CREATURES OF MYSTERY 
237 
least slightly with that sublimest spectacle of all the universe, 
the Aurora Borealis. This was the one brief half-hour of the 
day when we would most have liked to be left wholly to our 
thoughts, but it was not so ordered. 
Just at that instant something not more than one hundred 
feet from our cabin uttered a loud, unearthly wail. Having 
heard it on more than one occasion before, I knew instantly 
what it was, but maintained absolute silence, observing the 
reaction of my friend. I knew for sure that if silence was main¬ 
tained that the call would be repeated in about ten seconds. It 
so happened, and it had the appearance that my friend would 
go into a panic. He described it as the siren on a bicycle, 
starting on the lower notes and quickly ascending the scale, 
then shutting off abruptly, followed with a short but distinct 
“Tu.” He described the mating call of the diamond-back about 
as accurately as one could, when uttered at close range. I asked 
my friend if he had the slightest idea what it could have been. 
He had not the slightest idea. Being told what it was, he 
could not believe it. Being a well-read man, he confessed that 
he had never before heard of such thing. 
The story, after all, is a very simple one. No one, not even 
the Indian, could succeed in slipping up on a diamond-back 
uttering his dawn call, so delicate is his sense of hearing. It 
being in late August, the beginning of their annual mating 
season, he was simply going up the river hummock courting, 
hoping that he might succeed in whistling up a bride. He evi¬ 
dently traveled in darkness the night before, and by chance 
struck camp right by the side of us at the end of his day’s 
journey. 
While our conversation was conducted in an undertone at 
the time he commenced calling, it is quite evident that he over¬ 
heard our conversation and signed off promptly. It is the con¬ 
tention of the scientific world that reptiles do not have ears. 
This may be true, but we insist that if they do not, then they 
have something much better than the human ear. It can be 
as truthfully said that the radio has no ears, yet it readily 
picks up a conversation held in an undertone all the way from 
New York to San Francisco. This delicate piece of mechanism 
