s a deeper tone, and sounds more savage."
"That"s just what it is," said Shaddy, "ever so much more savage. That wasn"t a lion; that was a tiger--well, jagger, as some calls "em. Deal fiercer beasts than the lions."
The cries were repeated and answered from a distance, while many other strange noises arose, to which the man could give no name.
"One would want half a dozen lives to be able to get at all of it, my lad," said Shaddy quietly, "and there"s such lots of things that cheat you so."
"Hist! There"s another splash," whispered Rob.
"Ay; there"s no mistake about that, my lad. There it goes again, double one. It"s as plain as if you can see it, a big fish springing out of the water, turning over, and falling in again with a flop. You don"t think there"s no fish in the river now, do you?"
"Oh no. I don"t doubt it now," whispered Rob, as he listened to fish after fish rising, and all apparently very large.
"Makes a man wonder what they are jumping after, unless it is the stars shining in the water. You hear that?"
"Yes."
"And that, too?"
"Yes, I hear them," replied Rob, unable to repress a shiver, so strange and weird were the cries which came mournfully floating across.
"Well, them two used to puzzle me no end--one of "em a regular roar and the other quite a moan, as if somebody was a-dying."
"You know what it is now?"
"Yes, and you"d never guess, my lad, till you said one was made by a bird."
"A bird?"
"Yes, a long-legged heron kind of thing as trumpets it out with a roar like a strange, savage beast; and the other moaning, groaning sound is made by a frog. I don"t mind owning it used to scare me at first."
Rob sat listening to the weird chorus going on in the forest and watching the stars above, and their slightly blurred reflections in the water which went whispering by the prow and side of the boat. It was all so solemn, and strange, and awe-inspiring that, in spite of a feeling of dread which he could not master, he was glad to be there, wakeful, trying to picture the different creatures prowling about in the darkness of the primeval forest. He had listened time after time on the voyage up, but then the schooner was close at hand, and they pa.s.sed towns and villages on the east bank; but here they were farther away in the heart of the wild country, and on the very edge of a forest untrodden by the foot of man, and maybe teeming with animal life as new as it was strange. And in amongst this they were soon going to plunge!
It had been the dream of the boy"s life to penetrate one of the untrodden fastnesses of nature, but now that he was on the threshold listening in the darkness of night, there was something terrible both in the silence and in the sounds which made him ask himself whether he had done wisely in accompanying Martin Brazier, an old friend of his father, who, partly for profit, but more for the advancement of science, had made his arrangements for this adventurous journey. But it was too late now to recede, even had he wished to do so. In fact, had any one talked of his return, he would have laughed at him as a proposer of something absurd.
"I suppose it comes natural to most boys to long for adventures and to see foreign countries," he thought to himself, and then he went mentally over the scene with Giovanni.
"Joe is as eager as I was," he muttered, and then he started, for something swept by his face.
"What"s matter, my lad?" said Shaddy quietly.
"I--I don"t know, something--There it goes again, some bird. An owl, I think, flew past my face. There, it skimmed just over our heads with a fluttering noise."
"I heard it, lad--bat, big "un. Put your toes in your pockets if you haven"t got on your shoes."
"What do you mean?"
"It"s a blood-sucker--wampire, that"s all."
"But that"s all nonsense," said Rob, with a slight shudder, "a traveller"s tale."
"Oh, is it, boy? You"ll see one of these times when we wake in the morning. They come in the night and suck your blood."
"Oh, that can"t be true?"
"Why not? Get out, will you?" said Shaddy gruffly, as he made a blow at the great leathern-winged creature that kept fluttering about their heads. "He smells his supper, and is trying for a chance. You don"t believe it, then?"
"No."
"Humph! Well, you"ve a right to your own opinion, my lad," said Shaddy quietly, "but I suppose you believe that if you dabbled your legs in the water a leech might fix on you and suck your blood?"
"Oh yes; I"ve had many on me in England."
"And you"ve had skeeters on you and maybe sucked your blood here?"
"Yes."