Captain Jinks, Hero Part 17

"There doesn't seem to be any path here," said Cleary. "Do you see it?"

His companions were obliged to admit that they did not.

"We'd better call for help," said Sam, and the three men began to shout at the top of their voices, but there was no reply. An hour must have elapsed while they were engaged in calling, and their voices became husky, but all in vain.

"Hist!" said Cleary at last. "I think I hear some one coming. I heard the branches move. They have sent out for us, thank fortune! I didn't like the idea of sleeping out here and making the acquaintance of snakes and catching fevers."

The words, were hardly out of his mouth when three shadowy figures sprang out of the bushes and grasped each of the three men from behind, holding their elbows back so that they could not use their arms, and in a moment a veritable swarm of long-haired, half-clad Moritos were upon them, pinioning them and emptying their pockets and belts. It was quite useless to make any resistance, the attack had been too sudden and unexpected. Cleary cried out once, but they made him understand that, if he did it again, they would stab him with one of their long knives. When the captives were securely bound, the captors began to discuss the situation in their own language, which was the only language they understood. There was evidently some difference of opinion, but after a few minutes they came to some kind of an agreement. The legs of the prisoners were unbound, and they were made to march through the jungle, each one with two guards behind him, who p.r.i.c.ked him with their lances if he did not move fast enough. Their only other arms seemed to be bows and arrows. The march was a very weary one, and through a wild, mountainous country which would have been impa.s.sable for men who did not know it thoroughly. Occasionally they seemed to be following obscure paths, but as often there was no sign of a track, and the thick, tropical vegetation made progress difficult. For an hour or two they climbed up the half-dry bed of a mountain torrent, and more than once they were ankle-deep in swampy ground. The Moritos pa.s.sed through the jungle with the agility and noiselessness of cats, but the three white men floundered along as best they could. Their captors uttered never a word and would not allow them to speak.

The sun was just rising over a wilderness of mountains when they came to a small clearing in the woods, apparently upon a plateau near the top of a mountain. In this clearing there were a number of isolated trees, in each one of which, at about twenty feet above the ground, was a native hut, looking like a huge bird's nest. A small crowd of natives, including women and children, ran toward them shouting, and now for the first time the men of the returning party began to talk too. Some of them tied the legs of their prisoners again and sat them down on the ground, while the others rehea.r.s.ed the history of their exploit. It was a curious scene to witness. The men as well as the women wore their long, coa.r.s.e hair loose to the waist. Some of the men had feathers stuck in their hair, and all of them were grotesquely tattooed.

"I wonder if they're cannibals?" said Cleary, for there seemed to be an opportunity now for conversation.

"I don't think there are any in this part of the country," said Colonel James. "Here comes our breakfast anyway."

All the inhabitants of the village had been inspecting the captives with great interest, especially the women and children. Two women now came running from the group of tree-houses with platters of meat, and the crowd opened to let them approach.

"Don't ask what it is," said Cleary, as he gulped down his rations.

"I can't eat it!" cried Sam.

"Oh, you must, or you'll offend them," said Colonel James.

And they completed their repast with wry faces. When they had finished, one of the warriors, whom they had noticed before on account of his comparative height and the magnificence of his decorations, came up to them and addressed them, to their great surprise, in Castalian. He explained to them that he was the famous savage chief, Carlos, who as head of the Moritos ruled the entire region, and that they were prisoners of war; that he had learned Castalian as a boy from a missionary in the mountains when the land was at peace; and that a palaver would be held on the following day, to which the heads of the neighboring villages would be invited, to determine what to do with them. He showed special interest in Sam's red hair and mustache, and smoothed them and pulled them, asking him if they had been dyed. When he was informed that they were not, he was filled with admiration and called up his favorites to examine this wonder of nature. Sam had noticed that from the moment of his arrival he had been the object of admiration of the women, and this fact was now accounted for.

The three prisoners had no reason to complain of their treatment during the day. A guard was set upon them, but the ropes by which they were tied were loosened, and they were allowed from time to time to walk about. Most of the morning they pa.s.sed in much-needed sleep. In the afternoon Carlos visited them again with some of his men, and set to work to satisfy his curiosity as to their country, translating their answers to his friends. His Castalian was very bad, but so was that of his captives; yet they succeeded in making themselves understood without difficulty.

"Do you have houses as high as those?" he asked, pointing to the human nests in the trees.

"Yes, indeed," said Cleary. "Near my home there is a house nearly a quarter of a mile long and twice as high as that tree, and nine hundred people live in it."

There were murmurs of astonishment as this information was translated.

"What is that great house for?" asked the chief.

"It's a lunatic asylum."

"What is that?"

"A house for lunatics to live in."

"But what is a lunatic?"

Cleary tried in vain to explain what a lunatic was. The Moritos had never seen one.

"We have plenty of such houses at home," said Sam, "and we have had to double their size in ten years to hold the lunatics; they are splendid buildings. There was one not very far from the college where my friend and I were educated. But some of our prisons are even larger than our lunatic asylums."

"What is a prison," asked Carlos.

"Oh," said Sam, "don't you understand that either? It's a house in which we lock up criminals--I mean men who kill us or rob us."

"Oh, I see," replied Carlos. "You mean your enemies whom you take prisoner in battle."

"No, I don't. I mean our own fellow citizens who murder and steal."

"Do you mean that you sometimes kill each other and steal from each other, your own tribe?"

"Yes," said Sam. "Of course people who do so are bad men, but there are some such among us."

A great discussion arose among the natives after hearing this.

"What do they say?" asked Colonel James in Castalian.

"They say," said the chief, "that they can not believe this, as they have never heard of members of the same tribe hurting each other."

"We do all we can to prevent it," said Sam. "In our cities we have policemen to keep order; that is, we have soldiers stationed in the streets to frighten the bad men."

"Do you have soldiers in the streets of your towns to keep you from killing each other!" exclaimed the chief, in astonishment. "Who ever heard of such a thing? I do not understand it," and, altho Sam repeated the information in every conceivable way permitted by his limited vocabulary, he was unable successfully to convey the idea.

"It is strange how uncivilized they are," he said to his friends.

"Do you live on bananas in your country?" asked Carlos.

"No; we eat them sometimes, but we live on grain and meat," said Sam.

"You must have to work very hard to get it."

"Yes, we do, sometimes twelve hours a day."

"How frightful! And is there enough for all to eat?"

"Not always."

"And are your people happy when they work so hard and are sometimes hungry?"

"Not always," said Sam. "Sometimes people are so unhappy that they commit suicide."

"What?"

"I mean they kill themselves."

There was now another heated discussion.

"What do they say?" asked Colonel James.

"They say that they did not know it was possible for people to kill themselves. I did not know it either. It is very strange."

"What limited intelligences they have!" exclaimed Sam.