A flock of parrakeets swooped like swallows through the air with high-pitched cries; from the feathered foliage of a tamarind came the monotonous drool, "Ko-el--ko-el--ko-el--ke-e-e-e-el!" of the koel bird, harbinger of the "hot spell;" a crow, nesting in a banyan, rose from her eggs, and, with a frightened cry, fled through the air as a hawk cuckoo swooped with shrill whistle as if to strike. The cuckoo, dumping from the nest a couple of the crow's white eggs, settled down to deposit her own embryo chick. From the kennels came the joyous bark of Rampore hounds, and from a native village filtered up the yapping cries of pariah dogs.
Far up the road that wound past the bungalow sounded the squealing skirl of wooden axles in wooden wheels, and the cries of the bullock driver, "_Dut, dut, dut, Dowlet! Dut, dut--chelao Rajah!_" followed by the curious noise that the driver made with his lips while he twisted the tails of his bullocks to urge them on.
Finnerty thought of the stone on the road, and, passing into the bungalow, wakened Swinton. "Sorry, old boy, but we'd better have a look at that stone--there are carts coming down the hill."
"Bless me! Almost dropped off to sleep, I'm afraid!" and the captain sat up.
When they arrived at the scene of Swinton's adventure, Finnerty, peering over the embankment, said: "The dogcart is hung up in a tree halfway down. I expect you'll find that chita at the bottom, kicked to death by the Cabuli."
Swinton, indicating an abrasion on the boulder that might have been left by the iron tire of a wheel, said: "My cart didn't strike this, and there are no other iron-wheel marks on the road; just part of this beastly plot--to be used as evidence that the stone put me over the bank."
"They even rolled the boulder down to leave an accidental trail. There's not a footprint of a native, though. Hello, by Jove!" Finnerty was examining two bamboos growing from the bank above the road. "See that?" and his finger lay on an encircling mark where a strap had worn a smooth little gutter in the bamboo shell two feet from the ground. Both bamboos, standing four feet apart, showed this line of friction. "Here's where they held the chita in leash, and, when you arrived, took off his hood and slipped the straps. We'll just roll that boulder off the road and go back to breakfast."