ht case of split bamboo which the carpenter had made; and with one
gun over my shoulder, a botanist's collecting-box for choice birds, and
Pete following with another gun and a net for large birds slung over his
shoulder, we had tramped on for hours, thinking nothing of the heat and
the sun-rays which flashed off the surface of the clear shallow stream
we were following, for the air came down fresh and invigorating from the
mountains.

We had been fairly successful, for I had shot four rare humming-birds;
but so far we had seen no specimens of the gorgeous quetzal, and it was
for these that our eyes wandered whenever we reached a patch of
woodland, but only to startle macaws, parroquets, or the
clumsy-looking--but really light and active--big-billed toucans, which
made Pete shake his head.

"They're all very well, with their orange and red throats, or their pale
primrose or white, Master Nat; but I don't see no good in birds having
great bills like that."

We had a bit of an adventure, too, that was rather startling, as we
slowly climbed higher in tracking the course of the little stream
towards its source in the mountain. As we toiled on where the rocks
rose like walls on either side, and the ground was stony and bare, the
rugged glittering in the sunshine, Pete had got on a few yards ahead
through my having paused to transfer a gorgeous golden-green beetle to
our collecting-box.

I was just thinking that the absence of grass or flowers was probably
due to the fact that the flooded stream must at times run all over where
we were walking, the narrow valley looking quite like the bed of a river
right up to the rocks on either side, when Pete shouted to me--

"Come and look, Master Nat. What's this here? Want to take it?"

I looked, and then fired the quickest shot I ever discharged in my life.
I hardly know how I managed it; but one moment I was carrying my gun
over my shoulder, the next I had let the barrels fall into my left hand
and fired.

Pete leapt off the ground, uttering a yell which would have made anyone
who could have looked on imagine that I had shot him. He dropped the
gun he carried and turned round to face me.

"What did you do that for, Master Nat?" he cried.

"For that," I said, pointing, and then raising my piece to my shoulder,
I fired again at something writhing and twining among the loose stones.

"Thought you meant to shoot me, sir," said Pete, picking up the gun and
covering a dint