VTHE CAMP-FIRE
If it is dreadful to be overtaken in the forest by the punctual night of the tropics, while unprepared, without camp or comfort, yet, to the weary man, after a good bath and a good supper, and with a good bed awaiting him, the brief period of the departing day and the increasing camp-fire glow, the smell of wood smoke and the crackle of the burning log, are a delightful experience.
The camp is usually an open glade, where the night is not so sudden in its fall. The shadows grow longer in the evening light, and the gray twilight deepens till the stars shine through. Then in the red glow of the camp-fire, phantom shadows and eerie forms flit to and fro, approaching towards us and receding into the darkness like spirits impelled by curiosity, and planning either play or mischief according to the mood of the observer. In the day the man is properly the master of his mood, but in this hour it is pleasant to relax and let the mood be master of the man, giving a free rein to fancy.
Immediately after supper it was my custom to hold prayers with the carriers. Then, if the labour of the day has been easy, or a Sunday rest has intervened, they become more sociable and communicative than usual, and often prolong the evening with camp-fire stories. They are born orators and can tell a story to perfection, whether it be a fable handed down from others, or a narrative from their own experience. The knowledge of the native may be ever so limited and his thought meagre, but he canalways give it appropriate and striking form and express himself in forceful and sometimes beautiful language. He never hesitates nor becomes incoherent; his words flow like a river and keep well within the course of his purpose. His gestures are animated and infinitely varied, sometimes grotesque, more often graceful, and always expressive.
He has also a faculty of imitation beyond all men. For instance, two schoolboys (if we may leave the camp-fire for a while to digress upon this native talent for imitation)—two schoolboys sit talking together, myself paying no attention, when one of them imitates the clicking of my typewriter so that I immediately recognize it. A new clock has recently been placed in the school, and I recognize their imitation of its stroke. Again, I recognize the noise of the gasoline engine of the launch,Dorothy, now at half speed, now full speed, now running smoothly and now with the peculiar omission followed by a heavier stroke, due to a weak battery.
A boy in talking to me refers to another boy by a name that I do not know, one with rather a peculiar countenance.
I say: “I do not know of whom you are speaking.”
He replies: “He looks like this”—slightly twisting his face into an exaggerated and ludicrous likeness of the other boy, which I instantly recognize.
One day at Efulen the body of a very large monkey, killed by Mr. Kerr or Dr. Good, hung suspended from the roof of our back porch. The expression of the monkey’s face was fearfully human. It did not look dead, but rather as if it had been very drunk the night before and was sleeping off the effects. I heard our two house-boys giggling and chuckling on the porch, and looking out I saw them standing in front of the monkey trying to look just like him, which they did with such startling successthat I complimented them by telling them that either of them might exchange places with the monkey without Dr. Good ever knowing the difference.
On one occasion a party of white men and native boys were travelling on a river launch for several days. Four of the white men occupied their spare time in playing a certain game with dominoes. One day when they had left the cabin, four native boys sat down in their places and taking the dominoes, began to imitate the white men. They were absolutely ignorant of the game, and did not know the white men’s language, and yet they presented the semblance of the whole performance, each boy impersonating an individual white man—his exclamations, manner, and general behaviour during the progress of the game, from the deal to the last trick and the noisy conclusion.
This art of imitation is useful to the natives in hunting. For instance, a deer hunter in the forest will imitate the noise of two fighting bush-deer, and he will do it so well that any deer within hearing will come running to the spot. In reciting their numerous fables, in which animals are made to talk and act so as to teach lessons of prudence and goodness, the native will imitate the noise or the movements of each animal, and some of these stories one might almost follow without knowing the language.
This talent is also useful to the native in preaching the Gospel, which they all do, great and small, old and young, as soon as they become Christians, and often long before. I talked one day to a group of Christian boys, or young men, on the words: “Now the serpent was more subtile than any beast of the field,” applying the words obviously to the subtility of the Evil One in tempting us. Shortly afterwards, one of those young men, Ndong Koni (whose name I am likely to mention veryfrequently in the succeeding chapters) preached to a large audience a sermon on those words, which put mine to shame:
“You know where you may expect to find other animals,” he said, “and you also know their times.” And then naming first the leopard, he told them the kind of place that it frequents, and at what hours it seeks its prey, while the eager audience roared assent. So he did with the elephant, the gorilla and others. But the serpent, he told them, is found everywhere, often in the path before them, even in their houses, and always when least expected. Then he compared its powers with those of other animals, describing the leopard’s strength to fight, the fleetness of the deer in escaping, and how the monkey climbs; but how the serpent outfights the leopard, outruns the deer, outclimbs the monkey. The audience knowing well all the habits of the animals of the forest, was wildly appreciative, and several times took the sermon out of the speaker’s mouth.
On another occasion, a young man, Amvama, preached on the “Lost Sheep” of the parable, describing its peculiar helplessness. All the animals of the forest, however far they wander, can find their way back—but not the sheep; every other animal has some peculiar defense against its enemies of the forest, but the sheep is defenseless. The sheep lost in the forest cannot of itself get back to the town, and it is sure to be devoured by the wild beasts. Amvama did not fail to apply this to our own moral plight as lost and helpless.
But, we will return to the camp-fire in the forest, and the dim and dusky company seated around it, and the larger circle of fitful shadows and furtive forms that come gliding out, and back again into the forest. The opaque darkness pours forth such a volume of sound as never was heard in any forest elsewhere;—a thousand minglednoises of the night, weird, and difficult to associate with any bodily form, but belonging, one might easily fancy, to the shadow spirits of the forest, some of them perhaps the spirits of dead men—of those who, labouring under heavy loads, fell by the wayside, and died of sickness or fatigue, whose skeletons we sometimes pass; of those who by the spell of an enemy’s fetish lost their way, and never saw the face of man again; of those who for some crime have been driven forth into the forest by their own people, to die of hunger, or by the beasts.
Above all the myriad noises of the night, and separate from them, at times there falls upon the ear a prolonged cry of distress, that smites upon the heart, heard always in the African forest and never afterwards forgotten. It is a succession of ten or twelve long cries, shrill, tremulous and piercing; rather low at first, and vague, but gradually rising to a cry of definite terror, and again descending until it is lost in the volume of the forest noise.
It is a little disappointing to find the real source of this peculiar cry; and most people never find it, for it is exceedingly difficult to locate; whether near or far, whether high or low, one cannot be sure. It does not proceed as imagination suggested, from the spirits of the dead at variance and afflicting one another, but from a warm-bodied, innocent creature, the lemur, which lives in the heights of the trees, feeds upon insects, birds and reptiles, and seldom comes to the ground. In appearance it is somewhat like a bulky bear’s cub, but not well armed for offense or defense, and leading a precarious life among the stronger and fiercer creatures of the forest.
And now it occurs to me that theLemuresin Roman mythology were the spirits of those who had died in sin and who could not find rest, for whom expiatory rites were celebrated in the temple. It is generally supposed that Linnæus gave the namelemurto this familyof animals because of the pale and strangely ghost-like faces of some of them; but the peculiar cry of this particular kind of lemur is more sepulchral than the appearance of any of them, and might well be a reason for the name they bear.
There is one other characteristic sound in the night-forest, though personally I have not heard this sound when far from the coast. It is a single monotonous note, a little like a low tone on a flute, about ten seconds in duration, and without rise or fall, a doleful sigh or sob of unending remorse. This sound, although it always seems to be distant, is even more difficult to locate than the other. It is human more than all other sounds of the forest, and yet sepulchral, and the superstitious mind is easily persuaded that it issues from the unseen world. The source of it is rather extraordinary; for according to native testimony it proceeds from a certain gigantic snail, as it slowly draws itself into and out of its shell. This theory is difficult either for white man or black man to verify; for the sound is heard only at night, and it ceases as one approaches. But the native is by no means likely to be mistaken.
And now at the camp-fire a native is relating to his fellows a strange legend of the origin of this sound; a legend familiar to all the tribes of West Africa, and illustrating a rare interpretative faculty of the native mind. This is the camp-fire story:
“There was once a wayward and wilful son who lived alone with his mother. One day coming home hungry he ordered her to gather some greens and cook them for him. The mother, who never resisted his wishes, went out and gathered plenty of greens and cooked them. But in the cooking they shrivelled up as greens always do. Then the mother presented the greens to her son; but the son looking at them accused his mother of havingeaten the greens herself. This she denied; but the son would not believe her, and in his anger he struck her a blow on the head, and the mother fell dead at his feet. Then he cried out in anguish and sorrow; long and bitterly did he cry, but in vain. She was dead! She was dead! He had killed his own mother. From that day, all the days he mourned, saying always: ‘I killed my mother; I killed my mother;’ and all the nights he sobbed and moaned: ‘I killed my mother.’
“Then the spirits seeing his sorrow, that it was very great, and hearing him cry always day and night, at last were moved with pity, and turned him into a snail, which cannot suffer like a man. But though the snail does not weep in the daytime, yet at night it mourns and cries: ‘I—killed—my—mother;’ and so it will keep on crying until the end of the world.”
The reader will of course understand that the note of the snail is single and bears no resemblance to these articulate words of the son’s sorrow. The interpretation is purely spiritual, and poetic genius could scarcely improve upon it as an expression of the unending remorse which the sound conveys to sensitive and susceptive minds.
Sitting around the camp-fire they listen to the story as interested as if they had never heard it before, as children listen to the repetition of fables and nursery tales. Then remarks are made upon a son’s duty towards his mother, and some of them tell what good mothers they have; for this is the deepest reverence and highest sentiment of the African mind.
“Whatever other estimate we may form of the African,” wrote Leighton Wilson, than whom no one has ever known the African better, “we may not doubt his love for his mother. Her name, whether she be dead or alive, is always on his lips and in his heart. She is the first being he thinks of when awakening from his slumbersand the last he remembers when closing his eyes in sleep; to her he confides secrets which he would reveal to no other human being on the face of the earth. He cares for no one else in time of sickness; she alone must prepare his food, administer his medicine, perform his ablutions and spread his mat for him. He flies to her in the hour of his distress, for he well knows if all the rest of the world turn against him she will be steadfast in her love, whether he be right or wrong.
“If there be any cause which justifies a man in using violence towards one of his fellow men it would be to resent an insult offered to his mother. More fights are occasioned among boys by hearing something said in disparagement of their mothers than all other causes put together. It is a common saying among them that if a man’s mother and his wife are both on the point of being drowned, and he can save only one of them, he must save his mother, for the avowed reason that if the wife is lost he may marry another, but he will never find a second mother.”
Following the legend of the snail, several fables are told as we sit by the camp-fire. There is a fable called,The Chimpanzee and the Ungrateful Man:
“There was once a poor man who had but one wife and one child, and they lived in a small house in a far-away bush town near which was a stream with fish. The man was a hunter, and with his spear he hunted game in the forest, but the woman made fish-traps of basketwork and caught fish in the stream.
“One day when the man was hunting in the forest the woman took her babe and went to look at her fish-traps. She put her babe on the bank and herself went down into the water. Soon the babe began to cry; but the mother heard not for the noise of the running water. Now there was a mother chimpanzee in the top of a great tree nearby. The chimpanzee had her home there in a safe place; but when she heard the babe she felt pity and she came down to the ground and taking the child in her arms, nursed it to sleep.
“The mother, having removed the fish from the traps, came up the bank to get her babe, and lo! there sat a great monkey and the babe sleeping upon its breast. She screamed with fright, and screamed again, so that the chimpanzee, afraid lest the hunter might come, put the babe down and ran into the forest. The woman snatched her babe and ran home very much frightened. She told the story to her husband but he only laughed.
“However, the next time the woman went to work at her fish-traps the man followed her and hid in the thicket. Again the woman laid down her babe and waded into the stream and again the babe began to cry and again at length the kind chimpanzee ventured down the tree and quieted the babe on her breast. Then the man thinking only of procuring a big feast of meat drew stealthily near with spear in hand and aiming it right at the heart of the chimpanzee suddenly hurled it with all his might. But the chimpanzee, seeing him just in time, held out the babe to receive the flying spear which pierced through its body. The horrified father had slain his own child.
“The chimpanzee laid the dead babe on the ground with the spear still sticking in it, and fled to the forest. But before disappearing it turned and said: ‘I was doing you a kindness in taking care of your babe. Therefore the evil that you would have done me has fallen upon yourself.’”
There is a very common fable in which the turtle teaches the wisdom and prudence of not interfering in other people’s palavers. The leopard and the python had a quarrel. The leopard visits the turtle and asks hishelp against the python. The turtle says to the leopard: “Come again to-morrow evening.”
Then the python comes to the turtle and asks his help against the leopard, and the turtle says to the python: “Come again to-morrow evening.”
The next evening the python comes again to the turtle and asks his help against the leopard. The turtle says to the python: “Go hide in the thicket and keep still for a while.”
Then the leopard comes to the turtle and asks his help against the python. “Go hide in the thicket,” says the turtle.
Then the leopard ran into the thicket and walked on top of the python.
“Now,” says the turtle to the python and the leopard, “you can settle your own palaver.”
Another man tells why it is that the leopard has no friend among all the animals, but walks always alone in the forest. Once upon a time a chief made a great trap to catch animals. First a gazelle fell into the trap. Then he cried and cried to his companion (the story-teller imitates the cry of this and the following animals to a critical but delighted audience) but the gazelle’s companion did not hear and he died there, for the chief was away on a journey. Then a wild boar came and was caught and he also cried to his companion. Then an antelope came and was caught. They all died in the trap. Then came a leopard and was caught, but before the leopard died a turtle came; and the turtle felt pity for the leopard and released him. Then the leopard wanted to kill the turtle which had released him. So the turtle crawled inside of a hollow tree. The leopard followed the turtle into the tree, but he got fast in the tree and could not get out.
Now this was a tree that bears fruit upon whichmonkeys feed. So after a while there came a blue-nosed monkey to eat the fruit of the tree. Then there came a white-nosed monkey; then a red-headed monkey; then a black monkey. When the leopard heard the noise of the monkeys he begged them to come and release him. Then the monkeys all came and got the leopard out of the tree. But no sooner did the leopard find himself safe than he fought with the monkeys, and he killed the white-nosed monkey and the red-headed monkey and ate them. Then the black-haired monkey, who had escaped up a tree, said to the leopard: “You leopards are rogues and treacherous. We helped you and saved your life, and as soon as you were helped you turned on us and began to kill us.” So the leopard to this day has no friends, but walks alone in the forest, for he cannot be trusted. And there are men who cannot be trusted any more than the leopard; therefore they live without friends.
“Oh,” cried the audience, “men do not know the language of the leopard and the language of the monkey.” “No,” replies the story-teller, “men cannot speak the language of either of these animals; but some men have fetishes by which they can understand the language of all animals when they hear them talk.”
A man tells “a true story” about a slave who lives in his town, and who frequently turns himself into a leopard and eats the sheep of the town. He has also, in the form of a leopard, attacked men and women of the town, who had offended him. Everybody in the town knows this to be true.
This suggests to another the story of a magic fight. A certain stranger coming into a town walked rudely against a man, wishing to quarrel with him that he might get his goods. The man said nothing, but expecting that the stranger would return and try to provoke a fight he prepared himself by making medicine; for he had greatknowledge of medicine and magic, though he never used his knowledge except in self-defense. The stranger returned as he expected and again walked rudely against him. The man said to the stranger: “Do you want to fight with me?”
“Yes,” replied the stranger, and he cursed the man’s mother, at which the man struck him.
Now the stranger was a powerful witch, and immediately he turned into a leopard; but to his great surprise his opponent also turned into a leopard. Then a terrible fight took place between the two leopards. They leaped and sprang upon each other and howled so frightfully that the women of the town fell down with fear; but the men all gathered around the fighting leopards. Then suddenly the stranger turned himself into a python and springing upon the leopard threw a deadly coil around its neck; but the other leopard also turned into a python, and the pythons fought together, coiling about each other, hissing, and biting. Then the stranger turned into a gorilla that he might seize the python and choke it in his terrible hands, but the other python also turned into a gorilla, and the gorillas fought and tried to squeeze each other to death. At last the stranger, getting exhausted, turned into an eagle that he might fly away, but the other also turned into an eagle, and pursuing him dealt him a fatal blow. The dying eagle changed again into a man and begged the other man for mercy, which was refused. He would not make medicine for him, and so the stranger died.
On one of these camp-fire occasions a coast man who had been employed at Efulen tells how he recovered certain goods that a Bulu workman had stolen from him. He called together all the workmen, both Bulu and coast men, and after telling them that his goods had been stolen he proposed to discover the thief by ordeal. He told them of an ordeal that was well known in his town,and that never failed. Then he produced a dish of medicine he had made, which he said he would squirt into the eye of each man. In the eye of an innocent person it would be harmless as water, but it would burn the eye of the guilty one. From the first he had suspected a certain Bulu man, but he wanted formal evidence and the best evidence would be the man’s confession, which he determined to obtain. He stood the men in a row, with the suspected Bulu man near the last. Then he began squirting a copious dose of medicine into an eye of each man in turn. It did not hurt in the least, for the very good reason that it was nothing but water—which nobody knew but himself. Then when he came to the suspected man, he slipped a handful of red pepper into the water, and squirted it into the man’s eye. A sudden scream, a full confession, and the goods restored were some of the more important effects of this wonderful ordeal. And many African ordeals are useful for discovering a criminal when you happen to know who he is.
One man tells “a true story” of an evil spirit who hates people and who spreads disease and death. He once appeared in the forest near a town, in the form of a little child, evidently lost and hungry, and crying bitterly. Some kind-hearted woman finding him took pity on him and carried him to the town in her arms. But she was soon smitten with smallpox, which spread from her to others and the whole town was destroyed.
However the evening may begin with fable and fiction, it usually ends with narratives of fact and experience. But their facts are as fabulous as their fables and there is no distinct line between. One may listen to a story that is a tissue of impossibilities, and may suppose that the native is repeating a myth or a legend to which the imagination of at least several generations has contributed fantastic details, only to find that the purport of the storyis a narrative of fact which the native solemnly believes. For they know little of nature’s laws and nothing of their uniformity.
Therefore “miracles” are always happening. The miracles of the New Testament, as a display of supernatural power, do not at first impress the native mind; not because he cannot believe them, but because he believes them too easily, and believes that miracles more wonderful take place in his own town every day. But the moral quality—the benevolence and mercy—of the New Testament miracles impresses him deeply, and this to him is their wonder. For, among his people, men and women who possess supernatural power wield it to an evil purpose, or at best, in their own interest.
A man tells of a murderer in his town who was suspected of having killed a number of persons who had died a mysterious death, after having first lost their shadows. The suspected man was closely watched, and, sure enough, one day they caught him in the very act of driving a nail into another man’s shadow. Everybody knows that a man’s shadow is his spirit, or at leastoneof his spirits, and if it be mortally wounded, or in any way induced to leave him, he will die. No man will long survive the loss of his shadow. But while witches and other murderers commit their evil deeds under cover of night, the shadow-slayer chooses the day and often the noonday. Many a man has lost his shadow at noonday—not so difficult to understand if it be remembered that we are speaking of the tropics, where, at certain seasons, the sun at noonday is directly overhead.
The people were so enraged at this murderer who was caught driving the nail into a man’s shadow—was caught only after the deed was done, making death certain—and who must have been the cause of all the recent unaccountable deaths in the town, that they carried him into theforest and bound him to the ground in the track of the driver ants, which immediately covered his whole body and devoured him, leaving nothing but the bones. But in the night-time his screams were still heard, even after his death, and the people were sore afraid. His spirit haunted the town, until at length the people deserted it and built in another place. And even yet the belated traveller passing that way hears the screams of the dead man.
But the greatest fear in all Africa is the witch. The witch’s soul is “loose from her body,” and at night she leaves her body and goes about the town, an unseen enemy, doing mischief and wickedness. A young man by the camp fire tells of a witch in his town who for some time had been “eating” the children of the town. It is not the body, but the spirit, that she eats, after which the child sickens, and gradually becoming worse, at length dies.
The discovery of witchcraft was made in a peculiar way. A certain man who was sick and lying awake at night with pain, thought one night that he heard a sound in the street. He crawled close to the wall and peering through a crack he beheld in the street the phantom form of a woman carrying the form of a child. She laid the child down in the street. Then she drew the form of a knife with the evident intention of cutting the child to pieces and eating it. But the knife was powerless to cut because of the bodily eyes of the man who was a spectator. Again and again the woman tried to dissect the child and still the knife refused to cut. At length it occurred to her that she was probably being watched. Then, taking the child up quickly, she returned it to the house whence she had stolen it, restored it to its body, and fled, without being recognized by the man who had seen her. In the morning he reported to the town all he had seen. The wildest excitement ensued. The mothers of the town were in terror, not knowing who the witch was that waseating their children. But one of the women was taken suddenly ill and they became suspicious, though they said nothing. She grew rapidly worse until she was seized with a convulsion and foam appeared at her mouth, a certain sign of witchcraft and that her own witch inside had rebelled and was eating her. Then they all reviled and cursed her, gave her no food, threw cold water on her, mocked her agony, and exulted in her pain until she died.
A deep, resonant, hungry roar of a leopard arrests the attention of the company around the camp-fire. It is at a pretty safe distance, however, and the white man having given orders to keep the fire burning retires to his hammock a little apart, but takes his rifle with him.
The effect of these last stories is sobering and saddening, especially to a mind not yet accustomed to such tales. A shadow lies across the white man’s heart. And that same shadow lies across every charm in Africa and mars every beauty—the reflection of the cruel ignorance and awful sufferings of its people. The observer who does not see the shadow must never have entered into the mind-life and the heart-life of the people. The vast forest darkness, and the weird night-sounds that befit the darkness, deepen the impression of the camp-fire stories.
That piercing cry of the lemur, how it suggests the terror of the wretched man devoured by driver ants! And that other mournful note is surely the remorse of spirits in the other world for cruel deeds committed here.
There is now something awful in the darkness. One feels with theAncient Mariner—
“Like one that on a lonesome roadDoth walk in fear and dread,And having once turned round walks on,And turns no more his head;Because he knows a fearful fiendDoth close behind him tread.”
“Like one that on a lonesome roadDoth walk in fear and dread,And having once turned round walks on,And turns no more his head;Because he knows a fearful fiendDoth close behind him tread.”
“Like one that on a lonesome roadDoth walk in fear and dread,And having once turned round walks on,And turns no more his head;Because he knows a fearful fiendDoth close behind him tread.”
“Like one that on a lonesome road
Doth walk in fear and dread,
And having once turned round walks on,
And turns no more his head;
Because he knows a fearful fiend
Doth close behind him tread.”
Sleep does not come quickly to a mind depressed. As I lie awake and listen, the noises of the night reverberating through the forest, with the rush of the wind in the tree tops, blend together in one vast chorus, whose music is a funeral march.
The materialistic modern mind calls the universe a machine. But the old Norsemen of the forest said that it is a tree, the treeIgdrasil, that lured the mind of a great modern mystic. Often in the night-forest have I recalled the Norse legend of the treeIgdrasil, the tree ofexistence. It is watered by three streams, the past, the present and the future. The branches are human history, the leaves are the actions and the words of men; the wind sighing through it is the sobbing of men’s sorrows.
But the forest is as variable in her moods as the mind of a man. Stern at times and sometimes awful, yet again she loves to soothe the mind and impart a gentle cheer. If you would know the charm of the night-forest in her most intimate and communicative mood you must wait until some time, as if in response to an inaudible summons, you waken after several hours of deep, restful sleep that is one of the secrets of the forest. Under a roof and between close walls a wakeful hour is monotonous and miserable and the habit of wakefulness is a malady that were fit penance for mortal sins. But in the open forest, especially when there is a glimmer of stars shining through the screen of dark foliage, a wakeful hour passes easily. One is never lonely in such an hour, for a mystic life pervades the night-forest, and one realizes that it is something more and greater than the definite forms which the eye sees by day. When these are dissolved in darkness one is more sensible of the underlying, mysterious life, as of a spiritual presence. Forms, whether material or creedal, sometimes conceal the reality which they represent. The noises of the night-forest, the mingled voicesof innumerable crickets, tree-toads, frogs and croaking night-birds, the chatter of the stream over the stones, the rushing of the wind above the trees, with many unfamiliar sounds, each almost indistinguishable in the thrilling volume, seem but the sights of the silent day transformed into sound, and one feels that the interpretation of the sound would be also the interpretation of the forms and shapes, of colours, of shadows and broken light-beams.
This illusion may be promotive of the native belief in animistic nature. For the eye does not see those animate creatures in the day, and to the child-mind it might easily seem that the myriad noises of the night issue from rock and hill and stream and tree.
Lying thus awake but restful, the blended noises of the resounding forest fall upon the passive ear like the confused echo of some world-orchestra, or a broken strain from the music of the planets and the stars as they sweep through vast orbits, on and on forever. For the night-forest, unlike the day, speaks always musically to the ear that is attuned to hear it.
The soft sound of the wind among the leaves of the highest branches again lulls the wakeful listener into sleep; and he enjoys it the more because of the brief disturbance.