Just then the curved projection was observed to recede within the tree; and in its place appeared a small dark hole, apparently the entrance to a larger cavity. Karl, as Caspar had done the moment before, saw this with surprise.

“Nest?” repeated Caspar, astonished at the shikaree’s statement. “A bird’s nest? Is that what you mean, Ossy?”

“That just it, sahib. Nest of great biggee bird. Feringhees him call horneebill.”

“Well,” rejoined Caspar, not greatly enlightened by Ossaroo’s explanation, “that’s very curious. We have seen something like a horn sticking out of the tree, though it looks more like ivory than horn. It may be the bill of a bird; but as to a bird itself, or the nest of one, where is that, pray?”

Ossaroo intimated that the nest was inside the tree; and that the bird was on the nest just behind its beak, where it ought to be.

“What! the bird is in that hole where we saw the white thing sticking out? Why, it quite filled the hole, and if there’s a bird there, and what we saw be its bill, I have only to say that its bill must be as big as its body—else how can it get out and in through so small an aperture? Certainly I see no hole but the one. Oh! perhaps the bird is a toucan. I have heard there are some of that sort that can go through any place where they can pass their beaks. Is it a toucan, Ossaroo?”

Ossaroo could not tell what a toucan was, never having heard of such a bird. His ornithological knowledge went no further than to the birds of Bengal; and the toucan is found only in America. He stated that the bird in the tree was called by the Feringhees a “hornbill,” but it was also known to some as the “rhinoceros bird.” Ossaroo added that it was as large as a goose; and that its body was many times thicker than its bill, thick as the latter appeared to be.

“And you say it has its nest inside that hole?” interrogated Caspar, pointing to the little round aperture, which did not appear to be over three inches in diameter.

“Sure of it, young sahib,” was Ossaroo’s reply.

“Well, certainly there is some living creature in there, since we have seen it move; and if it be a bird as large as a goose, will you explain to me how it got in, and how it means to get out? There must be a larger entrance on the other side of the tree.”

“No, sahib,” confidently asserted Ossaroo; “that you see before your eye—that the only way to de horneebill nest.”

“Hurrah for you, Ossy! So you mean to say that a bird as large as a goose can go in and out by that hole? Why, a sparrow could scarcely squeeze itself through there!”

“Horneebill he no goee in, he no goee out. He stay inside till him little chickees ready for leavee nest.”

“Come, Ossy!” said Caspar, in a bantering way; “that story is too good to be true. You don’t expect us to believe all that? What, stay in the nest till the young are ready to leave it! And how then? How will the young ones help their mother out of the scrape? How will they get out themselves: for I suppose they don’t leave the nest till they are pretty well grown? Come! good shikaree; let us have no more circumlocution about the matter, but explain all these apparently inexplicable circumstances.”

The shikaree, thus appealed to, pro............