istance away and the slight wind that blew ruffled their feathers in a
most peculiar manner. He drew still nearer. Then it dawned upon him that
they were dead. Rafts of fish, also dead, floating on the surface of the
water dotted the edges of the marsh. And, strangest of all, queer
footprints were visible in the mud. They were unlike any Warruk had ever
seen--long, broad, and giving off a strange scent. He sniffed the tracks
and followed them entirely around the marsh to the river. There they
disappeared at the water's edge.

For once the Jaguar broke his rule not to eat anything he had not
killed. The birds for which he had longed were irresistible so,
cat-like, he picked one up in his mouth, carried it away a short
distance, and then, finding it not too rank, ate it. After that he
started to get another one. Like the one he had just eaten, the bird had
been mutilated by some ruthless hand; a part of its back had been torn
away. Warruk started off with the prize in his mouth but before he had
taken many steps a strange feeling came over him. A shudder passed over
his powerful frame and he became violently ill. He dropped the bird he
was carrying and rushing to the stream drank greedily, for a burning
thirst had now taken possession of him; and then followed nausea so
violent that it left him all but lifeless.

How many hours he lay on the bank of the stream, too sick to move, none
can tell; but it was many. Again and again he regained his senses long
enough to lap up water in great gulps and that always seemed, at least
partially, to quench the fire that was consuming him within. When a
measure of relief finally came he crawled weakly from the neighborhood,
determined never to visit it again.

In some manner Warruk connected his predicament with the new tracks in
the mud and the strange scent they conveyed. And he was right, for the
first time in his life he had come upon the trail of man, and upon man's
handiwork in all its most pitiless destructiveness.

What had happened was this: A party of plume hunters had discovered the
feeding-ground of the egrets; had gathered up great quantities of the
imprisoned fish and after poisoning them had redistributed them over the
surface of the water. The birds ate and died. Then the men returned,
stripped the plumes from their luckless victims and departed in their
canoes. The young in the platform nests in the forest island called in
vain for their elders and for the food they