232 FROM NORTH POLE TO EQUATOR. 



the wind may rage through the trees; or it may be that the dark 

 starless heaven is relieved only by the slender rays of far-distant 

 suns, while no leaf or blade of grass is stirred. A few minutes 

 after sunset, night descends upon the forest. What was clearly seen 

 by day is now veiled by darkness, what was seen in its true propor- 

 tions in the sunlight now becomes gigantic. Familiar trees become 

 phantasms, the hedge-like bushes thicken to dark walls. The noise 

 of a thousand voices is stilled, and for a few minutes a deep silence 

 prevails. Then life begins to stir again, the river and the forest are 

 again alive. Hundreds of cicadas raise their chirping, like the 

 jingle of many badly-tuned little bells heard from a distance; thou- 

 sands of restless beetles, some very large, whirr about the flowering 

 trees with a deep humming, fit accompaniment to the cicadas' chirp- 

 ing. Frogs add their single note, surprisingly loud for their size, 

 and their voices ring through the forest, like the sound of a slowly- 

 beaten Chinese gong. A great owl greets the night with its dull 

 hooting; a little screech-owl responds with shrill laughter; a goat- 

 sucker spins off the single strophe of his rattling song. From the 

 river come the plaintive cries of a nocturnal member of the gull 

 family, the skimmer or shearwater, which begins to plough the 

 waves, skimming along the surface of the water; from the islands 

 and banks sound the somewhat screeching cries of the thickknee or 

 stone-curlew, and the rich, melodious, song-like trills of the red- 

 shank or the plover; among the reeds and sedges of a neighbouring 

 pool croaks a night-heron. Hundreds of glowworms sparkle among 

 the bushes and the tree-tops; a gigantic crocodile, which had left 

 its sand-bank before sundown to bathe its heated coat of mail in the 

 tepid water, is swimming half beneath and half above the surface 

 of the water, and making long streaks of silver which shine in 

 the moonlight, or at least glitter in the flickering light of the 

 stars. Above the tallest trees float noiseless companies of horned 

 and other owls; long-tailed night-jars fly with graceful curves 

 along the river bank; bats describe their tortuous course among 

 the trees ; fox- bats and fruit - eating bats cross from bank to 

 bank, sometimes in flocks. This is the time of activity among the 

 other mammals too. A jackal utters its varied call, now plaintive, 



