180 On the trail of vanishing birds 



bare feet in the surf and an empty aguardiente bottle clasped to 

 his bosom. He was out like a light. In the shade of the truck lay 

 our driver, in like condition. And when the horrified Arturo lo- 

 cated Nicolas he found him asleep in our quarters, surrounded 

 by empty fruit-juice cans. He had consumed our entire stock! Of 

 the three culprits only Nicolas was sober, so Arturo descended 

 on him with enough wrath for all of them. "I told him," he 

 advised me, "that his father must have been a caiman and his 

 mother an aura" Apparently the unfortunate Nicolas objected 

 strongly to these insults, for who could be proud of an ancestry 

 that combined the unattractive qualities of a crocodile and a 

 vulture! 



The night that followed I shall never forget. Senora Felipe 

 stepped into the breech and treated us to supper (the errant 

 cook, it turned out, was her brother), and after our usual coffee 

 around the open fire we climbed into our improvised hammocks. 

 It was a still night and the mosquitoes and sandflies were worse 

 than ever. In the thatch over our heads crabs moved about, 

 rustling the dry fronds and dropping things on our faces. Finally, 

 worn out from our long day in the sun, I fell asleep. Sometime 

 after midnight I was awakened by blood-chilling shouts. There 

 was no light but I could sense that on the dirt floor next to me 

 two figures were thrashing around as if locked in a death struggle. 

 Then Felipe and the cook, the latter now more or less sobered, 

 came dashing in with a lantern. In the dim light we saw that 

 Nicolas lay on the floor with Arturo holding him by the throat. 

 Near them lay a thin-bladed knife. 



It was some minutes before anyone could calm down suffi- 

 ciently to tell me what was being said. It seemed that Nicolas 

 had brooded over the names that Arturo had applied to his pro- 

 genitors and had decided to slit Arturo's throat. Fortunately, 

 Arturo was only half asleep and when Nicolas had made his lunge 

 he had caught the fellow's arm and twisted the weapon from his 

 grasp. 



For safety's sake we trussed up the glaring Nicolas and laid him 

 away in a corner, while the cook made us some coffee. And there 

 we sat, for all the world, as I thought to myself, like a company 



