The cuckoo was gone, the nightingale silent, the finches were in the stubble, there might be a chiff-chaff “chip-chipping,” perhaps deep in the jungle, one pair of doves had not quite finished nesting on New Formosa, now and then parties of greenfinches called “ky-wee, ky-wee,” and a single lark sang in the early dawn. But the jungle here was silent. There was no song but that of the waterfall. Though there was not a breath of wind under the boughs, yet the sound of the fall now rose, and now declined, as the water ran swifter or with less speed. Sometimes it was like a tinkling; sometimes it laughed; sometimes it was like voices far away. It ran out from the woods with a message, and hastening to tell it, became confused. Bevis sat on the raft, leaning against the willow bulwark; Pan crept to his knee. The forget-me-nots and the hart’s-tongue, the beeches and the firs, listened to the singing. Something that had gone by, and something that was to come, came out of the music and made this moment sweeter. This moment of the singing held a thousand years that had gone by, and the thousand years that are to come. For the woods and the waters are very old, that is the past; if you look up into the sky you know that a thousand years hence will be nothing to it, that is the future. But the forget-me-nots, the hart’s-tongue, and the beeches, did not think of the ages gone, or the azure to come. They were there _now_, the sunshine and the wind above, the shadow and the water and the spray beneath, that was all in all. Bevis and Mark were there now, listening to the singing, that was all in all. Presently there was a sound--a “swish”--and looking up, they saw a pheasant with his tail behind like a comet, flying straight out to sea. This awoke them. Bevis held out the palm of his hand, and Pan came nearer and put his chin in the hollow of it, as he had done these hundreds of times. Pan looked up, and wagged his tail, thump, thump, on the deck of the raft. If we could put the intelligence of the dog in the body of the horse, size, speed, and grace, what an animal that would be! “Lots of perch here,” said Mark; “I shall come and fish. Suppose we land and go up the Sweet River?” “It belongs to the king of this country, I expect,” said Bevis. “He sits on a throne of ebony with a golden footstool, and they wave fans of peacocks’ feathers, and the room is lit up by a single great diamond just in the very top of the dome of the ceiling, which flashes the sunshine through, down from outside. The swan belongs to him.” “And he keeps the Sweet River just for himself to drink from, and executes everybody who dares drink of it,” said Mark.