When the men finished their meal, twilight had shaded to dusk. Owing to the many rapids, travel by night had become impossible. Manuel drooped over one smoky fire and Señor sat by another. After sunset there never was any real silence in the jungle. This hour was, nevertheless, remarkably quiet. It wore, shaded, blackened, into wild, lonely night. The remoteness of that spot seemed to dwell in the sultry air, in the luminous fog shrouding the river, in the moving gloom under the black trees, in the odor of decaying vegetable life. Manuel nodded and his shoulders sagged. Presently Señor raised his head, as if startled. “Listen!” he whispered, touching his comrade’s arm. Then in the semidarkness they listened. Señor raised his head net above his ears. “There! Hear it?” he breathed low. “What on earth--or in hell? What is it?” “I hear nothing,” replied Manuel. Señor straightened his tall form and stood with clenched hands. “If that was fancy--then--” He muttered deep in his chest. All at once he swayed to one side. And became strung in the attitude of listening. “Again! Hear it! Listen!” Out of the weird darkness wailed a soft, sad note, to be followed by another, lower, sweeter, and then another still fainter. “I hear nothing,” repeated Manuel. This time, out of curiosity and indefinable portent, he lied. “No! You’re sure?” asked Señor huskily. He placed a shaking hand on Manuel. “You heard no cry--like--like--” He drew up sharply. “Perhaps I only thought I heard something--I’m fanciful at times.” He stirred the camp fire and renewed it with dry sticks. Evidently he wanted light. A slight blaze flickered up, intensifying the somber dusk. A vampire bat wheeled in the lighted circle. Manuel watched his companion, studying the face, somehow still white through the swollen fly blotches and scorch of sun, marveling at its expression. What had Señor imagined he had heard? Again the falling note! Clearer than the clearest bell, sweeter than the saddest music, wailed out of a succession of melancholy, descending tones, to linger mournfully, to hold the last note in exquisite suspense, to hush away, and leave its phantom echo in the charged air. A woman, dying in agony and glad to die, not from disease or violence, but from unutterable woe, might have wailed out that last note to the last beat of a broken heart. Señor gripped Manuel’s arm. “You heard that--you heard it? Tell me!” “Oh, is that what you meant? Surely I heard it,” replied Manuel. “That’s only the Perde-alma.” “Perde-alma?” echoed Señor. “Bird of the Lost Soul. Sounded like a woman, didn’t it? We rubber hunters like his song. The Indians believe he sings only when death is near. But that signifies nothing. For above the Pachitea life and death are one. Life is here, and a step there is death! Perde-alma sings seldom. I was years on the river before I heard him.” “Bird of the Lost Soul! A bird! Manuel, I did not think that cry came from any living thing.”