“What a pity!” said Herbert, “such a useful tree, and which has such beautiful nuts!”

As to the birds, they swarmed among the scanty branches of the eucalypti and casuarinas, which did not hinder the display of their wings.  Black, white, or gray cockatoos, paroquets, with plumage of all colors, kingfishers of a sparkling green and crowned with red, blue lories, and various other birds appeared on all sides, as through a prism, fluttering about and producing a deafening clamor.  Suddenly, a strange concert of discordant voices resounded in the midst of a thicket.  The settlers heard successively the song of birds, the cry of quadrupeds, and a sort of clacking which they might have believed to have escaped from the lips of a native.  Neb and Herbert rushed towards the bush, forgetting even the most elementary principles of prudence.  Happily, they found there, neither a formidable wild beast nor a dangerous native, but merely half a dozen mocking and singing birds, known as mountain pheasants.  A few skillful blows from a stick soon put an end to their concert, and procured excellent food for the evening’s dinner.

Herbert also discovered some magnificent pigeons with bronzed wings, some superbly crested, others draped in green, like their congeners at Port-Macquarie; but it was impossible to reach them, or the crows and magpies which flew away in flocks.

A charge of small shot would have made great slaughter among these birds, but the hunters were still limited to sticks and stones, and these primitive weapons proved very insufficient.

Their insufficiency was still more clearly shown when a troop of quadrupeds, jumping, bounding, making leaps of thirty feet, regular flying mammiferae, fled over the thickets, so quickly and at such a height, that one would have thought that they passed from one tree to another like squirrels.

“Kangaroos!” cried Herbert.

“Are they good to eat?” asked Pencroft.

“Stewed,” replied the reporter, “their flesh is equal to the best venison!—­”

Gideon Spilett had not finished this exciting sentence when the sailor, followed by Neb and Herbert, darted on the kangaroos tracks.  Cyrus Harding called them back in vain.  But it was in vain too for the hunters to pursue such agile game, which went bounding away like balls.  After a chase of five minutes, they lost their breath, and at the same time all sight of the creatures, which disappeared in the wood.  Top was not more successful than his masters.

“Captain,” said Pencroft, when the engineer and the reporter had rejoined them, “Captain, you see quite well we can’t get on unless we make a few guns.  Will that be possible?”

“Perhaps,” replied the engineer, “but we will begin by first manufacturing some bows and arrows, and I don’t doubt that you will become as clever in the use of them as the Australian hunters.”

“Bows and arrows!” said Pencroft scornfully.  “That’s all very well for children!”