When the first four notes strike his ear,
he will listen, thinking that some human being in dire distress is
somewhere out in the swamps, pitifully calling for help, but in so
painful a manner that it seems as if all hope were abandoned. Still
listening, he will hear the four succeeding melancholy notes,
sounding as if the desolate sufferer were giving up the ghost in a
last desperate effort. The final two notes, following after a brief
interval, tell him that he now hears the last despairing sobs of a
condemned soul. So harrowing and depressing is this song that, once
heard, the memory of it alone will cause one's hair to stand on end
and he will be grateful when too far away to hear again this sob of
the forest.
A surprise was in store for me one day when I visited the domicile of
a rubber-worker living at the extreme end of the estate. I expected to
find a dwelling of the ordinary appearance, raised on poles above the
ground, but instead this hut was built among the branches of a tree
some twenty feet above the level of the earth. I commenced climbing
the rickety ladder leading to the door of the hut. Half-way up a
familiar sound reached my ear. Yes, I had surely heard that sound
before, but far away from this place.
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