CHAPTER III

THE NGOZOS, OR GRAY PARROTS WITH RED TAILS

There are many kinds of birds in the great forests. Among the most numerous and most intelligent are the gray ngozos with red tails.

These ngozos, when young, have very black eyes, but as they grow older a yellow-whitish ring forms itself round the black. Many of them live to be more than a hundred years old.

They live in flocks of tens, twenties, thirties, sometimes even fifties, though seldom more. Each flock has its leader, whom it obeys implicitly. He is chosen to be chief because he is supposed to be wise, and to know the forest and where food is to be found at the different months or seasons of the year. Hence he is old and has had more experience, and is the first to give the signal of danger.

It is the custom of the ngozos to meet every evening, sometimes before sunset, to tell the news,—what has happened and where food is to be found. Then after this they go to sleep.

The ngozos and the monkeys are not good friends. The ngozos hate the monkeys with all their hearts, and have good reason to do so, for they both are fond of fruits, berries, and nuts; and it often happens that when a flock of ngozos is upon a tree, enjoying its delicious meal and very happy, a troop of monkeys suddenly makes its appearance, succeeds in driving the ngozos away, takes possession of the tree, and eats up the fruit so that when the ngozos return they find nothing left.

[Illustration: [Birds]]

Sometimes they have regular fights, but the ngozos generally get the worst of it, and have to fly away, saying all kinds of saucy things to the monkeys.

One evening, flock after flock of ngozos arrived at their place of meeting, which was on an island situated in a large river. There they felt more secure from their enemies in the forest. Many had travelled a long way, but they knew exactly how long it would take them for their homeward journey, and though their wings were tired, they were not exhausted.

After they had alighted, all the ngozos greeted one another, exclaiming, “Glad to see you! Glad to see you! Welcome to our place of meeting.”

Such a pandemonium of ngozos’ voices was heard far and wide in the forest, for at least ten thousand of them were there perched on three or four trees that were close together. They jabbered away at a great rate. A stranger would have thought that they made too much noise to understand one another, as their voices were so confused, and as they were apparently all speaking at the same time. But to the ngozos it was not so; they held a conversation, and one ngozo was talking to one of several of his friends who were listening to him.

Though there were five or six hundred leaders of flocks in this great army of ngozos, each leader knew every member of his flock, and every ngozo knew his leader and recognized his voice, just as he recognized their voices also. He knew the number of his flock, and if one were missing he could tell which, and the other members of the flock likewise. No doubt each ngozo had a name known to the others of the flock.

As they were telling the news, the leader of one flock of ngozos said: “We have come back hungry this evening, for when we came to the trees we had seen loaded with our food of berries and nuts, we found they were all gone, for the monkeys had been there and eaten everything in sight. We were very angry, and during the day we had to fly over the forest and alight here and there to pick what we could. But almost everywhere the monkeys had been before us, and left only unripened berries or nuts, and we had to content ourselves with these, and few at that.”

After hearing this tale of woe, all the ngozos with one voice cried, “We hate the monkeys; ugly monkeys!” The noise was terrific when they said this, for they said these words all at the same time and they repeated them several times in succession, with anger. Oh, what a noise they made!

The ngozos of another flock, when they heard this, said: “We are sorry for you, dear ngozos; it is too bad that you came home hungry. We came to a part of the forest where all the tops of the trees were covered with beautiful ripened fruits; they were fine, and we ate them all day long, and no horrid monkeys came to disturb us. They were busy somewhere else eating our food.”

They called it “our food,” for the parrots considered the berries, nuts, and fruits of the forest as their own, and thought that the monkeys had no business to eat them. The monkeys thought likewise of the ngozos.

Then some ngozos belonging to another flock said: “We flew over a village of human beings, and saw a number of our kin in the place. They could not fly; their wings were cut; we spoke to them, but they could not understand us, neither could we understand them.”

The reason they could not understand each other was because the ngozos in the village of the human beings had been captured in their nests when their bodies were covered with down, and had only learned the language of the human beings. They had no ngozos to teach them the language of their kin living in the forest. They had invented a jargon of their own, which they used when they did not speak the human language.

Some flocks advised others not to go where they had been, for there was very little food to be found; others told where monkeys were numerous, or where they were not.

It was getting late, near sunset, and all the flocks ought to have arrived; but the ngozos noticed that two were still absent. They were very much excited, and began to be afraid some great misfortune had happened to the missing ones, and talked loudly to one another. They wondered why no stragglers had arrived.

Suddenly they heard voices above them. It was one of the flocks arriving. “We are coming!” said the belated ones; “we are coming!” and they alighted. “Welcome!” said all the ngozos at the same time.

“What makes you so late?” cried all the ngozos.

“Well, we have come from a long way off, and our wings are tired. We had great trouble to find food enough to-day to satisfy our hunger, for the monkeys had been there before us this morning. We went a great distance, and, guided by our leader, we came to a region in which food was plentiful, and which the monkeys had not found out. Several flocks can find plenty of food there to-morrow, provided the ugly monkeys do not find the place.”

“Horrid monkeys!” chattered all the ngozos at once.

The ngozos waited anxiously for the only flock missing. They were much distressed. Had the flock left them to go to another place? The sun had set, and it was fast growing dark, for in the forest darkness comes soon after sunset. Soon, to their great joy, they heard above their heads the voices of the missing ones, and a great cry arose among them. “Welcome!” they shouted with one voice.

The flock alighted. “What makes you so late? It is almost dark,” cried the ngozos together.

“Don’t speak of it,” cried the belated flock. “Don’t speak of it. We had an awful fight with the monkeys, and we are lucky to have escaped with our lives from their clutches.”

“Hateful monkeys!” cried all the ngozos.

“See how dilapidated some of us look,” said one of the late comers; and one of the flock, turning her back, cried, “Look at me. I am almost without a tail. An ugly monkey plucked it off. It was hard for me to fly and reach our meeting-place, for having hardly any tail I flew with difficulty.”

“Look at me,” said a second one, as he also turned his back to the ngozos. “My feathers are all gone between my wings. I wonder how I escaped from that savage monkey.”

All the ngozos listened silently when they heard this tale of woe.

[Illustration: [Birds]]

A third one said, “Look at me, ngozos. See the state of my poor feathers and how many have been plucked by one of those monkeys. But I succeeded in giving him a bite and cut off one of his fingers, and he had to let me go. He gave such a cry of pain.”

“Good for you!” shouted all the parrots; “good for you, ngozos!”

“How did the fight happen?” asked one of the wise ones who had been listening. “Tell us.”

Then the chief of the flock said: “Our flock was on a tree feasting on delicious fruits, when suddenly we heard a troop of monkeys coming. Soon they leaped on our tree and wanted to drive us away, and attacked us. We tried to resist, but the monkeys are so quick of motion, and they have hands and feet that can clutch, while we ngozos can only bite. The combat was unequal. One of our number was killed by them. The reason that we are so late is that we had to fly slowly on account of our disabled ones. We did not want to leave them behind, for we are all good comrades and we love one another dearly.”

“That was right. You are true ngozos,” cried they all.

Then came a shrill chorus, and all the ngozos shrieked again, “We hate the monkeys.” But soon the jabbering among the ngozos became less and less, for many were getting sleepy. Then quiet settled down on the army. All had fallen asleep, after, however, having first agreed where the flocks should go to the next morning.

Long before dawn, between three and four o’clock, all the ngozos were awake and talked to one another. When ready for their journey, each leader said to his flock, “Be ready, ngozos; we must hurry.” His flock would answer, “We are ready.” “Follow me, then,” would say the leader as he flew away, followed by all the numbers that belonged to him.

Flock after flock of ngozos left one after another, after saying, “Good-by,” “Good luck to you.” “Good luck to you,” was the answer, and in less than ten minutes they all had left. Some flocks flew toward the north, others to the east, west, south, to some particular part of the forest where they thought they would find plenty of food. They were all in a great hurry to reach the different places, so as to be there before the monkeys, the small flocks going where there were only a few fruit-bearing trees to be found, and the flock that had been so badly beaten by the monkeys going to the nearest food place.

The ngozos possess the wonderful gift of knowing their way through the air; the trees are their landmarks, as they fly above the forest and look down to discover any fruit-bearing trees.

A very old ngozo, about eighty years old, with powdered feathers and deep yellow eyes (which is a sign of old age), who was the last to go away, said to his flock: “I know of a place where at this time of the year there are trees that must be loaded with fruit [and he named the fruit]. I will lead you there.”

“Good for you, our chief!” cried all the ngozos. “You are a good chief. With you we shall find plenty of food.”

After a journey of about twenty miles, the old leader said to his flock, “Look yonder. Do you see the tree-tops red with fruit?” And they looked in that direction and saw trees red with fruit, and all uttered cries of joy, saying, “What a good-morning’s meal we are going to have!” They flew with still greater rapidity and soon alighted upon the trees. “We are here just in season,” they all exclaimed at the same time. Then they remained perfectly silent, so as not to attract other ngozos, and also so as not to let the monkeys know where they were. The fruits were very dainty. Soon every ngozo was enjoying his meal, holding the fruit in his claw (for they use their feet as we do our hands) and peeling it with his beak.

[Illustration: [Birds]]

After having had a good meal, they flew away to another part of the forest, where their leader thought they would find a kind of nut they liked very much.

Halfway they settled upon a tree to feed, when suddenly a stranger alighted among them. They looked at the new-comer, and at once wanted to drive him away, for he did not belong to their flock. Great cries of rage were heard among them; but as they were preparing to fight the poor wanderer, the chief of the flock cried with a very piercing and commanding voice: “Do not drive him away. He is lost. For some reason or another he is solitary. Don’t you see that he belongs to our kin, and has a gray body and a red tail? Let us welcome him.” The ngozos did so at once in a chorus. But, to their utter astonishment, they found that the stranger could not understand what they said to him; and when he spoke to them they could not understand what he said, and they marvelled at that, and looked at their new friend with amazement and did not know what to make of him.

The fact was that the poor ngozo had escaped from a village of human beings, one of whom had taken him away from his nest when he was a baby ngozo. He had given him to his wife, who fed him and raised him tenderly and taught him to speak or listen to her words. Consequently, he had not learned the language of the ngozos, not having lived among them. He spoke at times a queer kind of jargon which he and two or three captive ngozos of the village had invented for use among themselves.

In the evening the stranger followed them. He had been admitted as one of the members of the flock, and when they arrived at a certain place they met other ngozos. All marvelled at the new-comer, who was exactly like themselves, but could not understand them, as they could not understand him. But nevertheless they were soon friends.

The hour came when the flock thought it was time to return to the island where all the ngozos met, and they started and before long reached the place with the new friend they had adopted that day. As usual they had their talk out and then went to sleep.

That night this ngozo stranger thought of the home he had left, of his mistress who had been so kind to him, and how much he was petted by the people. The next morning he followed the flock that had received him. He had no one to bring him his breakfast, and henceforth he would have to work for his living. It was a new life before him, but after a while he found that it was much better to be free, even if you had to work for a living, instead of having some one to take care of you and be a slave.

Often the adopted stranger, when his people (the other ngozos) were resting on a tree, would talk the language of the human beings who had brought him up. While he did so, the other ngozos listened in silence. It did not take them long to learn the language of the human beings through their new friend. He wondered why and how they could learn so quickly from him, while it had taken him so long to learn the same language. The reason was that the ngozos learn much more quickly from one another.

He also learned quickly the speech of his kin, and after a while could talk the language of wild gray ngozos as well as the rest of them. Nevertheless, though years passed away, he never forgot some of the words his master and mistress had taught him, and he remembered them to his death.

One evening after all the flocks had arrived, the ngozos’ chiefs said, “Now it is time for us to start for the Land of Plenty.”

“Yes,” cried all the ngozos, “it is time for us to start for the Land of Plenty. A grand time we will all have there.”

“This is the moon of tornadoes, thunder, lightning, of great heat,” said one chief. “Fruit and nuts will soon be ripe in that far-off country.” And all the ngozos kept repeating over and over again, “It is time for us to travel toward the Land of Plenty.”

It was agreed among them that this should be the last day of the season they were all to stay and sleep at the dear old place, where they had had so many chats together, and they were sad; but the glorious time they were to have in the Land of Plenty from morning to night made them feel that they must go, for of late they had had a hard time to get food.

The ngozos are very wise, and they agreed to scatter and take different ways, for otherwise they would starve, there were so many of them.

As usual when daylight came, flock after flock left, bidding each other good-by, to meet again in the Land of Plenty.

In the evening only a few flocks returned to the old place of meeting. But the trees did not seem the same to them. There was a look of sadness among the ngozos,—so many dear friends and faces were missing. There was less bustle, less chattering, less noise, less laughing (for the ngozos laugh).

Three days afterward not one ngozo was to be seen on the trees. They all had left for their promised land. Flock after flock were spread over a vast extent of country, flying over the trees. They saw once in a while a troop of monkeys and bore them no good will.

When the ngozos saw any nut- or fruit-bearing trees, they alighted upon them, and after they had fed, continued their journey. Several flocks had trouble with the monkeys while feeding. When they came near, the ngozos made fearful noises, their feathers rose on their backs, and their tails spread, showing how angry they were. They gave all kinds of bad names to the monkeys.

The monkeys did not know what the ngozos said to them, as they did not understand their language. But they knew they were angry, and every time the poor ngozos had to get out of their way when they had made up their minds to climb on their tree.