Page:The further side of silence (IA furthersideofsil00clifiala).pdf/270

 Presently a shrill cry, half scream, half hoot, such as you might imagine to be the war-whoop of a Red Indian, sounded from the forest a quarter of a mile downstream. Even an European could have heard this, so clear and penetrating was the sound; and he would have added that it was the cry of an argus pheasant. A Malay, well though he knows his jungles, would have given to the sound a similar interpretation; but the Sâkai knew better. Their acute perceptions could detect without difficulty the indefinable difference between the real cry of the bird and this ingenious imitation, precisely similar though they would have seemed to less sharpened senses; and a moment later an argus pheasant sent back an answering challenge from the heart of the fire over which the old man who had spoken sat crouching. The whoop was immediately replied to from a hilltop a few hundred yards upstream, and the old fellow made a clicking noise in his throat, like the sound of a demoralized clockspring. It was his way of express- ing amusement, for a wild bird had answered his yell. It had failed to detect the deception which the Sâkai could recognize so easily.

In about a quarter of an hour two young Sakai, with long blowpipes over their shoulders, rattan knapsacks on their backs, and bamboo spears in their hands, passed into the camp in single file. They emerged from the forest like shadows cast upon a wall, flitting swiftly on noiseless feet, and squatted down by the central fire without a word. Each rolled a cigarette, lighted it from a flaming firebrand,