Up and up he went, while the whole shell-like structure of the fig swayed and bent under his weight and dry dust from the dead nut tree powdered down upon him in showers. Finally he reached a safe stopping-place, where he could stand with both feet resting in a loop which the snakelike fig had made in one of its twisting turns around its victim.
For a few minutes the trio in the tree-tops sat and stared in silence at one another and the weaving, champing herd of furious beasts below. It was Jud who spoke first.
"It's your move, Captain Pinto," he remarked. "What do we do next?"
"Sit still until they go away," returned the Indian despondently.
"How many arrows have you left?" inquired Will from his tree.
"I've got sixteen shots in my locker," observed Jud, from his perch; "but there must be nearly a hundred pigs in this herd; an' if these big fellows are like the chaps I knew in Mexico, the more you kill, the more those that are left will try to kill you."
"The only thing to do is to sit still," repeated the Mundurucu. "Perhaps they go 'way before night."
"Perhaps they don't, too," grumbled Jud. "A pig's an obstinate critter at his best, an' a peccary's a pig at his worst!"
As time went on, conversation among the besieged flagged and each one settled down to endure the wait as best he might. Will amused himself by watching the birds which passed him among the tree-tops and listening to some of their strange and beautiful songs. At any time of the year and in any part of the world, a bird-student can always find pleasure in his hobby where unseeing, unhearing people find nothing of interest. To-day the first bird that caught his eye looked something like a crow, save that it had a crest of curved, hairy feathers, which at times, on its perch in a neighboring tree, it would raise and spread out over its head like a fringed parasol. From its breast swung a pad of feather-covered flesh, and, as it perched, it would every now and then give a deep low flute-note, raising its parasol each time in a most comical manner.
"What's that bird, Pinto?" Will inquired, after he had watched it delightedly for a long time.
"He umbrella-bird," returned the other, indifferently; "no good to eat." For the Mundurucu had a very simple system of ornithology--he divided all birds into two groups, those that were good to eat and those that were not.