VI.
A GRAND TURKEY HUNT.
"With us ther was a Doctor of Physike,
In all this world ne was ther won him like
To speak of physike, and of surgerie."
IT was drawing near the close of my stay in Yucatan, and there was but a week remaining; but the Consul had planned one last trip into the country that should eclipse all previous expeditions. He promised to take me on a grand turkey hunt. The magnificent turkey of Yucatan, the Melcegris ocellatus, is found only there and in Honduras and Guatemala. It is the most beautiful of the whole family. Though there are three species in North America, one peculiar to the United States and another to Mexico, and though our species is the largest, the ocellated turkey of Yucatan surpasses them all in the metallic sheen and lustre of its plumage. It was to capture this glorious bird, then, that this final journey in Yucatan was undertaken.
At eleven o'clock at night, our volan drove up to the door, and the Consul, and John, myself, and another man, crawled into it and wedged ourselves together The reader doesn't know John, but I do; and that is where I have the advantage of the reader. John was a dentist, one of the few practitioners of the bloody art of dentistry who could draw a tooth without gloating over the misery he caused. In token that we appreciated this manly quality of his gentle nature, we took him along to let him see us shoot turkeys.
"'Alerta!" the watch-cry of the sentinel pacing in front of the municipal palace, rang clear on the midnight air, as we climbed into our volan.
