CHAPTER XVIJAGUAR ISLAND
Despitehis iron courage, Bomba could not repress a shudder.
To be sure, he still had his bow and arrows, and what he had done once he might do again.
But now he was handicapped by the darkness. It had come on swiftly. It would be almost half an hour before the moon would rise. And how could he shoot in the darkness at such a tiny target as the eye of the alligator?
For he must kill it there or nowhere. Against the tough, scaly armor that covered the brute from snout to tail, fifty arrows might strike as harmlessly as hail on a roof.
He strained his eyes through the darkness ahead, hoping to see some still blacker blot that might betray the presence of land. He felt that by now he must be somewhere in the vicinity of the island of the big cats. Whatever danger awaited him there, he would face gladly rather than endure the fate that threatened him from the waters in his wake.
Those phosphorescent streaks were drawing closer now. One in particular was not more than twenty feet away.
Then there came a rush, and a huge alligator hurled itself out of the water and came down with half its body on the raft. Its open jaws snapped at Bomba’s legs.
Quick as lightning, Bomba grabbed the long pole, and with all the strength of his muscular arms rammed it down the monster’s throat.
The brute slid off the raft into the water, and instantly its comrades were on it like a pack of wolves.
Relieved of its burden, the raft righted and swung ahead in the current. A moment later it came up against a jutting point of land with a shock that almost jarred Bomba off his feet.
But he caught hold of an overhanging branch and held the raft steady. Gradually he pulled it in until it grounded on a shelving beach.
Still maintaining his hold on the bough with one hand, Bomba took from around his neck where he had wound it a strong rope of creepers and fastened the raft to the bough so that it could not drift away. Then he leaped to shore.
He threw himself on the ground at full length, panting and exhausted.
Land! To feel the solid earth beneath him after the nightmare of that awful journey throughthe seething waters. Now let the alligators rage! He had cheated them on their own element.
But had he cheated them? He must not grow careless. The alligators could travel on land as well as in the water. They were close at hand, and one or more might come creeping up the bank.
So, tired as he was, he got to his feet and made his way cautiously inland until he came to a thorn thicket, into which he burrowed, not without scratches on arms and legs. But what were scratches to one who had escaped the jaws of the caymans?
Was he on Jaguar Island? Or had he struck a smaller island? Ashati and Neram had told him of one that stood in the river two miles above the island of the big cats. Perhaps it was this one on which his raft had grounded.
He need not wait long to know. The moon would soon be up, flooding all the world with light. Then he could make a survey of his surroundings and get his bearings.
In the meantime, rest was unspeakably sweet. The terrific strain under which he had been during that perilous journey down the river had tested his strength and endurance to the uttermost. Now he relaxed.
But he did not sleep. For, if he were not already on Jaguar Island, he still had a trip tomake that night. He had vowed to himself that he would not sleep until he had reached the island where Japazy dwelt. Then only would he lie down to slumber.
Perhaps to the slumber that knows no waking! He knew that, too. But the possibility did not for one moment swerve him from his purpose.
A little while later a faint light came flickering in among the trees. The moon was rising. Bomba waited for a few minutes more and then emerged from his shelter and looked about him.
A little scouting showed him that he was not on Jaguar Island. There was no semblance of human habitation of any kind. The island was only a few acres in extent, and in a little while he had walked all around it.
Once more he would trust himself to the swift turbulent river.
He came to the place where his raft was swinging in the sedge grass near the shore. His eyes scanned the river anxiously. But there were no more of those streaks of phosphorescence in evidence. The alligators had waited for a while perhaps, angry and disappointed, and then returned sullenly to their usual haunts.
To be sure, others might come and take their places, but as Bomba knew that the brutes usually slept at night he did not apprehend much danger on that score.
He unlashed the raft from its mooring and with a hard push of his paddle sent it out from the shore, where it was promptly caught in the grip of the current.
Now he was on the last lap of his journey, the journey that had taken him so many weary days, that had been so full of peril and adventure, and during which his life had so many times seemed to depend upon the turning of a hair.
Was not the very fact that he had been so preserved, Bomba asked himself, a proof that the gods of the Indians, in whom he half believed, were on his side? Surely he could not have come so far only to be mocked at last at the very moment when the end of his mission was in sight.
From these reflections Bomba derived what comfort he could, while his keen eyes scanned the tumbling waters ahead of him and darted from shore to shore.
Presently he became conscious of an odd humming sound, as of the buzzing of innumerable bees. In fact, he thought that a hive might be swarming from one side of the river to the other, and looked to see if he could detect the presence of the insects in the moonlight. Then he remembered that the bees swarmed only in the daytime.
Now the noise took on a deeper note, and with the humming were mingled discordant notes,rumbling notes, ominous notes, with an occasional crash as of faraway thunder.
Something like this Bomba had heard on his visit to the Moving Mountain. At that time they had been a prelude to a frightful earthquake. Was anything of that kind threatening now?
While he was seeking some solution, his eyes caught sight of a light on the river ahead of him. He thought at first it might be a torch in the canoe of some native. But if that had been so, it would have moved steadily in one direction.
Instead, it leaped about irregularly as though a sport of the wind and waters. Then it disappeared altogether.
Now other lights, some faint, some bright, began to stud the surface of the stream. There were many of them, and they flared up and went out as though at the caprice of a magician. All the time the humming sound persisted.
Bomba began to feel the hair slowly rising on his head. This transcended anything in his experience. He recalled the warnings of Hondura, of Neram and Ashati. Was he entering a realm of spirits, of malignant ghosts and demons? Were they even now laughing in glee as they saw the young voyager coming within their reach?
So engrossed was he in these eerie imaginings that for a moment his vigilant watch of the course he was taking lessened. He was brought to arude sense of reality when his raft struck violently on a rock that protruded above the boiling foam of a rapid, so violently that it broke apart, the tough withes that bound it snapped by the force of the impact.
The next moment Bomba found himself struggling in the waters of the river.
He rose to the surface and shook the spray from his eyes. In the churning waters he could see the separated logs of the raft tossing about in wild confusion. He grasped one of them and hung on desperately until the current carried him and his slender support into the comparatively quiet waters beyond.
Then he climbed up on the log and sat on it astride.
His mind was a welter of conflicting thoughts and emotions. In a moment the whole outlook had changed. He had been in comparative safety as long as the raft was beneath his feet. Now he was a mere floating derelict, unable to shape his course, powerless to use his weapons if he were assailed.
The other logs were tossing about in dangerous proximity. At any moment one of them might be hurled against him, breaking a leg or knocking him senseless.
And the caymans!
He looked behind him fearfully. But therewere none of those phosphorescent streaks to betray the presence of the monsters. How long would it be, however, before there would be a break of the water and the emerging of the hideous head of one of the lords of the river!
Sitting astride the log, his legs were hanging in the water. One bite of the alligator’s jaws and a leg would be severed as though shorn by shears.
But he was nearing land. That was one comfort. Before him in the moonlight he could see a black mass rapidly taking shape. By its size and general contour, as given him by the ex-slaves, he conjectured that it must be the island of the big cats.
He drifted nearer and nearer to it. Now he was not more than a hundred feet away. Bomba braced himself for the jar that would come when the log struck the shore. Once more he looked behind.
That look almost made his heart stop beating.
He saw a phosphorescent streak!