dipped their bills under water in search of prey:  but before noon even those had slipped away, and there reigned a stillness which might be heard—­such a stillness (to compare small things with great) as broods beneath the rich shadows of Amyas’s own Devon woods, or among the lonely sweeps of Exmoor, when the heather is in flower—­a stillness in which, as Humboldt says, “If beyond the silence we listen for the faintest undertones, we detect a stifled, continuous hum of insects, which crowd the air close to the earth; a confused swarming murmur which hangs round every bush, in the cracked bark of trees, in the soil undermined by lizards, millepedes, and bees; a voice proclaiming to us that all Nature breathes, that under a thousand different forms life swarms in the gaping and dusty earth, as much as in the bosom of the waters, and the air which breathes around.”

At last a soft and distant murmur, increasing gradually to a heavy roar, announced that they were nearing some cataract; till turning a point, where the deep alluvial soil rose into a low cliff fringed with delicate ferns, they came full in sight of a scene at which all paused:  not with astonishment, but with something very like disgust.

“Rapids again!” grumbled one.  “I thought we had had enough of them on the Orinoco.”

“We shall have to get out, and draw the canoes overland, I suppose.  Three hours will be lost, and in the very hottest of the day, too.”

“There’s worse behind; don’t you see the spray behind the palms?”

“Stop grumbling, my masters, and don’t cry out before you are hurt.  Paddle right up to the largest of those islands, and let us look about us.”

In front of them was a snow-white bar of raging foam, some ten feet high, along which were ranged three or four islands of black rock.  Each was crested with a knot of lofty palms, whose green tops stood out clear against the bright sky, while the lower half of their stems loomed hazy through a luminous veil of rainbowed mist.  The banks right and left of the fall were so densely fringed with a low hedge of shrubs, that landing seemed all but impossible; and their Indian guide, suddenly looking round him and whispering, bade them beware of savages; and pointed to a canoe which lay swinging in the eddies under the largest island, moored apparently to the root of some tree.

“Silence all!” cried Amyas, “and paddle up thither and seize the canoe.  If there be an Indian on the island, we will have speech of him:  but mind and treat him friendly; and on your lives, neither strike nor shoot, even if he offers to fight.”

So, choosing a line of smooth backwater just in the wake of the island, they drove their canoes up by main force, and fastened them safely by the side of the Indian’s, while Amyas, always the foremost, sprang boldly on shore, whispering to the Indian boy to follow him.