The Inca Emerald Part 9

"There ain't no such animal," murmured Jud to himself, examining the stranger with awe.

Pinto's face shone with pleasure when he came up.

"It giant ant-eater and very good to eat," he remarked cheerfully.

Upon seeing them, the great beast shuffled away, but was soon brought to bay, when it stood with its back against the bank, swinging its long snout back and forth and making a little whining noise. Jud was about to step in and kill it with a blow from his ax, but Pinto held him back.

"No get in close to ant-bear," he warned, pointing to the giant's claws.

"He rip you to pieces. You watch."

Stepping back, the Indian raised his blow-gun to his mouth. Again came the fatal pop, and the next second one of the tiny arrows was embedded like a thorn in the side of the monster's snout. For a moment the great ant-eater tried to dislodge the tiny pointed shaft with his enormous claws. Then he stopped, stood motionless for a while, swayed from side to side, and sank dead without a sound or struggle. With the help of Jud's ax and his own knife, the Indian soon quartered and dressed the great beast and an hour later the two staggered back to camp loaded down with a supply of meat which, when roasted, tasted much like tender pork.

"Now," said Jud, smacking his lips after a full meal, "bring on your work!"

CHAPTER VI

THE BLACK TIGER

Under Pinto's direction the hollow trunk was lifted up so that each end rested on a stump. Then a slow fire was kindled under its whole length.

Pinto tended this most carefully, so that the heat would spread evenly.

Gradually, under the blaze, the green wood spread out. This was the most critical point in this forest boat-building, for if there were too much heat at any one point, a crack might start through the log and all the work of the week go for nothing. As the great log opened out, the Indian moved constantly up and down its length, checking the blaze here and there with wet moss where the sides were spreading out too fast. At several different points he fitted in straddlers, with wedges made from stonewood branches. By skilfully changing the pressure of these and varying the heat at different points the hollowed log at last took on a graceful curve, with tapered turned-up ends. Green strips of stonewood were fitted in for gunwales, and seats and semicircular end-boards put in place. Then the long dugout was allowed to cool off gradually all through one night. As it contracted, it locked in place gunwales, seats and thwarts. Another day was given to fas.h.i.+oning light paddles out of palm-wood; and then at last, one week after their s.h.i.+pwreck, these latter-day Argonauts were once more afloat upon Black River.

There followed long days, in each of which three seasons were perfectly reproduced. The mornings had all the chill of early spring; by noon came the blinding heat of midsummer; and the nights, of the same length as the days, had the frosty tang of autumn. During the morning of each day they paddled, lying by at noon-time in cool, shaded lagoons where they slept or fished. At other times they would collect nuts and fruits on the sh.o.r.e, under the direction of Professor Ditson, or take turns in going with Pinto on short hunting-trips, during which all kinds of strange game would fall before his deadly blow-gun.

It was Jud who went with him on the first of these hunts. As they came to the bank of one of the many streams that ran into the Black River, the old trapper caught sight of a strange animal on the bank which looked like a great guinea-pig about the size of a sheep. Its wet hide was all s.h.i.+ning black in the sunlight, and even as Jud turned to ask the Indian what it was, there sounded just behind him the fatal pop of the blow-gun, a venomous little arrow buzzed through the air, and a second later was sticking deep in the beast's blunt muzzle. Like an enormous muskrat, the stranger scrambled to the edge of the stream, plunged in, and disappeared in the dark water.

"That was a capybara," Pinto informed Jud.

"Well, you've lost him all right, whatever he was," returned the latter.

"Wait," was all that Pinto would say. A few minutes later, the limp, dead body of the capybara, the largest of all aquatic rodents floated to the surface. Jud was about to wade into the shallow water and secure it when he was stopped by the Mundurucu.

"Never put your hand or foot into strange water," he said. "You may lose 'em."

Without explaining himself, he cut a long pole and carefully towed the dead animal to sh.o.r.e. That night the whole party camped on a high, dry, sandy bluff where Pinto and Hen dressed the capybara and roasted parts of it on long green spits of ironwood.

Will sampled the dank, dark meat cautiously.

"Tastes like a woodchuck I once tried to eat," he remarked, after one mouthful. "You can have my share." And he went back to palm-nuts.

From another trip, Pinto brought back a coaita, one of the spider-monkeys which had so affected Will's appet.i.te on the occasion of their first meal at Professor Ditson's house. This one had a long, lank body covered with coa.r.s.e black hair, while its spectral little face was set in a ma.s.s of white whiskers.

Will ate the rich, sweet meat shudderingly.

"It looks just like a little old man," he protested.

"But it tastes better," observed the hardened Jud, pa.s.sing his bark plate for another helping.

It was Jud and Will who accompanied Pinto on the third and most eventful trip of all. The boat had been beached at the slope of a high bank; and, while the others dozed or slept, Pinto and his two companions started through the woods on their hunt for any game which might add some kind of meat to their menu. A hundred yards from the bank the jungle deepened and darkened. Everywhere the strangler-fig was killing straight, slim palms and towering silk-cotton and paradise-nut trees. At first, this a.s.sa.s.sin among the tree-folk runs up its victim's trunk like a vine. As the years go by, it sends out shoots and stems around and around the tree it has chosen. These join and grow together, forming a vast hollow trunk, in the grip of which the other tree dies. Pools of black water showed here and there at the foot of the strangled trees, and something sinister seemed to hang over this stretch of jungle.

"Feels kind of creepy here," Jud confided to Will. "Looks just the kind of a place for some of Hen's haunts," he went on.

Even as he spoke, there sounded among the distant trees ominous grunting groans, and here and there among the shadows dark shapes could be seen moving about. The fierce moaning grew louder, mingled with a clicking noise like castanets.

"Peccaries!" muttered Jud. "I've hunted the little ones down in Mexico.

They were liable to bite a piece out of you as big as a tea-cup. I'm in favor of lettin' these big fellows strictly alone."

"Quiet, quiet!" muttered the Indian, slipping behind a tree and motioning his companions to do likewise. "They go by in a minute, and I take off the last one with my blow-gun."

Instead of doing this, however, the great herd spread out through the woods, grunting and groaning and clattering their sharp tusks. As they came closer and closer, each of the peccaries seemed nearly as large as the wild boar of European forests, while their lips and lower jaws were pure white. The Mundurucu showed signs of alarm.

"Something has stirred them up," he muttered. "If they see us, they charge. Better each one choose a tree."

Even as he spoke, the leading peccary, whose gleaming tusks thrust out like keen knives from each side of his white jowl, glimpsed the little party in the shadows. With a deep groan, he lowered his head and charged at full speed, his tusks clattering as he came, while the white foam showed like snow against the raised bristles of his back. The whole herd followed--a nightmare of fierce heads, gleaming red eyes, and clicking, dagger-like tusks. Against such a rush Jud's automatic was as useless as Pinto's blow-gun or Will's throwing-stones. There was only one thing to do, and, with the utmost promptness all three of the party did it. Jud went up the vinelike trunk of a small strangler-fig hand over hand, nor ever stopped until he was safe astride the branch of a stonewood tree, twenty feet from the ground. Pinto, gripping the rough red bark of a cow tree, walked up it Indian fas.h.i.+on until he was safely seated in a crotch far above the ground. Will was not so fortunate. Near him was the smooth bark of an a.s.sai-palm. Twice he tried to climb it, and twice slipped back. Then, with every muscle tense, he dodged behind it and sprinted, as he had never run before, across a little opening to where a vast strangler-fig had swallowed a Brazil-nut tree in its octopus grip. The rush of the charging herd was hard on his heels as he reached the tree, and he had just time to swerve around its trunk and grip one of the vinelike tentacles which had not yet become a part of the solid sh.e.l.l of the strangler. Even as he swung himself from the ground, the bristling head of one of the herd struck against his feet, and he kicked them aloft just in time to avoid the quick double slash of the sharp tusks that followed.

Up and up he went, while the whole sh.e.l.l-like structure of the fig swayed and bent under his weight and dry dust from the dead nut tree powdered down upon him in showers. Finally he reached a safe stopping-place, where he could stand with both feet resting in a loop which the snakelike fig had made in one of its twisting turns around its victim.

For a few minutes the trio in the tree-tops sat and stared in silence at one another and the weaving, champing herd of furious beasts below. It was Jud who spoke first.

"It's your move, Captain Pinto," he remarked. "What do we do next?"

"Sit still until they go away," returned the Indian despondently.

"How many arrows have you left?" inquired Will from his tree.

"Ten."

"I've got sixteen shots in my locker," observed Jud, from his perch; "but there must be nearly a hundred pigs in this herd; an' if these big fellows are like the chaps I knew in Mexico, the more you kill, the more those that are left will try to kill you."

"The only thing to do is to sit still," repeated the Mundurucu. "Perhaps they go 'way before night."

"Perhaps they don't, too," grumbled Jud. "A pig's an obstinate critter at his best, an' a peccary's a pig at his worst!"

As time went on, conversation among the besieged flagged and each one settled down to endure the wait as best he might. Will amused himself by watching the birds which pa.s.sed him among the tree-tops and listening to some of their strange and beautiful songs. At any time of the year and in any part of the world, a bird-student can always find pleasure in his hobby where unseeing, unhearing people find nothing of interest. To-day the first bird that caught his eye looked something like a crow, save that it had a crest of curved, hairy feathers, which at times, on its perch in a neighboring tree, it would raise and spread out over its head like a fringed parasol. From its breast swung a pad of feather-covered flesh, and, as it perched, it would every now and then give a deep low flute-note, raising its parasol each time in a most comical manner.

"What's that bird, Pinto?" Will inquired, after he had watched it delightedly for a long time.

"He umbrella-bird," returned the other, indifferently; "no good to eat."

For the Mundurucu had a very simple system of ornithology--he divided all birds into two groups, those that were good to eat and those that were not.

The next bird which pa.s.sed by aroused the interest even of Jud, who cared even less for birds than did the Indian. Through the dim light of the sinister forest, above the raging, swinish herd, flitted a bird of almost unearthly beauty, a parrot over three feet in length, of a soft, hyacinthine blue except around the eyes, where the bare skin showed white. As Will watched it delightedly, he recognized the bird as the hyacinthine macaw, the largest, most beautiful, and one of the rarest of all the parrot family. Even as he looked, the great bird alighted on a neighboring Brazil-nut tree and immediately showed itself to be as efficient as it was beautiful. Seizing in its great black beak one of the tough, thick nut-cases, called "monkey-pots" by the Indians, it proceeded to twist off its top and open up a side, although a man finds difficulty in doing this even with a hammer and chisel. Drawing out one Brazil-nut after another, it crushed them, in spite of their hard, thick sh.e.l.ls, into a pulp, which it swallowed. Then it flew away, leaving Will staring regretfully after it.

As noon approached, the vines and the tree-trunks seemed to hold and radiate the heat like boiler-tubes. Gradually it rose and concentrated until the forest seemed to throb and pulsate like a furnace. Then a cicada began to sound. It began with a low, jarring note, something like the creaking of our ordinary katydid. This increased slowly in loudness and volume until at last it ended with an almost unendurable siren-whistle note which seemed to shake the very leaves of the trees.

Again and again and again this performance was repeated, until Will, deafened and stunned by the noise, dizzy with the heat, and cramped and tired of standing on his narrow perch, thought with an almost unutterable longing of the dark, cool river and the shaded boat where the rest of the party were even now taking their noontide nap.