It is not pleasant to hear a noise as of something forcing its way
through bushes close by your bedside, when instead of the strong walls
of a house in a thickly inhabited place, with police to protect you,
there is nothing but a thin piece of canvas between you and a forest
swarming, for aught you can tell, with hosts of dangerous creatures
seeking their prey.
I felt that in my first night where I lay by the outskirts of one of the
Central American forests, and I should have seized Uncle Dick by the arm
and shaken him into wakefulness but for the dread of being considered
cowardly.
For he seemed so calm and confident that I dared not wake him up, to be
told that the noise I heard was only made by some innocent animal that
would flee for its life if I slipped outside.
"I wonder whether that would," I said to myself. "I'll try."
I made up my mind that I would take my double gun from where it lay
beside me and go out; but it was a long time before I could make up my
body to act; and when at last, in anger with myself for being so
cowardly, I did creep out softly and make a dash in the direction of the
sound, I was bathed in perspiration, and my legs shook beneath me, for I
felt certain that the next minute I should be seized by some monstrous
creature ready to spring at me out of the darkness.
But nothing did seize me. For there was a thud and a faint crash
repeated again and again, and though I could not see, I felt certain
that the fire had attracted some deer-like creature, which had gone
bounding off, till all was silent again, when I crept back, letting the
canvas fall behind me, feeling horribly conceited, and thinking what a
brave fellow I must be.
I must have gone off to sleep directly I lay down then, for one moment I
was looking at the dull-reddish patch in the canvas behind which the
fire was burning, and the next everything was blank, till all at once I
was wide awake, with a hand laid across my mouth, and the interior of
our scrap of a tent so dark that I could see nothing; but I could hear
someone breathing, and directly after Uncle Dick whispered:
"Lie still--don't speak."
He removed his hand then, and seemed to be listening.
"Hear anything, Nat?" he said.
"Not now, uncle. I did a little while ago, and took my gun and went
out."
"Ah! What was it?"
"Some kind of deer, and it bounded away."
"It was no deer that I heard, my boy," he whispered, "but something big
and heavy. Whatever it was trod upon a stick or a shell, and it snapped
loudly and woke me up. There it is again."
I heard the sound quite plainly in the darkness, and it was exactly as
Uncle Dick described, but I leaned towards its being a fragile shell
trodden on by some big animal or a man.
"Couldn't be one of the great cats?" I whispered.
"Oh, no! they tread like velvet."
"Could it be a tapir?"
"Not a likely place for one. Hist!"
I was silent, and lay listening, so to speak, with all my might, till a
low swishing sound reached us, just as if someone had brushed against a
bush.
Uncle Dick laid his hand upon my shoulder, and he pressed it hard, as if
silently saying, "Did you hear that?"