CHAPTER VIICARRIED INTO CAPTIVITY
Fora moment Bomba stood stupefied with dread. Then he ran out into the open.
He beat the bushes about the hut. He dashed down to the edge of the ygapo, his quick eye scanning the expanse for some sign of the passing of Casson and Pipina.
Nothing anywhere. No footprints, no trampling of the bushes, no clue to guide him in a search for the missing ones.
To all appearances no one had trodden that deserted spot since Bomba had returned from his journey to the Moving Mountain.
Yet Casson was gone. Pipina was gone.
Bomba retraced his steps to the hut, his mind in a ferment of bewilderment and grief.
Indians! Only Indians could traverse the jungle with the silence and stealth of ghosts, leaving no trace behind.
“Nascanora!” The word hissed between the boy’s clenched teeth. “This is your work! Ifyou have killed Casson, Bomba will not rest until he has found your heart with an arrow, a bullet, or a knife!”
The boy reëntered the empty hut with a sharp pain stabbing at his heart. He would search the cabin more minutely now for some sign, some clue, to the whereabouts of the absent ones. And if he could not find it there, he would call into play all his skill in woodcraft to find and follow their trail. For trail there must be somewhere. They could not have vanished into thin air.
Inch by inch, he scrutinized the walls, the floor, even every crevice of the crude and meagre furniture, thinking he might find some message from Casson. It was almost a forlorn hope, but it was all that he had at the moment.
He had nearly abandoned even this hope, however, when he discovered a faint scrawl on the wall in the darkest corner of the hut. He bent closer, and his brows drew together in a scowl as he tried to decipher the writing.
Then suddenly a hoarse cry of rage escaped him. His eyes blazed in the shadowy hut like those of an angry puma.
For this was what he read:
“Nascanora is taking away Casson, Pipina, Hondura to camp near Giant Cataract. Come. Help.”
“Nascanora is taking away Casson, Pipina, Hondura to camp near Giant Cataract. Come. Help.”
So the headhunters had achieved their end at last! They had captured the helpless old man whom their superstition had led them to regard as a Man of Evil, a magician whose spells had brought blight on their crops and sickness to their people. Poor old Casson, whose one desire was to help rather than hurt!
They would torture him. They would make him a sacrifice to their gods. And when flesh and blood could no longer stand their torments, they would kill him and place his head on the wigwam of their chief.
Bomba’s rage was terrific, and it would have fared ill with the savage chief if at that moment he had come within reach of the boy’s knife.
The boy read the scrawl again. So they had taken Hondura too, the friendly chief of the Araos tribe, the father of the pretty little girl, Pirah, who had once saved Bomba’s life!
Why had Nascanora made Hondura captive with Casson and the squaw? Was it because Hondura and his tribe had been on friendly terms with Bomba and the old naturalist? Or did Nascanora think that the Araos tribe was becoming too powerful, and had he hoped by depriving them of their chief to render his people helpless and throw confusion and panic into their hearts?
But that problem could be left till later for solution. The pressing thing was to plan for therescue of the captives before they were so far away that their recovery would be impossible.
When his first fury had exhausted itself, Bomba left the writing on the wall and sat down on the threshold of the hut, the better to think out a course of action.
“Near the Giant Cataract” said that rude scrawl penciled by poor Casson, when the attention of his captors was momentarily diverted. Bomba had no clear idea as to how far away that was or what direction would have to be followed to reach it. But from what he had gathered from the natives from time to time, the place was at a great distance, and he knew that a long and arduous journey lay before him.
That is, if he had to go that far in order to catch up with the raiding party. There was nothing in the hut on which he could base any judgment as to the time the capture had taken place.
It might have occurred the very day that he had left on his hunting trip. In that case, they would have had a three days’ start of him. Or again it might have happened yesterday. In that event, his task of overtaking them would be that much easier.
No matter how much they wanted to hurry, no large party could proceed very fast, encumbered as they were with prisoners and probably ladenwith spoils. Bomba could cover as much ground in one day as they could in two or possibly in three. So he had little doubt of his ability to overtake them before they could get very far.
What he would do if he should come up with them, he did not pause to consider. No plan formed now would be of any service. He must be guided by circumstances as they developed. But he had enough confidence in his own quick wit to believe that he would be able to shape such circumstances to meet his ends.
But time pressed, and he could spend no more time in reflection. He rose to his feet and secured some cured meat from Pipina’s stores to feed him on the way. He would have no time to spend in hunting food when there were human enemies requiring his attention.
He tested his bow, put a new string on it, and replenished his store of arrows. His revolver and machete were already at his belt. He took one more look about the cabin to make sure he had overlooked nothing and plunged into the jungle.
Like a hound when trying to pick up a trail, he described a long circle, scanning the ground narrowly for every sign that might indicate the direction in which the party had gone.
For a long time his search was unsuccessful. At last his eyes brightened, for they rested on a little strip of cloth fluttering on a thorn bush. Heexamined it carefully and recognized it as a strip torn from a loose dress such as the Indian women wear. Probably it was torn from Pipina’s garment.
This was something, but not enough. He must find a second strip, if possible, and the line formed by the two would give him the direction in which the party were traveling.
Before long his eager search was rewarded. Now he could shape his course, and he hurried forward with redoubled speed.
The bits of cloth also told the jungle boy another story. The fact that they had been torn off at all showed that the savages had been hurrying their captives along at great speed, and so roughly that they took no care to avoid the thorn bushes that tore the clothes and probably the skin.
Bomba’s heart burned within him as he pictured poor, weak Casson driven along, perhaps flogged to make him hasten. How long could he endure such treatment in his feeble condition? Perhaps even now he had succumbed to the hardships of the journey! Bomba gritted his teeth and his eyes flamed with fury.
He had not gone far when his jungle instinct warned him of danger in the immediate vicinity. Motions as vague as shadows, faint rustlings that could not have been detected by an untrained ear, told him that something or someone was trailinghim, keeping step with him, moving as swiftly and silently as he. From being the hunter, he had become the hunted.
When Bomba paused the slight rustlings stopped. When he moved on they were resumed.
Still he continued on his way. Whether his pursuer were beast or human he could not tell. But the jungle lad knew that, whether beast or human, the surest way to provoke attack was to betray a knowledge of his danger.
To keep on would be at least to delay attack and perhaps derange the plans of his pursuer. But when the attack at last came—if it should come—he would be ready.
Suddenly he became conscious that he was encircled. The faint sound, which had been behind him, was echoed now on the right and the left and in the front. His enemies, whoever they were, were closing in upon him.
There was nothing that his eyes could tell him. Not a leaf stirred nor was there any movement in the brush. There was only that ghostly rustling that to Bomba’s sensitive ears was as plainly perceptible as the rumbling of distant thunder.
Then something shaped itself, vague and dim behind a thicket. Like a beast at bay, Bomba crouched, pulled his bow from his shoulder and plucked an arrow from his pouch.
Before he could fit the arrow to the string ahideous chorus of shouts rent the air, and like magic the jungle was filled with men, men with the ferocious faces of demons, who rushed upon him, shouting and brandishing their sharp, murderous knives above their heads.
Bomba had no time to turn and flee. He dropped his bow, whipped out his machete and backed toward a tree, only to feel himself seized from behind and borne helpless to the ground.
A score of natives bent above him, their faces menacing, their knives pointed at his throat.
“Hondura?” grunted one of them. “Where is he?”
A light dawned upon Bomba. These were braves of the Araos tribe seeking their leader. They blamed him, Bomba, for the disappearance of their chief—Bomba, who at that very moment was on his way to rescue that chief from captivity.
“Let me up and I will tell you,” he said, refusing to quail before the fierce eyes directed upon him.
They hesitated, evidently suspicious of some trick. But finally the leader, a strapping native named Lodo, whom Bomba remembered having seen on his recent visit to their village, ordered that a close ring be formed about the lad. Then he ordered him to stand up.
Bomba did so, and Lodo advanced toward him, knife in hand, his gaze lowering.
“Where is Hondura, our chief?” he demanded. “You hide him.”
“The bad chief, Nascanora, take good chief, Hondura, prisoner,” Bomba replied, his brown eyes holding the little, shifting ones of Lodo with great earnestness. “He take, too, my friend Casson and Pipina, the squaw. Come with me to the hut, and I will show you the writing on the wall.”
It was plain that the Indians considered this a subterfuge or a trap, and there was considerable parleying before Lodo finally announced that they would take him to the hut.
“But you fool us, Bomba,” threatened Lodo with a suggestive twist of his knife, “and I cut out your heart—so!”