per. "I
have sailed up one or two of these rivers in my time, and when you get
higher up you will find it very different: big forests with grand trees,
rivers with fine water, and places beautiful enough for anything, such
as will satisfy travellers who don't want ports and towns. You and the
doctor, Mr Rodd, will be able to get some fine shooting up there, if
you like, and fine fishing too. Do you want to get any birds of all the
colours of the rainbow?"

"Why, of course!" cried Rodd eagerly.

"Well, there you'll find them, sir--singing birds too, green and gold
and scarlet and grey, and some with long tails, and some with short.
Only," continued the skipper dryly, and with a grim smile at the two
lads, "they don't sing like our birds at home, but in a foreign lingo,
all squeak and scream and squawk, through their having crooked hook
beaks. They are what people at home call parrots and parakeets."

"Oh, that's what you mean!" cried Rodd, laughing.

"Of course, sir--them as you teaches to talk. Wicked 'uns, some of
them, ready enough to learn anything the sailors teach them, but sulky
as slugs when you want them to learn anything good."

"But there are plenty of them, captain?" said Rodd.

"Thicker than crows at home, sir. Then what do you say to monkeys?"

"That I should like to see them alive in the forest."

"Well, there you have them, sir; and you could come across plenty, if
you went far enough, big as boys."

"Ah, now you are telling travellers' tales, captain," said Rodd.

"Nay, my lad, not I. I have seen them as big as boys, only not so tall,
because their legs have all gone into arms. Little, short, crooked
legs, they have got, as makes them squatty. But when they stand up
their arms are so long that they nearly touch the ground. Big as boys?
Why, they are bigger! I never saw boys with such big heads. And they
all look as if they had been born old; wrinkled faces and long shaggy
black hair."

"Now, look here, captain, I don't mind you joking me, but don't play
tricks with the Viscount here."

"Not I, my lad. I am just telling you the honest truth, and you may
believe me."

"But where's the river where these things are?"

"We shall come across one of them before long, sir," said the skipper.
"I expected to have found one that suited my book hours ago. I was very
nearly going up that one just about dinner-time."

"Oh, but that was only a little inlet," said Rodd.

"Looked so to y