CHAPTER VIIITHE WARNING
Thechief of the Araos leaned toward Bomba and spoke in a voice charged with intensity:
“Hondura is a friend of Bomba. Hondura speaks wise words. If Bomba is wise, he will stay in the maloca of Hondura and not go to the island of the big cats.”
Bomba looked puzzled.
“Why does Hondura tell this to Bomba?” he queried.
“Because Hondura is friend of Bomba,” replied the chief gravely. “He would not see Bomba put his head within the jaws of death.”
“Is it because it is called Jaguar Island?” persisted the lad. “Is it the big cats Hondura fears?”
The Indian shook his head.
“The danger Hondura fears for Bomba,” he answered impressively, “is not of this world. It is of the world beyond. Be warned in time, Bomba. Hondura has spoken.”
Although Bomba had been taught by Casson tolaugh at the superstitions of the natives, he had lived his life too far from civilization not to share to some extent their primitive fear of the supernatural.
The words of Hondura sent a strange chill through him. What did the Indian mean?
“Of what danger speak you, Hondura?” he asked in an awed voice. “Tell Bomba, so that he may know the truth.”
“Once a great many moons ago,” began Hondura, “there was above the island of the great cats a big, strange city.”
The eyes of Bomba glistened.
“Tell me of it!” he cried.
“Those that knew of it said it was a city of devils, though its beauty was that of the sun.”
“What made its beauty like the sun?” was Bomba’s eager query.
“The towers,” replied Hondura, “were of gold and reached upward like trees to the sky. When men looked upon them long they had to cover their eyes with their hands. Else they would have gone blind.”
“I wish that the eyes of Bomba might have seen it, Hondura!” exclaimed the lad. He thought longingly of those faraway cities described to him by the boy named Frank, the white boy, son of the woman with the golden hair, who had once kissed Bomba as though he had been her son.Perhaps this city with towers of gold was like those others. So he looked eagerly, yearningly, at the wrinkled face of the grizzled chieftain who spoke with such a calm air of assurance.
“It is many moons since the eyes of men have rested upon that city,” returned the Indian sternly, seeming by his manner to rebuke the boy’s enthusiasm.
Bomba was abashed, but asked with undiminished curiosity:
“What then became of the city of gold, Hondura? Tell Bomba so that he may know the truth. His heart is thirsty like that of the tapir that bends its head toward the cool water.”
“The city sank into the earth,” returned Hondura. “Slowly the mud of the swamp crept up over it and the towers of gold were covered so that they no more made blind the eyes of men.”
The chief seemed to sink into a reverie after this announcement, and Bomba ventured to remind him of his presence by asking another question.
“The city is gone. Where then is the danger to Bomba, O good and wise chief?”
Hondura roused himself from his abstraction and stared at Bomba almost as though he were looking through him to something sinister that lay beyond.
“It is true that the city is gone. But strange ghosts arise from it, spirits that harm.”
The little Pirah cried out sharply, and Pipina started a long eerie wail that chilled Bomba to the marrow of his bones.
“The evil spirits walk abroad at night,” the chief continued, “and woe is the portion of those who meet them. For they carry with them pain and pestilence and death. Of those who have met them in the darkness of the night none have come back alive.”
Bomba was impressed despite himself. Nevertheless his determination remained unshaken.
“The cause of Bomba is a good one,” he said simply. “Bomba does not fear the evil spirits.”
“Hondura knows that Bomba does not fear anything living,” the chief responded. “But he has no arrow that will sink into the breasts of the dead. He has no knife that can reach their hearts. They will not fear when Bomba defies them. They will laugh.”
“I am going,” the lad declared.
The old chief nodded his head as though, knowing Bomba, he had expected some such answer from the boy.
“Go then. But go only to the island of the big cats. Do not go to the place above the island where the city with the towers of gold stood. Find Japazy, the half-breed, and return with speed. Hondura and the little Pirah will watch for you. And we will have prayers madeby the medicine man that you do not meet the evil spirits.”
“But do not go yet,” pleaded Pirah, clinging to his hand. “Pirah wants you to stay days, many days. You are tired. You have been fighting. We will make big feast if you will stay in the maloca of Hondura for a time.”
Bomba returned the pressure of the warm little hand affectionately.
“Pirah is good and Hondura too is good,” he said earnestly. “Bomba would be glad to stay. But he must go.”
He turned to the chief.
“I go first into the jungle to hunt for Casson,” he said. “I will look for him till I find him or feel sure that he is dead. If I find him, I will bring him back to stay with Hondura. If I do not find him, I will go on to find Japazy on Jaguar Island.”
Pipina set up a wail, but Bomba checked her.
“Do not cry, Pipina,” he said. “Bomba has many times gone into the jungle and come back again. Did he not go to the Moving Mountain and return? Did he not come back from the Giant Cataract and the island of snakes? The gods will watch over me, and you can stay here safe with the women of Hondura’s tribe and help them with their cooking and their weaving. And you can tell them of the hole in the floor and howyou were wiser than all the warriors of Nascanora.”
The last was cunningly put, and the look of pride that came into the old woman’s eyes showed that if the Araos women failed to appreciate her strategy it would not be for lack of telling.
Bomba turned to the chief.
“Your heart is big, Hondura, and your heart is good,” he said. “Bomba will not forget.”
“It is but little that Hondura is doing for Bomba,” the old chieftain replied. “Did not Bomba save my people? Did he not bring back the women and little children that Nascanora’s bucks had stolen? My people would die for Bomba. And I will tell my braves to hunt for Casson. Wherever they go their eyes will be open for the old white man. They will be looking while Bomba is on his way to Jaguar Island. And if he is alive, they will find him.”
The assurance was an immense comfort to the heart of Bomba. If his own search for Casson failed, he would know that a host of sharp eyes were taking up his work. All that could be done would be done for the old man he loved.
He stayed at the maloca only long enough to get some more strings for his bow and to replenish his stock of arrows and put an additional edge on his machete. Then, with a warm farewell to Hondura, Pirah, Pipina, and the assembledpeople of the tribe, he plunged into the jungle.
He thought longingly of the “fire stick” and the cartridges that had been destroyed in the blazing cabin. He took the now useless revolver from his pouch where he carried it in a waterproof covering and looked at it sadly. It was a fine weapon, and he had learned to use it effectively, though not yet with the perfect accuracy of the machete and the bow and arrows.
“The fire stick might not hurt the ghosts from the sunken city,” he pondered, as he turned the revolver lovingly in his hands; “but against the beasts of the jungle and the braves of Nascanora it speaks with the voice of death. And who knows but what it might save my life when I reach the place of the big cats.”
Again his anger flamed against the headhunters.
“They may still, by robbing me of my cartridges, be the cause of my death,” he murmured.
But he had the fatalistic philosophy born of his life in the jungle. The cartridges were gone. He could not help it. Perhaps it had been decreed. Who was he, Bomba, to find fault with the laws that governed the world?
For all the rest of that day he hunted feverishly for some trace of Casson. Hardly a foot of ground escaped his eager scrutiny. He searched every thicket, explored every swamp. At times, when he felt it was safe, he raised his voice inthe hope that perhaps Casson might hear him. But all his efforts were fruitless. There was no trace or sound of his half-demented protector.
During his search he had gathered some turtle eggs, and these he roasted at night over a fire before the opening of a cave that he had chosen for the night’s shelter.
The food was succulent, the fire comforting, and the cave reasonably safe. Bomba built up the fire so that it should serve through the night to keep off the prowling denizens of the forest, and made his refuge secure by rolling a great stone that no animal could dislodge to the entrance of the cave.
Then he lay down and slept, not opening his tired eyes till the first break of dawn.
All that day and the next Bomba hunted for Cody Casson. He had given himself three days before he would relinquish the quest as hopeless.
Occasionally he came upon traces of the headhunters. But the tracks were cold, and Bomba calculated that they were at least five days old. If the bucks were in that region at all, they were probably lurking in the vicinity of the cabin, where, soon or late, they could count on Bomba’s reappearance.
Toward the evening of the third day Bomba caught sight of something strange lying at theroots of a great tree in one of the most extensive swamps with which the region abounded.
At first sight it looked like a crumpled heap of rags. Bomba’s thought was that it was the remains of an old hammock or native rug thrown aside as useless.
But there was something in the shape of it that made him revise his opinion, and he approached it with the caution that he always used when in the presence of something which he did not understand.
When at last he stood beside it he started back with a gasp.
It was a skeleton that lay there amid the shreds of garments that had previously clothed the body!
Bomba had seen such grisly sights before. They were not uncommon in the jungle, where natives without number met their end by the jaws of the puma and the fangs of the snake.
No, it was not the mere sight of a skeleton that made Bomba start so violently.
It was the fact thatthe skeleton was that of a white man!