Early next morning the three adventurers were awakened by a mournful cry. A long, shrill note sounded near the shelter-tent and was followed by three others, each deepening in tone. They sat up and rubbed their eyes, then looked at one another, as if to ask, “What is that?”
Again the long, shrill note, and again the three mournful echoes, each deeper than the one preceding.
“Oh, I know what it is!” exclaimed Harvey, rising, his face brighter. “It’s the alma perdida.”
“Alma perdida! That’s the Spanish for ‘lost soul.’”
“Exactly. That’s why the bird has such a name, because of its cry. It’s an alma perdida—a bird, that is piping so dolefully. Come, see if I am not correct.”
He pushed aside the flap of the shelter-tent, sprang without, and was followed by the young men. In the light of early day they saw a little brown bird, a tuft of red on its head, perched on a scrub bush, not a hundred yards away. Even as they looked the shrill note was repeated, and then the doleful ones of deeper sound.
“Shoo!” said Ferguson; and as the bird remained perched on the bush, he threw a stone. The red-tufted body of brown rose from the branch and disappeared.
“’Good riddance to bad rubbish,’” said Ferguson. “We don’t want any such croakers at our feast; which, by the way, reminds me of breakfast.”
Indeed it was cold for these travellers from the warm coast-belt, the mercury standing at about thirty-five degrees Fahrenheit.
“Let’s run and get wood for a fire, then we’ll feel warmer,” said Hope-Jones. “There’s a dwarf tree over there. Surely some dry branches are beneath it. Now for a two hundred yards’ dash! One! two! three!”
Ferguson won, Hope-Jones second, and Harvey a close third. The run started their blood well in circulation, and they fell to gathering chips of bark and dried twigs with a will, returning to the tent each with an armful. They placed four stones equidistant from a centre, so that a few inches were between them, and in the spaces piled the wood.
“Be careful with the matches!” said Ferguson. “Only one for a fire. Harvey, take from your box first.”
The boy stooped over and the two young men stood to the windward of him, forming a shield. In a few seconds a crackle was heard, then a thin line of blue smoke rose from between the stones, and tongues of flame licked the pieces of granite.
