Its
first efforts at chanting or singing sounds like the deep, harsh,
anger-croak prolonged, but as the time goes on they gradually acquire,
night by night, a less raucous and a louder, more sustained and far-
reaching sound. There was always very great variety in the tones; and
while some continued deep and harsh - the harshest sound in nature -
others were clearer and not unmusical; and in a large number there
were always a few in the scattered choir that out-soared all the
others in high, long-drawn notes, almost organ-like in quality.
Listening to their varied performance one night as we lay in bed, my
sporting brother proposed that on the following morning we should drag
one of the cattle-troughs to the lake to launch it and go on a voyage
in quest of these dangerous, hateful creatures and slay them with our
javelins. It was not an impossible scheme, since the creatures were to
be seen at this season swimming or floating on the surface, and in our
boat or canoe we should also detect them as they moved about over the
green sward at the bottom.
Accordingly, next morning after breakfast we set out, without
imparting our plans to any one, and with great labour dragged the
trough to the water. It was a box-shaped thing, about twenty feet long
and two feet wide at the bottom and three at the top. We were also
provided with three javelins, one for each of us, from my brother's
extensive armoury.
He had about that time been reading ancient history, and fired with
the story of old wars when men fought hand to hand, he had dropped
guns and pistols for the moment and set himself with furious zeal to
manufacture the ancient weapons - bows and arrows, pikes, shield,
battle-axes and javelins. These last were sticks about six feet long,
nicely made of pine-wood - he had no doubt bribed the carpenter to make
them for him - and pointed with old knife-blades six or seven inches
long, ground to a fearful sharpness. Such formidable weapons were not
required for our purpose: they would have served well enough if we had
been going out against Don Anastacio's fierce and powerful swine; but
it was his order, and to his wild and warlike imagination the toad-
like creatures were the warriors of some hostile tribe opposing us, I
forget if in Asia or Africa, which had to be conquered and extirpated.
No sooner had we got into our long, awkwardly-shaped boat than it
capsized and threw us all into the water; that was but the first of
some dozens of upsets and fresh drenchings we experienced during the
day.
