Chapter Nine.

Chapter Nine.How Phil and Dick voyaged up the Magdalena.“There, now, what did I tell you?” demanded Stukely, triumphantly, as the boat slid easily through the reeds and glided alongside a smooth, grassy bank, the top of which was scarcely a foot above the surface of the river. “Now,” he continued, “if we lower the sail and unstep the mast, we may remain here as long as we please, undetected.”Indeed the statement was strictly true; for, having lowered the sail and unshipped the mast, they stepped ashore upon a smooth, grassy lawn, of some four acres in extent, completely hidden from the river by the screen of tall reeds, the feathery tops of which rose some ten feet above the water’s surface, while inland it was completely encircled by a belt of forest the undergrowth of which was so dense as to be absolutely impenetrable by man without the aid of axes or other hewing implements. The lawn was thickly dotted with trees and shrubs of various kinds, amid which was conspicuous the tree which Stukely had asserted was good for the making of bows; and many of the trees were fruit bearers, among them being bananas, pawpaws, guavas, mangoes, and other excellent varieties.Dick stared about him in amazement as he stepped ashore, taking the boat’s painter with him and making it fast to a sturdy bush which grew conveniently close to the water’s edge. “Well,” he said, in answer to Stukely’s question, “you were perfectly right, however you came by your knowledge. And, as to remaining here—well, I think we might do worse. We ought to accustom ourselves gradually to the outdoor, semi-savage life which will henceforth be ours; and I think we cannot do better than begin here. And that reminds me that I have not yet breakfasted, while yonder I see some bananas that appear to have reached the very pink of perfection. Are you hungry, Phil?”“I am,” answered Stukely, with emphasis; “and we have a full larder, it seems; so help yourself, lad. At present we shall be obliged to content ourselves with an exclusively fruit diet; but in the course of a few days, when we have provided ourselves with bows and arrows, we can vary it a little by adding an occasional venison steak, or a parrot or two. I can assure you, Dick, that parrots are very excellent eating.”“How do you know?” demanded the matter-of-fact Dick. “Have you ever eaten one?”“Ay, often enough,” answered Stukely, impulsively, then he checked himself. “At least,” he stammered, “I seem to have done so; and yet, of course, ’tis impossible. Do you believe, as some assert, that a certain number, if not all, of us have lived on this earth once, twice, thrice before this present life, Dick? Because that is exactly how I feel, as though I had spent at least one previous existence here, in this very part of the world, amid such surroundings as those which our eyes now gaze upon. It all seems so absolutely familiar; I feel that I know all that there is to know about everything, except the names of them; ay, and there are even times when strange dim memories of past scenes seem to visit me, and for a moment I picture myself surrounded by all the pomp and grandeur of a civilisation that has long passed away. You will call me a dreamer, as indeed you have often called me already; and perhaps you are right. Yet it is strange that all my dreams should centre round scenes glorious as this, and have been so vivid that I recognise hitherto unseen objects as perfectly familiar when my gaze rests upon them. But this is unprofitable talk; the really important thing is that we are hungry, and are surrounded by food in abundance. Let us to breakfast.”When at length they had satisfied their hunger by feasting upon the several kinds of delicious fruits which abounded in the enclosure, Phil approached the tree which he had asserted was good for making bows from, and, drawing his hanger, proceeded to examine very carefully its several boughs, finally choosing two which were absolutely straight and about twelve feet long. These he hacked off from the parent trunk, without difficulty, using his hanger as an axe; then, handing one to Dick, whom he directed to follow his own example, he sat down in the shadow of a great umbrella tree and proceeded to trim away first the twigs and then the bark. This done, he took the bare, straight branch, and trimmed off the thin end until the wood, which was perfectly round, was about three-quarters of an inch thick. Then he cut away enough of the thick end of the branch to leave a pole about six feet long, which he proceeded to whittle away at the thick end until it also was about the same thickness as the thinner end, leaving the middle part about two inches thick. This he did with his pocket knife, without any difficulty, the wood seeming to be quite soft and yielding itself to the sharp blade with the utmost facility. And as he worked, so did Dick, the latter with a smile of amusement upon his face, for he flattered himself that he knew a thing or two about bows; and to him it seemed ridiculous to suppose that this wood which yielded itself as readily as cheese to the shaping of the knife could ever be of the slightest use as a bow. But he worked steadily on, following Stukely’s lead, and shaping his own branch precisely as Stukely shaped his, and after some three hours of by no means arduous work each possessed a perfectly straight, smooth rod, accurately trimmed into the form of a bow about six feet long, with properly notched ends for the string to fit into.“There,” said Stukely at last, as he critically inspected his own and Dick’s production, “I do not think we can improve upon either of those, which ought to make really formidable weapons when they are ready for use. Now, the next thing is to hang them up in the shade to dry, and that will take three full days at least, after which they will be ready to use, and will steadily improve in quality until the whole of the sap is completely dried out of them. If they have a fault it will probably be that we shall find them a shade too strong for us at first; but we shall grow accustomed to that in time. We cannot do better than hang them to a bough of this tree, where they will be completely shielded from the rays of the sun, and will dry slowly and evenly. Now, the next thing we need is a string for each bow, and—if we can contrive it—a spare string as a stand by. And”—glancing about him—“I think we ought to find the materials for the manufacture of those strings not very far away.”He hung up the two bows in such a situation that at no time of the day would the rays of the sun get at them, and then wandered round the enclosure, peering up among the branches of the trees, and at length seemed to find what he was seeking, for presently he swung himself up into a particular tree, and climbing some little way up it, plucked two brown balls about the size of oranges, with which he descended.“Here we are,” he exclaimed in accents of satisfaction, as he exhibited the balls to Dick. “These are the cocoons of a certain caterpillar, the name of which I forget, but they spin a kind of silk which is admirably adapted for the making of bowstrings, for it is incredibly strong, does not fray, and is not affected by damp. Now—”“But how on earth do you come to know all this, Phil?” demanded Dick, as he took one of the cocoons in his hand and examined it curiously.“I cannot tell you,” answered Stukely, rather impatiently; “let it suffice you that I possess the knowledge, in some inscrutable way, ay, and a good deal more, too, of which you are like to reap the benefit in the long run.”He then proceeded to explain and illustrate how the silk was to be unwound—a task which kept them both busy for several hours—and when this was at length done he showed Dick how to spin the fine, tough filament into a thin but immensely strong cord. But the most remarkable part of the whole affair was the perfectly intimate knowledge which he displayed of the various operations, none of which, be it remembered, he had ever performed before. The unwinding of the cocoons and the spinning of the cords—two for each bow—occupied the young men during the remainder of that first day and the whole of the second, for the process was a rather tedious and delicate one, in which Dick at least exhibited all the inaptitude of the novice. The third and fourth days were fully occupied in the cutting of reeds and the conversion of them into arrows; and here again Stukely showed the same weird, incomprehensible knowledge and skill that he had so conspicuously displayed in his choice of the wood for the bows, his working of it to the proper shape, and his manufacture of the bowstrings; for the arrows, when finished, were as nearly perfect as such missiles could possibly be, the shafts being of uniform length, perfectly straight, and each tipped with a strong, hard thorn, sharp as a needle, and growing naturally in the form of a barb. Two dozen arrows for each constituted their initial equipment, but they cut a considerable quantity of spare reeds and thorns, and wound quite a large skein of silk to bind the barbed heads with, as they were quite prepared to lose several of their arrows at the outset, and accordingly made ample provision for their replacement, which could be done at odd moments, while working their way up the river. Their next business was to plait two quivers of palm-leaf fibre, with shoulder straps to support the same; and it was Stukely who had to make these, for when Dick endeavoured to follow his friend’s instructions he proved to be so absolutely lacking in the necessary skill that, to save time, Phil undertook to do all the work himself. These several occupations kept them busy for an entire week, during which they saw no sign of human presence on the river; and by the time that all was finished the bows had dried into prime condition, and Dick found, to his amazement, that the wood which, when first cut, had been soft and workable as cheese, had become as hard as iron, tough, elastic, and extraordinarily strong; that it had, in short, become perfect for use as a bow.Being now equipped with powerful and effective weapons which would enable them to save their powder and ball for special emergencies, and provide them with all the game they might require, the two adventurers resumed their journey, heading up the wide, deep river which they believed to be the Magdalena, sailing when the wind permitted, and paddling when it did not, unless they happened to be within sight of a good camping place when the wind failed them, in which case they very frequently ran in alongside the bank, moored the boat, and rested or hunted, or both, until the wind sprang up again.They were perfectly happy now, these two; and it is difficult to say which was the happier. The life which they were living was, as nearly as possible, ideal; it was passed in the open air, in the midst of glorious scenery which was constantly revealing new beauties and wonders; they had not a care in the world, for the river and the forest provided them with an ample supply of food, while they had no anxiety with regard to clothing in a climate which rendered clothes a superfluity. In short, their every physical need was abundantly satisfied; they enjoyed perfect health, and if their adventures thus far were of a somewhat tame and commonplace description, well, what mattered it? They had not a doubt that excitement in plenty lay before them, and meanwhile their daily life was insensibly training and preparing them to cope with it. Each of them was happy in his own way; Dick, because all was new and splendid, and Phil, because he was possessed of a wonderful overmastering feeling that after a long period of exile he once more found himself amid scenes that were familiar, and, although he could not say precisely in what way, suggestive of glorious associations.Late on the second day of their resumed voyage they arrived at a point where the river forked, the stream on their right hand being almost as important as the other; but they decided that the stream on their left was the main stream, and therefore followed it. Although they knew it not at the moment, this decision of theirs to follow the left instead of the right stream was of the utmost import to them; for had they decided differently they would have missed the extraordinary adventure that awaited them among the mountains which lay so far ahead that many a weary mile of river, forest, and plain must be traversed before their peaks should swing into sight.They camped that night on the point of land where the two rivers united their waters, and had scarcely landed when, without a sound to tell of his coming, a graceful antelope emerged from the brake a few hundred yards away, evidently going to the river to drink. The adventurers were at the moment partly concealed by the reeds among which they had moored their boat, moreover the wind was in their favour, and for nearly half a minute the creature failed to see them. By the time that he did, Stukely had seized his bow, fitted an arrow to the string, and risen cautiously to his feet. Then the antelope appeared to become aware of some unusual feature in the scene, and halted to investigate, whereupon Phil cautiously drew his bowstring, released it with a loud twang, and the arrow, flying straight and true, pierced the creature’s heart, so that it fell dead in its tracks, and they had their first deer. And now again Stukely gave fresh evidence of his uncanny knowledge, for although he had never before killed a deer, and might be supposed to know nothing of the verderer’s art, he at once set to work to skin and “break up” the animal with all the skill of an adept. So that night they feasted sumptuously upon venison steaks, grilled upon the embers of a fire which, with a further display of his strange knowledge, Phil kindled by the apparently simple but really exceedingly difficult process of rubbing two sticks together! And that night, too, they heard for the first time the roar of the jaguar in the adjacent forest.For several days—so many, indeed, that they lost count of them—they voyaged steadily up the great river, sailing when the wind permitted, paddling when it did not, passing, at tolerably frequent intervals, points where lesser streams discharged themselves into the main body of water, while by imperceptible degrees the waterway narrowed, and the forest—dense, green, flower-decked, alive and gay with bird and insect life—pressed its foliaged walls in upon them ever closer and closer, except where an occasional break caused by fire or windfall afforded them a momentary glimpse of giant mountain ranges to right and left, at first a delicate purple-grey in the distance, but ever, like the forest, creeping closer in upon them. And now at increasingly frequent intervals, they began to see Indians, at first a solitary “buck” spearing fish from his canoe, but later on in parties of from half a dozen to fifty or more, crossing the river, or, like themselves, using it as a highway. But thus far, much as Stukely desired it, they had never succeeded in getting into touch with the natives, for the latter invariably fled at the mere sight of them.One of the most surprising circumstances, perhaps, in connection with this voyage up the river, was the rapidity with which the two Englishmen—or Dick, rather—lost the capacity to be astonished. Stukely, indeed, had never manifested the least surprise at any of the wonders that were continually coming under their observation, for, steadfastly adhering to that strange fancy of his that he must have lived in these regions during some former state of existence, he persistently asserted that everything he saw was perfectly familiar to him. But with Dick it was very different; he was as matter-of-fact as Phil was fanciful; and the sight of giant trees between two and three hundred feet in height towering up into the cloudless blue a solid mass of purple, scarlet, or yellow bloom; of graceful clumps of feathery bamboo a hundred feet long; of the lofty forest walls on either hand draped with festoons of orchids of the most extraordinary and undreamed-of shapes and the most gorgeous colours; of birds, insects, ay, and even fish, that flashed and glittered with all the hues of the rainbow; of monkeys who followed their course up the river in troops of a hundred or more; of the lithe and graceful jaguar lying stretched upon some trunk or branch that closely overhung the water, watching with ready paw to seize any unwary fish that might chance to swim past within reach; of alligators that basked log-like on the mud banks—all these things were to Chichester at first a source of utmost wonder and admiration; yet within a month they had become the veriest commonplaces to him, and had entirely ceased to attract his attention. He was far more interested in the sight of a fair breeze stealing up the river after them than he was in the sight of the most beautiful flower, the most gorgeous butterfly, or the most dainty and brilliant colibri, for he knew that all these things he would see again a thousand times or more; but a wind that would relieve them of the labour of paddling in that scorching climate—ah! that was indeed a sight worth seeing.At length, when they had been journeying up the river in leisurely fashion for about three weeks, meeting with no adventure worthy of record, on a certain hot and steamy afternoon, when the boat, under sail, was doing little more than barely stem the current, they gradually became aware of a low, faint roar, at first scarcely distinguishable above the rustle of the wind in the trees aloft and the buzzing hum of the innumerable insects which swarmed in the forest and hovered in clouds over the surface of the water. But as the boat continued to creep upstream the roar gradually increased in intensity, until at length, as they rounded a bend and entered another reach of the river which extended practically straight for nearly three miles ahead of them, they saw, at a distance of about a mile, a long stretch of foaming, tumbling water, rushing headlong down through a rocky gorge, about three hundred yards wide, over what was evidently a rocky bed, for the brown heads of several rocks were seen protruding above the leaping water in the channel. Rapids! with a fall of nearly thirty feet in about half a mile. This was a formidable obstacle indeed, for it did not seem possible that they could get the boat through them; and if they should be obliged to abandon her, what would then happen? Obviously they would be obliged to walk the rest of the distance—or to build another boat, or canoe, above the rapids; and it was difficult to say which was the more distasteful alternative of the two. Walking, probably, for although their belongings were few and by no means cumbersome to carry, the forest was so dense that, as they had already proved by experience, it was scarcely possible to travel a hundred feet without being faced by the necessity to cut their way.“Well,” said practical Dick, after they had sat staring at the beautiful but tantalising scene for full five minutes, “it’s no use meeting trouble halfway, or wondering how we are going to get across the bridge until we come to it; let’s push on and get as close up as we can; then we’ll get ashore, walk up along, and have a look at the place. Perhaps when we come to it, it will not look so bad as it does from here.”The bank on either hand was so densely overgrown with shrubs that landing seemed out of the question; but, seizing their paddles, the two adventurers drove the boat up against the rapidly strengthening current. Presently a tiny strip of beach, a yard wide by ten or twelve yards long, came into view; and here they beached the boat, making her well fast in order that the current might not sweep her away. The rapids were now less than a hundred feet distant, and the rush of the water brought down with it a cool, spray-laden breeze that was infinitely refreshing after the baking breathlessness of the stream below; but the roar of the chafing waters was so loud that it was almost impossible to make one’s voice heard; Phil therefore scrambled up the steep bank, and signed to Dick to follow. Fighting their way through the dense undergrowth, through which they were obliged to cut much of their way with their hangers, they at length came out upon a jutting spur of bare rock which overhung the rapids at a height of some fifty feet, and from this point they were able to obtain a tolerably distinct view of the whole gorge. And, as Dick had suggested, when they came to look at the place from close at hand, it did not appear to be nearly so impracticable as they had at first imagined.The bed of the channel was badly encumbered with rocks, it is true, but only for about two hundred feet at the lower end; the rest of it, while showing a partially submerged rock here and there, was on the whole remarkably clear, the water rushing over its bed in a swift, glass-smooth stream. Even where the rocks were thickest, it was apparent that there was a very well-defined channel between them, up which a carefully navigated boat might easily pass—if propulsive power enough were applied to her to overcome the downward rush of the stream. But how was that power to be obtained? Certainly not by paddling; the stream was too swift for that. But it was just possible that it might be done by warping if a warp long enough and strong enough could be obtained. Moreover the warp need not be so prodigiously long, for now that they came to look at the rapids at close quarters they saw that their original estimate of their length had been a long way over the mark; it was much nearer a quarter than half a mile long. They glanced about them and saw that the trees were here, as everywhere along the river bank, thickly draped with long, thin, tough lianas, and the same idea flashed into both their minds at the same moment: why should they not twist or plait a warp of lianas? There were plenty of them, and, after all, it merely resolved itself into a question of time, while time, just then, was of less importance to them than labour. There was an alternative, of course, they might abandon the boat and construct a canoe above the rapids; and it was worth considering whether the construction of a canoe or the making of a warp would involve the more labour. To settle the point they decided to go on through the woods until they reached the head of the rapids, and there inspect the trees with the view of ascertaining whether there were any suitable for the construction of a canoe; and having come to this decision, they left the rock and re-entered the forest.For more than half an hour they were so busily engaged in forcing and hewing their way through the dense, parasitical undergrowth that they had no attention to spare for anything else; but at length they became conscious of certain discordant sounds, reaching their ears above the roar of the rapids, which presently became distinguishable as the beating of drums, mingled with a sort of braying bellow, comparable to nothing that they had ever heard before. As the pair pressed on, the unearthly sounds gradually grew louder, not only because they were approaching the source of them but also because it was evident that the producers of the sounds were becoming more excited, for the tapping of the drums increased in rapidity while the braying as steadily grew in stridency and discord. Another five minutes of strenuous labour then the two Englishmen burst through the last of the undergrowth and emerged upon a cleared space of about a hundred acres on the bank of the river just above the rapids. At this point the river widened out again to about the space of half a mile from bank to bank, the gorge being about a hundred yards below, and the current was again gentle enough to render paddling against it an easy matter. A small strip of shingly beach was dotted with some forty or fifty canoes, each hewn out of a single log; and adjoining the beach, scattered over a space of about five acres of ground, was a native village consisting of about fifty palm-leaf huts, dotted about without the slightest attempt at symmetrical arrangement, except that they were built round an open space. The remainder of the clearing consisted of cultivated ground divided into patches devoted in about equal proportions to cassava and maize, with a little indigo here and there. A whole forest of slender poles, connected with each other by lianas, from which large quantities of fish were suspended, drying in the sun, and which, by the way, gave off a most intolerable odour, indicated that the inhabitants depended as much upon the river as upon the soil for their subsistence.Apparently some sort of festival or religious ceremony was in process of being observed when Dick and Phil burst in so unceremoniously upon them, for the entire population of the village, men, women, and children, were squatted in a circle round the open space in the middle of the village. Despite the scorching heat a large fire was blazing in the centre of the open space, and round it sat the village band, consisting of four drums, made of sections of trees with the inside cut away, leaving a thin cylinder of wood, over one end of which was tightly strained a skin of some sort which was slapped with the palm of the open hand, and about a dozen flageolet players, their instruments being made of baked clay. It was these last that emitted the unearthly braying, bellowing sounds already mentioned. To this hideous medley of sounds a figure in the middle of the circle was dancing, a figure so queer that for a second or two the young Englishmen scarcely knew what to make of it. But presently they saw that it was a man laced-up in a jaguar skin, with teeth, claws, and tail complete, the face of the man peering out from between the gaping jaws. He was not only dancing vigorously, if indeed dancing it could be called, which consisted in leaping violently into the air and springing from side to side over a bundle, the nature of which the intruders could not at first make out, but also singing, or rather howling, certain words which appeared to begradually working his audience up into a state of savage excitement; for at intervals one or another of them, apparently moved out of himself, would yell furiously and shake in the air a villainous-looking, triple-barbed spear.For nearly a minute the people were so completely absorbed in the movements and words of their piache, or medicine man, or witch doctor, as the man in the jaguar skin proved to be, that they were quite oblivious of the presence of the two Englishmen; but suddenly the piache caught sight of them and stopped short in his leapings and howlings, and glared, open-mouthed, at the strangers for a second or two before, with a yell of dismay, he turned tail and, leaping right through the blazing fire in his panic, dashed into a hut and violently drew across the mat which served as a door. This extraordinary behaviour on the part of the medicine man naturally excited the wonder of his audience, and also aroused in them a feeling of consternation which caused them to spring to their feet and look about them apprehensively. Then they, too, caught sight of the Englishmen, and, like their piache, made a mad dash for their huts, yelling as they went. Thus, in the course of a couple of minutes, the two young Devonians were left in complete, undisputed possession of the village, although they were conscious of being stealthily observed from practically every hut in the place.“Well,” exclaimed Dick, as he stared about him in astonishment, “this beats everything! Men and women, big and little, there must have been close upon two hundred of them, and not one had the courage to stay and face us!”“They probably took us for Spaniards,” answered Stukely, “and may have thought that we were merely the advance guard of a considerable force. Hence their terror. I only hope that when they discover their mistake they may not revenge themselves upon us for the fright which we have given them. I would that one or the other of us possessed a smattering of their lingo, sufficient to make ourselves understood; I am afraid that we shall find our ignorance in that respect a very serious hindrance as we penetrate farther into the interior; and we must do our best to remedy the—hallo! what on earth is in that bundle? Did you see it move?”Phil referred to the bundle over which the piache had been performing his extraordinary dance when they interrupted him, and which had the appearance of being simply a bundle of ordinary matting. But Stukely’s eye happened to have been resting upon it while he spoke, and he had distinctly seen it move.“No, I didn’t,” answered Chichester, in reply to his friend’s question, “for the simple reason that I wasn’t looking at it. But we’ll look at it now, if you like.” And striding over to where the bundle lay upon the ground, he drew his knife, severed the thongs that bound it, unrolled the matting, and disclosed to his own and his companion’s astonished gaze the figure of a little old man, securely bound hand and foot. He was an Indian of some sort, evidently, but not of the same race as the inhabitants of the village, his colour being that of light copper, while that of the others was a very dark brown, nearly approaching to black; also his features were of a totally different and much higher type, his forehead being broad and high, his nose thin and aquiline, and his cheek-bones rather high and prominent; in fact he must, in the days of his youth, have been a decidedly handsome man, with an imposing presence; but now he was old—how old it was rather difficult to guess, but probably not far short of a hundred—shrunken and shrivelled up until he resembled an animated mummy more than anything else. His head and face were clean shaven, and he was naked, except for a sort of petticoat of feathers about his loins, the said petticoat having evidently at one time been an exceedingly handsome garment, though now it was soiled, frayed, and generally very much the worse for wear.As Dick bent over the old fellow, with his long, keen knife in his hand, to sever his bonds, the creature suddenly cried out some half a dozen words, in a thin, high, piping voice, causing Stukely to start forward and gaze earnestly into the face of the speaker; then, to Dick’s stupefaction, Stukely replied in apparently the same tongue, bent over and rapidly loosed the thongs which bound the old fellow’s hands and feet together, and proceeded gently to chafe the shrunken limbs.

“There, now, what did I tell you?” demanded Stukely, triumphantly, as the boat slid easily through the reeds and glided alongside a smooth, grassy bank, the top of which was scarcely a foot above the surface of the river. “Now,” he continued, “if we lower the sail and unstep the mast, we may remain here as long as we please, undetected.”

Indeed the statement was strictly true; for, having lowered the sail and unshipped the mast, they stepped ashore upon a smooth, grassy lawn, of some four acres in extent, completely hidden from the river by the screen of tall reeds, the feathery tops of which rose some ten feet above the water’s surface, while inland it was completely encircled by a belt of forest the undergrowth of which was so dense as to be absolutely impenetrable by man without the aid of axes or other hewing implements. The lawn was thickly dotted with trees and shrubs of various kinds, amid which was conspicuous the tree which Stukely had asserted was good for the making of bows; and many of the trees were fruit bearers, among them being bananas, pawpaws, guavas, mangoes, and other excellent varieties.

Dick stared about him in amazement as he stepped ashore, taking the boat’s painter with him and making it fast to a sturdy bush which grew conveniently close to the water’s edge. “Well,” he said, in answer to Stukely’s question, “you were perfectly right, however you came by your knowledge. And, as to remaining here—well, I think we might do worse. We ought to accustom ourselves gradually to the outdoor, semi-savage life which will henceforth be ours; and I think we cannot do better than begin here. And that reminds me that I have not yet breakfasted, while yonder I see some bananas that appear to have reached the very pink of perfection. Are you hungry, Phil?”

“I am,” answered Stukely, with emphasis; “and we have a full larder, it seems; so help yourself, lad. At present we shall be obliged to content ourselves with an exclusively fruit diet; but in the course of a few days, when we have provided ourselves with bows and arrows, we can vary it a little by adding an occasional venison steak, or a parrot or two. I can assure you, Dick, that parrots are very excellent eating.”

“How do you know?” demanded the matter-of-fact Dick. “Have you ever eaten one?”

“Ay, often enough,” answered Stukely, impulsively, then he checked himself. “At least,” he stammered, “I seem to have done so; and yet, of course, ’tis impossible. Do you believe, as some assert, that a certain number, if not all, of us have lived on this earth once, twice, thrice before this present life, Dick? Because that is exactly how I feel, as though I had spent at least one previous existence here, in this very part of the world, amid such surroundings as those which our eyes now gaze upon. It all seems so absolutely familiar; I feel that I know all that there is to know about everything, except the names of them; ay, and there are even times when strange dim memories of past scenes seem to visit me, and for a moment I picture myself surrounded by all the pomp and grandeur of a civilisation that has long passed away. You will call me a dreamer, as indeed you have often called me already; and perhaps you are right. Yet it is strange that all my dreams should centre round scenes glorious as this, and have been so vivid that I recognise hitherto unseen objects as perfectly familiar when my gaze rests upon them. But this is unprofitable talk; the really important thing is that we are hungry, and are surrounded by food in abundance. Let us to breakfast.”

When at length they had satisfied their hunger by feasting upon the several kinds of delicious fruits which abounded in the enclosure, Phil approached the tree which he had asserted was good for making bows from, and, drawing his hanger, proceeded to examine very carefully its several boughs, finally choosing two which were absolutely straight and about twelve feet long. These he hacked off from the parent trunk, without difficulty, using his hanger as an axe; then, handing one to Dick, whom he directed to follow his own example, he sat down in the shadow of a great umbrella tree and proceeded to trim away first the twigs and then the bark. This done, he took the bare, straight branch, and trimmed off the thin end until the wood, which was perfectly round, was about three-quarters of an inch thick. Then he cut away enough of the thick end of the branch to leave a pole about six feet long, which he proceeded to whittle away at the thick end until it also was about the same thickness as the thinner end, leaving the middle part about two inches thick. This he did with his pocket knife, without any difficulty, the wood seeming to be quite soft and yielding itself to the sharp blade with the utmost facility. And as he worked, so did Dick, the latter with a smile of amusement upon his face, for he flattered himself that he knew a thing or two about bows; and to him it seemed ridiculous to suppose that this wood which yielded itself as readily as cheese to the shaping of the knife could ever be of the slightest use as a bow. But he worked steadily on, following Stukely’s lead, and shaping his own branch precisely as Stukely shaped his, and after some three hours of by no means arduous work each possessed a perfectly straight, smooth rod, accurately trimmed into the form of a bow about six feet long, with properly notched ends for the string to fit into.

“There,” said Stukely at last, as he critically inspected his own and Dick’s production, “I do not think we can improve upon either of those, which ought to make really formidable weapons when they are ready for use. Now, the next thing is to hang them up in the shade to dry, and that will take three full days at least, after which they will be ready to use, and will steadily improve in quality until the whole of the sap is completely dried out of them. If they have a fault it will probably be that we shall find them a shade too strong for us at first; but we shall grow accustomed to that in time. We cannot do better than hang them to a bough of this tree, where they will be completely shielded from the rays of the sun, and will dry slowly and evenly. Now, the next thing we need is a string for each bow, and—if we can contrive it—a spare string as a stand by. And”—glancing about him—“I think we ought to find the materials for the manufacture of those strings not very far away.”

He hung up the two bows in such a situation that at no time of the day would the rays of the sun get at them, and then wandered round the enclosure, peering up among the branches of the trees, and at length seemed to find what he was seeking, for presently he swung himself up into a particular tree, and climbing some little way up it, plucked two brown balls about the size of oranges, with which he descended.

“Here we are,” he exclaimed in accents of satisfaction, as he exhibited the balls to Dick. “These are the cocoons of a certain caterpillar, the name of which I forget, but they spin a kind of silk which is admirably adapted for the making of bowstrings, for it is incredibly strong, does not fray, and is not affected by damp. Now—”

“But how on earth do you come to know all this, Phil?” demanded Dick, as he took one of the cocoons in his hand and examined it curiously.

“I cannot tell you,” answered Stukely, rather impatiently; “let it suffice you that I possess the knowledge, in some inscrutable way, ay, and a good deal more, too, of which you are like to reap the benefit in the long run.”

He then proceeded to explain and illustrate how the silk was to be unwound—a task which kept them both busy for several hours—and when this was at length done he showed Dick how to spin the fine, tough filament into a thin but immensely strong cord. But the most remarkable part of the whole affair was the perfectly intimate knowledge which he displayed of the various operations, none of which, be it remembered, he had ever performed before. The unwinding of the cocoons and the spinning of the cords—two for each bow—occupied the young men during the remainder of that first day and the whole of the second, for the process was a rather tedious and delicate one, in which Dick at least exhibited all the inaptitude of the novice. The third and fourth days were fully occupied in the cutting of reeds and the conversion of them into arrows; and here again Stukely showed the same weird, incomprehensible knowledge and skill that he had so conspicuously displayed in his choice of the wood for the bows, his working of it to the proper shape, and his manufacture of the bowstrings; for the arrows, when finished, were as nearly perfect as such missiles could possibly be, the shafts being of uniform length, perfectly straight, and each tipped with a strong, hard thorn, sharp as a needle, and growing naturally in the form of a barb. Two dozen arrows for each constituted their initial equipment, but they cut a considerable quantity of spare reeds and thorns, and wound quite a large skein of silk to bind the barbed heads with, as they were quite prepared to lose several of their arrows at the outset, and accordingly made ample provision for their replacement, which could be done at odd moments, while working their way up the river. Their next business was to plait two quivers of palm-leaf fibre, with shoulder straps to support the same; and it was Stukely who had to make these, for when Dick endeavoured to follow his friend’s instructions he proved to be so absolutely lacking in the necessary skill that, to save time, Phil undertook to do all the work himself. These several occupations kept them busy for an entire week, during which they saw no sign of human presence on the river; and by the time that all was finished the bows had dried into prime condition, and Dick found, to his amazement, that the wood which, when first cut, had been soft and workable as cheese, had become as hard as iron, tough, elastic, and extraordinarily strong; that it had, in short, become perfect for use as a bow.

Being now equipped with powerful and effective weapons which would enable them to save their powder and ball for special emergencies, and provide them with all the game they might require, the two adventurers resumed their journey, heading up the wide, deep river which they believed to be the Magdalena, sailing when the wind permitted, and paddling when it did not, unless they happened to be within sight of a good camping place when the wind failed them, in which case they very frequently ran in alongside the bank, moored the boat, and rested or hunted, or both, until the wind sprang up again.

They were perfectly happy now, these two; and it is difficult to say which was the happier. The life which they were living was, as nearly as possible, ideal; it was passed in the open air, in the midst of glorious scenery which was constantly revealing new beauties and wonders; they had not a care in the world, for the river and the forest provided them with an ample supply of food, while they had no anxiety with regard to clothing in a climate which rendered clothes a superfluity. In short, their every physical need was abundantly satisfied; they enjoyed perfect health, and if their adventures thus far were of a somewhat tame and commonplace description, well, what mattered it? They had not a doubt that excitement in plenty lay before them, and meanwhile their daily life was insensibly training and preparing them to cope with it. Each of them was happy in his own way; Dick, because all was new and splendid, and Phil, because he was possessed of a wonderful overmastering feeling that after a long period of exile he once more found himself amid scenes that were familiar, and, although he could not say precisely in what way, suggestive of glorious associations.

Late on the second day of their resumed voyage they arrived at a point where the river forked, the stream on their right hand being almost as important as the other; but they decided that the stream on their left was the main stream, and therefore followed it. Although they knew it not at the moment, this decision of theirs to follow the left instead of the right stream was of the utmost import to them; for had they decided differently they would have missed the extraordinary adventure that awaited them among the mountains which lay so far ahead that many a weary mile of river, forest, and plain must be traversed before their peaks should swing into sight.

They camped that night on the point of land where the two rivers united their waters, and had scarcely landed when, without a sound to tell of his coming, a graceful antelope emerged from the brake a few hundred yards away, evidently going to the river to drink. The adventurers were at the moment partly concealed by the reeds among which they had moored their boat, moreover the wind was in their favour, and for nearly half a minute the creature failed to see them. By the time that he did, Stukely had seized his bow, fitted an arrow to the string, and risen cautiously to his feet. Then the antelope appeared to become aware of some unusual feature in the scene, and halted to investigate, whereupon Phil cautiously drew his bowstring, released it with a loud twang, and the arrow, flying straight and true, pierced the creature’s heart, so that it fell dead in its tracks, and they had their first deer. And now again Stukely gave fresh evidence of his uncanny knowledge, for although he had never before killed a deer, and might be supposed to know nothing of the verderer’s art, he at once set to work to skin and “break up” the animal with all the skill of an adept. So that night they feasted sumptuously upon venison steaks, grilled upon the embers of a fire which, with a further display of his strange knowledge, Phil kindled by the apparently simple but really exceedingly difficult process of rubbing two sticks together! And that night, too, they heard for the first time the roar of the jaguar in the adjacent forest.

For several days—so many, indeed, that they lost count of them—they voyaged steadily up the great river, sailing when the wind permitted, paddling when it did not, passing, at tolerably frequent intervals, points where lesser streams discharged themselves into the main body of water, while by imperceptible degrees the waterway narrowed, and the forest—dense, green, flower-decked, alive and gay with bird and insect life—pressed its foliaged walls in upon them ever closer and closer, except where an occasional break caused by fire or windfall afforded them a momentary glimpse of giant mountain ranges to right and left, at first a delicate purple-grey in the distance, but ever, like the forest, creeping closer in upon them. And now at increasingly frequent intervals, they began to see Indians, at first a solitary “buck” spearing fish from his canoe, but later on in parties of from half a dozen to fifty or more, crossing the river, or, like themselves, using it as a highway. But thus far, much as Stukely desired it, they had never succeeded in getting into touch with the natives, for the latter invariably fled at the mere sight of them.

One of the most surprising circumstances, perhaps, in connection with this voyage up the river, was the rapidity with which the two Englishmen—or Dick, rather—lost the capacity to be astonished. Stukely, indeed, had never manifested the least surprise at any of the wonders that were continually coming under their observation, for, steadfastly adhering to that strange fancy of his that he must have lived in these regions during some former state of existence, he persistently asserted that everything he saw was perfectly familiar to him. But with Dick it was very different; he was as matter-of-fact as Phil was fanciful; and the sight of giant trees between two and three hundred feet in height towering up into the cloudless blue a solid mass of purple, scarlet, or yellow bloom; of graceful clumps of feathery bamboo a hundred feet long; of the lofty forest walls on either hand draped with festoons of orchids of the most extraordinary and undreamed-of shapes and the most gorgeous colours; of birds, insects, ay, and even fish, that flashed and glittered with all the hues of the rainbow; of monkeys who followed their course up the river in troops of a hundred or more; of the lithe and graceful jaguar lying stretched upon some trunk or branch that closely overhung the water, watching with ready paw to seize any unwary fish that might chance to swim past within reach; of alligators that basked log-like on the mud banks—all these things were to Chichester at first a source of utmost wonder and admiration; yet within a month they had become the veriest commonplaces to him, and had entirely ceased to attract his attention. He was far more interested in the sight of a fair breeze stealing up the river after them than he was in the sight of the most beautiful flower, the most gorgeous butterfly, or the most dainty and brilliant colibri, for he knew that all these things he would see again a thousand times or more; but a wind that would relieve them of the labour of paddling in that scorching climate—ah! that was indeed a sight worth seeing.

At length, when they had been journeying up the river in leisurely fashion for about three weeks, meeting with no adventure worthy of record, on a certain hot and steamy afternoon, when the boat, under sail, was doing little more than barely stem the current, they gradually became aware of a low, faint roar, at first scarcely distinguishable above the rustle of the wind in the trees aloft and the buzzing hum of the innumerable insects which swarmed in the forest and hovered in clouds over the surface of the water. But as the boat continued to creep upstream the roar gradually increased in intensity, until at length, as they rounded a bend and entered another reach of the river which extended practically straight for nearly three miles ahead of them, they saw, at a distance of about a mile, a long stretch of foaming, tumbling water, rushing headlong down through a rocky gorge, about three hundred yards wide, over what was evidently a rocky bed, for the brown heads of several rocks were seen protruding above the leaping water in the channel. Rapids! with a fall of nearly thirty feet in about half a mile. This was a formidable obstacle indeed, for it did not seem possible that they could get the boat through them; and if they should be obliged to abandon her, what would then happen? Obviously they would be obliged to walk the rest of the distance—or to build another boat, or canoe, above the rapids; and it was difficult to say which was the more distasteful alternative of the two. Walking, probably, for although their belongings were few and by no means cumbersome to carry, the forest was so dense that, as they had already proved by experience, it was scarcely possible to travel a hundred feet without being faced by the necessity to cut their way.

“Well,” said practical Dick, after they had sat staring at the beautiful but tantalising scene for full five minutes, “it’s no use meeting trouble halfway, or wondering how we are going to get across the bridge until we come to it; let’s push on and get as close up as we can; then we’ll get ashore, walk up along, and have a look at the place. Perhaps when we come to it, it will not look so bad as it does from here.”

The bank on either hand was so densely overgrown with shrubs that landing seemed out of the question; but, seizing their paddles, the two adventurers drove the boat up against the rapidly strengthening current. Presently a tiny strip of beach, a yard wide by ten or twelve yards long, came into view; and here they beached the boat, making her well fast in order that the current might not sweep her away. The rapids were now less than a hundred feet distant, and the rush of the water brought down with it a cool, spray-laden breeze that was infinitely refreshing after the baking breathlessness of the stream below; but the roar of the chafing waters was so loud that it was almost impossible to make one’s voice heard; Phil therefore scrambled up the steep bank, and signed to Dick to follow. Fighting their way through the dense undergrowth, through which they were obliged to cut much of their way with their hangers, they at length came out upon a jutting spur of bare rock which overhung the rapids at a height of some fifty feet, and from this point they were able to obtain a tolerably distinct view of the whole gorge. And, as Dick had suggested, when they came to look at the place from close at hand, it did not appear to be nearly so impracticable as they had at first imagined.

The bed of the channel was badly encumbered with rocks, it is true, but only for about two hundred feet at the lower end; the rest of it, while showing a partially submerged rock here and there, was on the whole remarkably clear, the water rushing over its bed in a swift, glass-smooth stream. Even where the rocks were thickest, it was apparent that there was a very well-defined channel between them, up which a carefully navigated boat might easily pass—if propulsive power enough were applied to her to overcome the downward rush of the stream. But how was that power to be obtained? Certainly not by paddling; the stream was too swift for that. But it was just possible that it might be done by warping if a warp long enough and strong enough could be obtained. Moreover the warp need not be so prodigiously long, for now that they came to look at the rapids at close quarters they saw that their original estimate of their length had been a long way over the mark; it was much nearer a quarter than half a mile long. They glanced about them and saw that the trees were here, as everywhere along the river bank, thickly draped with long, thin, tough lianas, and the same idea flashed into both their minds at the same moment: why should they not twist or plait a warp of lianas? There were plenty of them, and, after all, it merely resolved itself into a question of time, while time, just then, was of less importance to them than labour. There was an alternative, of course, they might abandon the boat and construct a canoe above the rapids; and it was worth considering whether the construction of a canoe or the making of a warp would involve the more labour. To settle the point they decided to go on through the woods until they reached the head of the rapids, and there inspect the trees with the view of ascertaining whether there were any suitable for the construction of a canoe; and having come to this decision, they left the rock and re-entered the forest.

For more than half an hour they were so busily engaged in forcing and hewing their way through the dense, parasitical undergrowth that they had no attention to spare for anything else; but at length they became conscious of certain discordant sounds, reaching their ears above the roar of the rapids, which presently became distinguishable as the beating of drums, mingled with a sort of braying bellow, comparable to nothing that they had ever heard before. As the pair pressed on, the unearthly sounds gradually grew louder, not only because they were approaching the source of them but also because it was evident that the producers of the sounds were becoming more excited, for the tapping of the drums increased in rapidity while the braying as steadily grew in stridency and discord. Another five minutes of strenuous labour then the two Englishmen burst through the last of the undergrowth and emerged upon a cleared space of about a hundred acres on the bank of the river just above the rapids. At this point the river widened out again to about the space of half a mile from bank to bank, the gorge being about a hundred yards below, and the current was again gentle enough to render paddling against it an easy matter. A small strip of shingly beach was dotted with some forty or fifty canoes, each hewn out of a single log; and adjoining the beach, scattered over a space of about five acres of ground, was a native village consisting of about fifty palm-leaf huts, dotted about without the slightest attempt at symmetrical arrangement, except that they were built round an open space. The remainder of the clearing consisted of cultivated ground divided into patches devoted in about equal proportions to cassava and maize, with a little indigo here and there. A whole forest of slender poles, connected with each other by lianas, from which large quantities of fish were suspended, drying in the sun, and which, by the way, gave off a most intolerable odour, indicated that the inhabitants depended as much upon the river as upon the soil for their subsistence.

Apparently some sort of festival or religious ceremony was in process of being observed when Dick and Phil burst in so unceremoniously upon them, for the entire population of the village, men, women, and children, were squatted in a circle round the open space in the middle of the village. Despite the scorching heat a large fire was blazing in the centre of the open space, and round it sat the village band, consisting of four drums, made of sections of trees with the inside cut away, leaving a thin cylinder of wood, over one end of which was tightly strained a skin of some sort which was slapped with the palm of the open hand, and about a dozen flageolet players, their instruments being made of baked clay. It was these last that emitted the unearthly braying, bellowing sounds already mentioned. To this hideous medley of sounds a figure in the middle of the circle was dancing, a figure so queer that for a second or two the young Englishmen scarcely knew what to make of it. But presently they saw that it was a man laced-up in a jaguar skin, with teeth, claws, and tail complete, the face of the man peering out from between the gaping jaws. He was not only dancing vigorously, if indeed dancing it could be called, which consisted in leaping violently into the air and springing from side to side over a bundle, the nature of which the intruders could not at first make out, but also singing, or rather howling, certain words which appeared to begradually working his audience up into a state of savage excitement; for at intervals one or another of them, apparently moved out of himself, would yell furiously and shake in the air a villainous-looking, triple-barbed spear.

For nearly a minute the people were so completely absorbed in the movements and words of their piache, or medicine man, or witch doctor, as the man in the jaguar skin proved to be, that they were quite oblivious of the presence of the two Englishmen; but suddenly the piache caught sight of them and stopped short in his leapings and howlings, and glared, open-mouthed, at the strangers for a second or two before, with a yell of dismay, he turned tail and, leaping right through the blazing fire in his panic, dashed into a hut and violently drew across the mat which served as a door. This extraordinary behaviour on the part of the medicine man naturally excited the wonder of his audience, and also aroused in them a feeling of consternation which caused them to spring to their feet and look about them apprehensively. Then they, too, caught sight of the Englishmen, and, like their piache, made a mad dash for their huts, yelling as they went. Thus, in the course of a couple of minutes, the two young Devonians were left in complete, undisputed possession of the village, although they were conscious of being stealthily observed from practically every hut in the place.

“Well,” exclaimed Dick, as he stared about him in astonishment, “this beats everything! Men and women, big and little, there must have been close upon two hundred of them, and not one had the courage to stay and face us!”

“They probably took us for Spaniards,” answered Stukely, “and may have thought that we were merely the advance guard of a considerable force. Hence their terror. I only hope that when they discover their mistake they may not revenge themselves upon us for the fright which we have given them. I would that one or the other of us possessed a smattering of their lingo, sufficient to make ourselves understood; I am afraid that we shall find our ignorance in that respect a very serious hindrance as we penetrate farther into the interior; and we must do our best to remedy the—hallo! what on earth is in that bundle? Did you see it move?”

Phil referred to the bundle over which the piache had been performing his extraordinary dance when they interrupted him, and which had the appearance of being simply a bundle of ordinary matting. But Stukely’s eye happened to have been resting upon it while he spoke, and he had distinctly seen it move.

“No, I didn’t,” answered Chichester, in reply to his friend’s question, “for the simple reason that I wasn’t looking at it. But we’ll look at it now, if you like.” And striding over to where the bundle lay upon the ground, he drew his knife, severed the thongs that bound it, unrolled the matting, and disclosed to his own and his companion’s astonished gaze the figure of a little old man, securely bound hand and foot. He was an Indian of some sort, evidently, but not of the same race as the inhabitants of the village, his colour being that of light copper, while that of the others was a very dark brown, nearly approaching to black; also his features were of a totally different and much higher type, his forehead being broad and high, his nose thin and aquiline, and his cheek-bones rather high and prominent; in fact he must, in the days of his youth, have been a decidedly handsome man, with an imposing presence; but now he was old—how old it was rather difficult to guess, but probably not far short of a hundred—shrunken and shrivelled up until he resembled an animated mummy more than anything else. His head and face were clean shaven, and he was naked, except for a sort of petticoat of feathers about his loins, the said petticoat having evidently at one time been an exceedingly handsome garment, though now it was soiled, frayed, and generally very much the worse for wear.

As Dick bent over the old fellow, with his long, keen knife in his hand, to sever his bonds, the creature suddenly cried out some half a dozen words, in a thin, high, piping voice, causing Stukely to start forward and gaze earnestly into the face of the speaker; then, to Dick’s stupefaction, Stukely replied in apparently the same tongue, bent over and rapidly loosed the thongs which bound the old fellow’s hands and feet together, and proceeded gently to chafe the shrunken limbs.

Chapter Ten.How the Two Adventurers acquired a Companion.“Why, Phil,” exclaimed Dick, in amazement, “what does this mean? Surely you are not pretending that you understand the old chap’s lingo?”“No, Dick, I am not pretending,” answered Stukely, regarding Chichester with a dazed expression. “It is a fact—a most extraordinary and unaccountable fact, that I really understand what the poor old chap says, without knowing it, without even previously suspecting it for an instant. I seem to possess a sufficient knowledge of his tongue to be able to comprehend his speech, and even to answer him; and I believe that in the course of a day or two I shall be able to converse freely with him. What he cried out just now was an entreaty that we would spare his life, and I answered that he need not fear us, for we meant him no harm.”“Um–m–m!” commented Dick. “Well, this is the land of marvels, and no mistake! I thought I had grown accustomed to the wonders of it, and that I had no capacity for further astonishment, but I confess that you have contrived to give me one more spasm of surprise. Ask your friend who he is, and where he hails from: I dare swear that he is not a native of this village.”Stukely turned to the old man, who was by this time sitting up and gently chafing his wrists and ankles, and attempted to put to him the question which Dick had suggested. But he found that the words would not come to him; he felt that he knew but could not remember them; and after two or three bungling attempts he was obliged to give it up.“Now, that is very extraordinary,” said he, attempting to explain his failure to Dick; “almost as extraordinary as the fact that I understood the old chap’s words, and was able to answer them. But I know his language—I am certain I do—and after I have practised with him a little, it will all come back to me. Meanwhile we must do the best we can. Are you feeling better, ‘gramfer’? And what were the Indians going to do to you?” This in English.The Indian looked up in Stukely’s face and spoke for nearly a minute; and when he had finished Stukely was again, to his own and Dick’s amazement, able to reply.“We are getting on,” Phil explained. “The old gentleman asked me why I did not address him in his own tongue, since I evidently understand it; and then went on to say that we arrived here just in the nick of time, as the villagers were about to torture him to death, to secure the favour of some god or devil of whom they appear to be particularly afraid. And I said that he might depend upon us to protect him so long as we have the power to do so.”Then he turned again to the old man, and, with a good deal of stammering and hesitation, and many long pauses for consideration, said something else, to which the ancient again replied; whereupon Phil made a further attempt, with the result that ultimately the two had quite a long conversation together, although it must be confessed that the elder man did most of the talking. At length the conversation came to an end, for the moment, and Stukely seized the opportunity to transmit to Dick the information which he had acquired.“Our friend’s story is a very remarkable one,” he said. “He tells me that his name is Vilcamapata; that he is a Peruvian; and was once a priest of the Sun, in a temple which stood—and the ruins of which, indeed, still stand—on an island in the midst of a great lake which, lies among the mountains far away to the southward. This was when Peru was at the zenith of its power and glory under an Inca named Atahuallpa, whom the Spaniards under Pizarro decoyed into their power and murdered most shamefully and cruelly; afterward seizing the country and making it their own. Since then ‘gramfer’ Vilcamapata has been a wanderer and a fugitive, always fleeing from the Spaniards, who, it appears, are doing their utmost to extirpate the Peruvians under the pretence of converting—or trying to convert—them to the Christian faith. Thus it was in the course of his aimless wanderings that he came to this village, three days ago, and was seized by the inhabitants, who, after much deliberation, decided to sacrifice him to one of their demons, and were, indeed, about to do so when we appeared upon the scene and interrupted them.”“Well,” said Dick, “it seems to me that he stands a very good chance of being sacrificed still, as soon as these Indians find that there are only two of us to defend him. Pray heaven that they may not take it into their heads to sacrifice us too, with a murrain on them!”“Oh, I don’t think they will do that, or even attempt to take gramfer from us,” replied Phil, cheerfully. “It seems that they have a very great respect for white men—except Spaniards—and are ever on the lookout for a paleface named Amalivaca to come across the Great Water and unite all the Indians into one great and powerful nation which shall utterly destroy the Spaniards and restore the country to its original owners.”“I suppose they could not be persuaded to accept us as two of Amalivaca’s sons, come over as a sort of advance guard to prepare the Indians for the arrival of the old boy himself?” suggested Dick. “But then the difficulty is that we don’t understand their lingo. Does gramfer, think you? If so, he might be induced to act as our interpreter, and inform the Indians that we are their friends. Perhaps if they could be persuaded of that they might be induced to help us to get the boat up above the rapids.”“Yes,” agreed Phil, “they might; that is a very good idea, and I’ll see what can be done.” Therewith he turned to the ancient, and again, with much halting and stammering, contrived to explain what they desired to accomplish.The Peruvian put several questions to Stukely, seeming not quite to comprehend what the white men required; and Dick noticed that after the ex-priest had spoken a little while with Phil, the latter became much more fluent and certain in his speech, so that, in the course of a further conversation of some ten minutes’ duration, he contrived to make Vilcamapata clearly understand what he wanted; whereupon the old man, facing round toward the huts, lifted up his voice and made what seemed to be a long proclamation in a language of which Stukely understood nothing. But if what he said was incomprehensible to the white man, it was evident that it was clearly enough understood by the Indians, who, before the speech was half over, came swarming out of their huts and prostrated themselves before Phil and Dick, grovelling in the dust. Nor did they attempt to interfere further with the Peruvian; on the contrary, they listened with the utmost attention to all that he had to say to them; and when he had finished, about a dozen of them jumped into one of the largest canoes, paddled across to the opposite side of the stream, vanished into the forest, and after an absence of about an hour and a half, reappeared, singing a song of triumph and carrying the white men’s boat, with all her gear and contents intact, upon their shoulders, having evidently brought her up past the rapids by a path through the forest, on the opposite side of the river to that by which Phil and Dick had ascended.It was by this time within half an hour of sunset; and when the boat had been launched in the river above the rapids, towed across to the village side of the stream, and safely moored, the piache again made his appearance and addressed himself at considerable length to Vilcamapata; who, in his turn, addressed himself to Phil, informing the latter that the villagers were profoundly grateful for the honour which the white men had done them in condescending to visit their village, and that they trusted the said white men would, by lodging in the village for that night at least, if not for a much longer time, afford them an opportunity to show their gratitude in a practical way. To which Phil, after consultation with Dick, replied that they were gratified to find that their Indian children duly appreciated the honour which had been done them, and that, as a token of their favour, they would accede to their request to spend the night in the village, provided that a new hut were erected for their accommodation; but that they must depart at sunrise, as they had a long journey before them. Whereupon the Indians, with joyful songs, at once proceeded to erect the new hut on a vacant space somewhat apart from the village, pushing forward the work so rapidly that the hut was completed and ready for occupation by the time that the first stars began to appear in the sky. And no sooner had the two white men installed themselves therein, with a large fire blazing before the hut to afford them light, and drive off the mosquitoes, than several women appeared with baskets on their heads, some of which contained cassava, while the contents of others consisted of the young heads of Indian corn, boiled, and wrapped in plantain leaves, the hind quarter of a kid, roasted, roasted plantains, a quantity of fruit, and a calabash containing a liquid which had a faint, mellow, acid flavour, something like weak cider, exceedingly refreshing as a beverage, but decidedly heady, as they discovered a little later on. The Peruvian, at the joint request of the white men, established himself in a corner of the hut, thankfully accepted such viands as they gave him, and generally comported himself in such a manner as to convey the idea that he regarded himself as under their special protection. Indeed they were glad enough that he should so regard himself, for there could be no doubt that he would be of very great service to them, if only as a guide and interpreter; he having, it appeared, been a wanderer up and down the country for—as Phil understood—nearly forty years.“The thing that puzzles me most of all,” said Dick, when they were discussing the day’s doings as they sat at supper that night, “is how you and the Peruvian came to be able to converse together. To me it seems nothing less than a miracle.”“Yes,” agreed Stukely, “I have no doubt it does; I can quite understand that it would so appear to you. Indeed, when I come to reflect upon it, it also appears miraculous to me; for why should I be able to understand a language that I have never studied, spoken, or even heard before? It seems impossible, upon the face of it, doesn’t it? Yet, although I know that I never was abroad until I came over here in theAdventure, I have, from the earliest days of my childhood, had a feeling, amounting sometimes to conviction, that sometime in the past I dwelt in just such another land as this; a sound, an odour, has brought to me vague, elusive memories of a country of vast forests, great, shining rivers, stupendous mountains, and island-dotted lakes crowned with vast buildings constructed in a style of architecture such as these eyes of mine have never beheld in England. Then again I seem to be able to recall gorgeous pageants in which I took a prominent part, and at which, in the presence of an innumerable people, I assisted in the performance of strange rites. Such scenes come to me most vividly in my dreams at night; and there are occasions when those dreams are so realistic that when I awake I am puzzled to decide which is the dream and which the reality. And—strangest thing of all—on all these occasions I have spoken the language which I spoke with Vilcamapata to-day! I recognised him, or rather his type of countenance, the moment I set eyes upon him, for I have beheld many such in my dreams. And ever since I have been in this country I have had the feeling of one who, after a long absence, finds himself again among familiar and homelike surroundings. Those are the facts; but I cannot explain them any more than you can explain to me why that fire throws out heat.”On the following morning the up-river journey was resumed, much to the grief of the villagers, who seemed to have taken a most extraordinary liking for the Englishmen, possibly because of some fancy that the presence of the white men would bring good luck to the village and its inhabitants. But neither Stukely nor Dick was minded to delay their journey, and met the pressing invitation of the Indians to remain with them by repeating their explanation that a long journey lay before them, and that there were urgent reasons for the utmost haste. Whereupon the headman of the village, through Vilcamapata, petitioned that a party might be permitted to accompany the palefaces two days’ journey up the river, in order that they might transport their friends’ boat past certain rapids and a cataract which would be met with at that distance above the village. This statement as to the existence of the rapids and cataract being confirmed by Vilcamapata, Stukely graciously gave the required permission; and when, after an early breakfast, the little expedition set out, it consisted not only of the two Englishmen and Vilcamapata, but also of twenty Indians in two canoes, who were vastly astonished when, a fresh and favourable breeze happening to be blowing, they saw the white men step their mast, unfurl their sail, and go scudding upstream against the current at a speed which taxed their utmost energies to keep pace with. But the wind died away about noon, and then nothing would satisfy the Indians but that they must take the boat in tow, which they did, with the result that Dick and Stukely were spared a long and hot afternoon’s paddling. Moreover, not content with this, when the time came for them to camp for the night, the friendly Indians insisted on building a hut for Dick and Phil to pass the night in, one half of the party undertaking this task while the other half plunged into the woods, to return, some three-quarters of an hour later, loaded with fruit and game of various descriptions, the choicest portions of which they placed in the white men’s hut.The next day’s journey was, in all essential particulars, the counterpart of that which preceded it, except that about mid-afternoon they arrived at the foot of the rapids, of the existence of which the Indians had warned them. These rapids were very much more formidable than those which they had first encountered, the channel being considerably narrower and the current consequently far more rapid; also the river bed was here full of enormous rocks and boulders, over and between which the water rushed and leapt and boiled in a turmoil of fury that no boat or canoe could possibly have faced. Furthermore, the rapids were nearly a mile and a half in length, beyond which was about a mile of comparatively quiet water, and then came a cataract of over a hundred feet in perpendicular height, with another half-mile of rapids beyond it, before the river once more widened out sufficiently to be navigable. Had the two adventurers been alone they would certainly have been compelled to abandon their boat at this spot; but the Indians made light of the difficulty, beginning by building a hut for their white friends, as on the day before, on a small open plateau near the foot of the rapids, while half a dozen of their number explored the banks on either side of the river in search of a practicable road, by means of which the boat could be carried up past the rapids and the cataract to the navigable water beyond. This they eventually discovered in time to effect the portage before dark. Then, more fruit having been found, and game taken on the way back, a great fire was kindled, and a farewell feast was held in honour of their paleface friends, which was wound up with some of the most weird and extraordinary singing and dancing that the Englishmen had ever heard or seen.On the following morning the Indians escorted Phil, Dick, and Vilcamapata to the spot where, beyond the cataract and the upper rapids, their boat, with all its contents intact, rode safely in the placid waters of a little bay where the river widened out and navigation was once more possible. Here at last the kind-hearted natives bade a reluctant and sorrowful farewell to Dick and Stukely; the bitterness of parting being mitigated by a promise on the part of the white men that, in the event of their returning by way of the river, they would not fail to make a stay of at least a week in their friends’ village.Now, with a long stretch of unobstructed navigation before them, they had time to improve their acquaintance with Vilcamapata, who was never tired of expressing his gratitude to Dick and Stukely for having saved him from a terrible death. But it soon became apparent that, for some inexplicable reason, he regarded Stukely as much the more important personage of the two, his devotion to Phil being of such a pronounced character that it almost amounted to worship. This, of course, might have been accounted for to some extent by the fact that Stukely was able to converse with him in his own tongue, and the rapidity with which Phil attained to proficiency in the Peruvian language was a never-ending source of wonderment to Dick. But there was evidently something more than this in it, something which he did not offer to explain, and upon which Stukely did not care to question him, fearing that, if he did so, such an exposure of ignorance on his part might result in a weakening of his influence over the Peruvian, while from this influence he hoped to obtain certain very important advantages. A rather remarkable circumstance, which gradually revealed itself in the course of Phil’s conversations with the ex-priest, was that the latter did not seem to be in the least surprised that Stukely should be desirous of penetrating Peru; on the contrary, he appeared to regard it as quite a matter of course; nay, more, it almost appeared as though Stukely’s visit had been long expected, and was a thing to be rejoiced over. At least this was the impression which Stukely gathered from remarks and expressions dropped by Vilcamapata from time to time; and he would greatly have liked to have questioned the man upon the subject, and learned precisely what he meant by such references; but forbore for the reasons above stated. When at length Stukely cautiously hinted that the object of his journey was the acquisition of wealth, the ex-priest, far from exhibiting surprise or displeasure, displayed the utmost satisfaction, and eagerly assured Phil that he could place him in possession of all the wealth that he could possibly desire. Upon Phil asking where the wealth was to come from, the Peruvian replied that when the country fell into the hands of the Spaniards an enormous quantity of gold, silver, and uncut gems had been concealed in a secret chamber of the temple of which he had been a priest; that it was there still; and that he was quite prepared to reveal the hiding-place to his English friends, feeling assured that they would use it in the manner which had been intended when it was first concealed. This again was a distinctly cryptic remark, of which neither of the Englishmen could possibly guess the meaning; but Stukely replied that Vilcamapata might rest assured that they would employ it wisely and well; and with that answer the Peruvian seemed perfectly satisfied. But when he was asked to describe the whereabouts of the temple, he could only very vaguely indicate it as being built on an island situated in the midst of a sacred lake; that the lake lay at an immense distance to the southward, under the shadow of a rather remarkable snow-capped mountain; that the way thither was encompassed with dangers from wild animals, hostile Indians, and—worst of all—Spaniards; and that, if they were fortunate, they might possibly reach the place in about four moons of diligent travel. Four moons, or months, of diligent travel! It seemed an immense distance; for “diligent travel” through the virgin forest—and Vilcamapata gave them to understand that a very considerable part of the distance would have to be traversed by land—meant something like an average of fifteen miles a day; and fifteen miles a day for one hundred and twenty days meant a journey of eighteen hundred miles! But they were not dismayed; for by this time they had come to have unlimited confidence in themselves. They were daily becoming more learned in woodcraft, being now able to traverse at least three miles of forest in the time that it had originally taken them to travel one mile; familiarity had caused them to lose completely their original dread of wild animals and noxious reptiles and insects; and as for Indians and Spaniards—well, they believed they could always circumvent either or both of them; while, so far as the length of the journey was concerned, what was four months, if there was a fortune to be gained at the end of it? So with light hearts they pressed forward day after day, always following the river, until at length they were obliged, first to abandon their boat in consequence of the increasing number of rapids and falls, and take to a light canoe instead, which they were easily able to transport overland when necessary; and finally they reached a point where the river was no longer navigable, even for a canoe, and they were obliged to take to the forest.But although they could no longer travel by water they still clung closely to the river, as it was their only source of supply of drinking water; moreover, it happened to lead pretty nearly in the direction of their route. They were now proceeding up a valley, hemmed in on either side by mountains ranging in height from ten thousand to fifteen thousand feet, yet so dense was the forest through which they were travelling that they seldom caught a glimpse of them, except in one particular instance where they frequently sighted a majestic, snow-capped peak right ahead of them when they encamped in a clearing close to the river.At length a day came when the noble river, upon the broad bosom of which they had journeyed for so many days, dwindled to a tiny brook brawling over a rocky bed, across which they could leap, the forest grew thin and stunted, degenerated to a few scattered scrub oaks, and finally ceased altogether, and they found themselves confronted by a mountain barrier, the bare rocks of which were interspersed with patches of grass, upon some of which were grazing small flocks of most extraordinary animals, such as they had never seen before, but with which Vilcamapata was evidently quite familiar. There were three distinct species of them, although they all bore a striking resemblance to each other, being about the size of donkeys, but having long necks, heads somewhat like those of sheep, and legs and feet resembling those of camels. Vilcamapata informed the Englishmen that these animals were known respectively as alpacas, llamas, and vicuñas, and that the first were used by his countrymen for food, while their wool was woven into garments; the second were used as beasts of burden, and the third were valuable principally for their hair and hides.The river was now left behind; but this caused the travellers no inconvenience, for the mountains which they were ascending, were most of them snow-capped, and tiny rivulets of ice-cold water, formed by the melting snow, were frequently met with, so that they were at no loss for water wherewith to quench their thirst. But as they pressed on, climbing ever higher and higher, they began to suffer very severely, first from cold, and next from mountain sickness, due to the steadily increasing rarefaction of the atmosphere. Vilcamapata, however, had a remedy for both evils, for he killed three alpacas and stripped off their skins to serve as wraps for himself and his companions, to protect them from the cold; while, as soon as the first symptoms of mountain sickness declared themselves, he produced from his pouch a quantity of leaves of the marvellous coca, and bade the Englishmen chew them, which they did; whereupon not only did the sickness disappear, but they felt no further need of food, while their strength was restored to them in a manner that seemed absolutely miraculous. It cost them three days of arduous labour to cross this mountain range; but the evening of the third day found them once more encamped in the tropical forest beside a tiny stream that flowed to the southward and eastward, while, on the farther side, the valley sloped away into a still deeper depression.Six days later, having meanwhile traversed about a hundred miles of stifling tropical forest, travelling all the while in a due southerly direction, and having crossed two important streams running in an easterly direction, to say nothing of numberless rivulets, they came to the bank of a third stream, also running almost due east; and here Vilcamapata announced that it would be necessary to build a canoe, as he now proposed to take to the water again. Upon Stukely pointing out to him that this river, like those others that they had recently crossed, flowed east, whereas he understood that their own route lay to the southward, the Peruvian replied that such was certainly the case; but that although the river which they had now reached ran eastward, it eventually discharged into another, by travelling up which they would in process of time come very near to their destination; and that although the distance which they would have to travel by water was very much greater than the direct overland route, they would be able to accomplish it in a much shorter time, and with considerably more ease and comfort to themselves. With this reply the Englishmen were obliged to be content; accordingly while Dick and the Peruvian proceeded to hunt for a suitable tree out of which to construct a canoe, within a reasonable distance of the river bank, Stukely, taking his bow and arrows, went off into the forest in search of game.There had been a time when he would have hesitated to go very far into those depths of green shadow alone, for fear of losing himself; but that time was now long past for both the young Englishmen. They had grown quite accustomed to travelling through the pathless forest, to wandering hither and thither in it in pursuit of game, and mechanically to note while doing so a thousand signs, quite imperceptible to the novice, whereby they were enabled to return with certainty to the spot where they had temporarily fixed their camp. Therefore on this occasion, as on many others, Stukely, with a word of explanation to his companions, plunged unhesitatingly into the labyrinth of tangled undergrowth which covered the soil between the boles of the giant trees, instinctively taking the direction in which he would be likely soonest to come upon the track of game.Yet he might have been excused had he hesitated to enter such a maze as that which reared itself within less than a hundred yards of the spot which the party had fixed upon for their temporary camp, for there was no semblance of a path through it, and the mode of progress consisted simply in entering at the spot where the tangle was thinnest and, still following the line of least resistance, in that way make one’s devious way forward. Progressing in such a fashion, it would have been quite possible, nay more, almost inevitable, that one unaccustomed to such a mode of travel should become hopelessly lost within the first five minutes; but not so Stukely or Dick; they had learned to preserve their bearings by noting the moss growing on the trunks of the trees, the direction in which their principal branches pointed, and a hundred other apparently trivial signs. But it was a weird place in which to be alone, for, apart from the green twilight produced by the filtration of the light through the dense canopy of foliage that shut out all view of the sky overhead, the under-brake was so thick that it was seldom possible to see more than a yard or two ahead, and it was impossible to say what strange or thrilling sight might at any moment meet the gaze. Then there was the uncanny silence of the place, the kind of silence that caused an involuntary movement on tiptoe and the holding of the breath for fear of breaking it, yet which was broken at recent intervals by stealthy, unaccountable rustlings, or sudden, violent commotions beginning close at hand and gradually dying away in the distance. These strange, sudden, unaccountable sounds, caused in all probability by a boa-constrictor, a buck, or some other creature startled into quick movement by the scent of a human being, wafted to their nostrils by an errant draught of air, were even more startling to the nerves than the distant roar of the jaguar, or the call of the bell bird which irresistibly suggested the incongruous idea that at no great distance in those gloomy forest depths would be found a church!But Stukely was thoroughly accustomed to these and the various other strange sounds that so frequently broke the silence of the forest, and if he noted them at all it was merely as a hunter notes sounds that guide him toward his game, or warns him of possible dangers. It was not, however, in such a spot as this that he expected to find game, it was in the open glades that occur here and there, where for some unaccountable reason an acre or so of ground is entirely free from trees, or at all events from undergrowth, and where the soil is covered with thick, rich grass, upon which the deer love to graze, and which they seem capable of scenting for miles. So he pushed forward, worming his way through the tangled brake with an ease and celerity that would have seemed absolutely miraculous to him three months earlier, and ever, as he went, his glances darted hither and thither, searching for the stronger light which should reveal to him the whereabout of one of those open glades, or, incidentally, a venomous snake or other noxious creature lurking in his path.At length, when he had been thus engaged for about an hour, and had travelled a distance of about two miles, a somewhat stronger light away on his right front conveyed to him the welcome intimation that such an open glade as he sought was at hand; and ten minutes later he emerged from the forest to find himself confronted by a scene of so extraordinary a character that he halted abruptly and rubbed his eyes, uncertain for the moment whether what he beheld was reality or the effect of a disordered imagination.

“Why, Phil,” exclaimed Dick, in amazement, “what does this mean? Surely you are not pretending that you understand the old chap’s lingo?”

“No, Dick, I am not pretending,” answered Stukely, regarding Chichester with a dazed expression. “It is a fact—a most extraordinary and unaccountable fact, that I really understand what the poor old chap says, without knowing it, without even previously suspecting it for an instant. I seem to possess a sufficient knowledge of his tongue to be able to comprehend his speech, and even to answer him; and I believe that in the course of a day or two I shall be able to converse freely with him. What he cried out just now was an entreaty that we would spare his life, and I answered that he need not fear us, for we meant him no harm.”

“Um–m–m!” commented Dick. “Well, this is the land of marvels, and no mistake! I thought I had grown accustomed to the wonders of it, and that I had no capacity for further astonishment, but I confess that you have contrived to give me one more spasm of surprise. Ask your friend who he is, and where he hails from: I dare swear that he is not a native of this village.”

Stukely turned to the old man, who was by this time sitting up and gently chafing his wrists and ankles, and attempted to put to him the question which Dick had suggested. But he found that the words would not come to him; he felt that he knew but could not remember them; and after two or three bungling attempts he was obliged to give it up.

“Now, that is very extraordinary,” said he, attempting to explain his failure to Dick; “almost as extraordinary as the fact that I understood the old chap’s words, and was able to answer them. But I know his language—I am certain I do—and after I have practised with him a little, it will all come back to me. Meanwhile we must do the best we can. Are you feeling better, ‘gramfer’? And what were the Indians going to do to you?” This in English.

The Indian looked up in Stukely’s face and spoke for nearly a minute; and when he had finished Stukely was again, to his own and Dick’s amazement, able to reply.

“We are getting on,” Phil explained. “The old gentleman asked me why I did not address him in his own tongue, since I evidently understand it; and then went on to say that we arrived here just in the nick of time, as the villagers were about to torture him to death, to secure the favour of some god or devil of whom they appear to be particularly afraid. And I said that he might depend upon us to protect him so long as we have the power to do so.”

Then he turned again to the old man, and, with a good deal of stammering and hesitation, and many long pauses for consideration, said something else, to which the ancient again replied; whereupon Phil made a further attempt, with the result that ultimately the two had quite a long conversation together, although it must be confessed that the elder man did most of the talking. At length the conversation came to an end, for the moment, and Stukely seized the opportunity to transmit to Dick the information which he had acquired.

“Our friend’s story is a very remarkable one,” he said. “He tells me that his name is Vilcamapata; that he is a Peruvian; and was once a priest of the Sun, in a temple which stood—and the ruins of which, indeed, still stand—on an island in the midst of a great lake which, lies among the mountains far away to the southward. This was when Peru was at the zenith of its power and glory under an Inca named Atahuallpa, whom the Spaniards under Pizarro decoyed into their power and murdered most shamefully and cruelly; afterward seizing the country and making it their own. Since then ‘gramfer’ Vilcamapata has been a wanderer and a fugitive, always fleeing from the Spaniards, who, it appears, are doing their utmost to extirpate the Peruvians under the pretence of converting—or trying to convert—them to the Christian faith. Thus it was in the course of his aimless wanderings that he came to this village, three days ago, and was seized by the inhabitants, who, after much deliberation, decided to sacrifice him to one of their demons, and were, indeed, about to do so when we appeared upon the scene and interrupted them.”

“Well,” said Dick, “it seems to me that he stands a very good chance of being sacrificed still, as soon as these Indians find that there are only two of us to defend him. Pray heaven that they may not take it into their heads to sacrifice us too, with a murrain on them!”

“Oh, I don’t think they will do that, or even attempt to take gramfer from us,” replied Phil, cheerfully. “It seems that they have a very great respect for white men—except Spaniards—and are ever on the lookout for a paleface named Amalivaca to come across the Great Water and unite all the Indians into one great and powerful nation which shall utterly destroy the Spaniards and restore the country to its original owners.”

“I suppose they could not be persuaded to accept us as two of Amalivaca’s sons, come over as a sort of advance guard to prepare the Indians for the arrival of the old boy himself?” suggested Dick. “But then the difficulty is that we don’t understand their lingo. Does gramfer, think you? If so, he might be induced to act as our interpreter, and inform the Indians that we are their friends. Perhaps if they could be persuaded of that they might be induced to help us to get the boat up above the rapids.”

“Yes,” agreed Phil, “they might; that is a very good idea, and I’ll see what can be done.” Therewith he turned to the ancient, and again, with much halting and stammering, contrived to explain what they desired to accomplish.

The Peruvian put several questions to Stukely, seeming not quite to comprehend what the white men required; and Dick noticed that after the ex-priest had spoken a little while with Phil, the latter became much more fluent and certain in his speech, so that, in the course of a further conversation of some ten minutes’ duration, he contrived to make Vilcamapata clearly understand what he wanted; whereupon the old man, facing round toward the huts, lifted up his voice and made what seemed to be a long proclamation in a language of which Stukely understood nothing. But if what he said was incomprehensible to the white man, it was evident that it was clearly enough understood by the Indians, who, before the speech was half over, came swarming out of their huts and prostrated themselves before Phil and Dick, grovelling in the dust. Nor did they attempt to interfere further with the Peruvian; on the contrary, they listened with the utmost attention to all that he had to say to them; and when he had finished, about a dozen of them jumped into one of the largest canoes, paddled across to the opposite side of the stream, vanished into the forest, and after an absence of about an hour and a half, reappeared, singing a song of triumph and carrying the white men’s boat, with all her gear and contents intact, upon their shoulders, having evidently brought her up past the rapids by a path through the forest, on the opposite side of the river to that by which Phil and Dick had ascended.

It was by this time within half an hour of sunset; and when the boat had been launched in the river above the rapids, towed across to the village side of the stream, and safely moored, the piache again made his appearance and addressed himself at considerable length to Vilcamapata; who, in his turn, addressed himself to Phil, informing the latter that the villagers were profoundly grateful for the honour which the white men had done them in condescending to visit their village, and that they trusted the said white men would, by lodging in the village for that night at least, if not for a much longer time, afford them an opportunity to show their gratitude in a practical way. To which Phil, after consultation with Dick, replied that they were gratified to find that their Indian children duly appreciated the honour which had been done them, and that, as a token of their favour, they would accede to their request to spend the night in the village, provided that a new hut were erected for their accommodation; but that they must depart at sunrise, as they had a long journey before them. Whereupon the Indians, with joyful songs, at once proceeded to erect the new hut on a vacant space somewhat apart from the village, pushing forward the work so rapidly that the hut was completed and ready for occupation by the time that the first stars began to appear in the sky. And no sooner had the two white men installed themselves therein, with a large fire blazing before the hut to afford them light, and drive off the mosquitoes, than several women appeared with baskets on their heads, some of which contained cassava, while the contents of others consisted of the young heads of Indian corn, boiled, and wrapped in plantain leaves, the hind quarter of a kid, roasted, roasted plantains, a quantity of fruit, and a calabash containing a liquid which had a faint, mellow, acid flavour, something like weak cider, exceedingly refreshing as a beverage, but decidedly heady, as they discovered a little later on. The Peruvian, at the joint request of the white men, established himself in a corner of the hut, thankfully accepted such viands as they gave him, and generally comported himself in such a manner as to convey the idea that he regarded himself as under their special protection. Indeed they were glad enough that he should so regard himself, for there could be no doubt that he would be of very great service to them, if only as a guide and interpreter; he having, it appeared, been a wanderer up and down the country for—as Phil understood—nearly forty years.

“The thing that puzzles me most of all,” said Dick, when they were discussing the day’s doings as they sat at supper that night, “is how you and the Peruvian came to be able to converse together. To me it seems nothing less than a miracle.”

“Yes,” agreed Stukely, “I have no doubt it does; I can quite understand that it would so appear to you. Indeed, when I come to reflect upon it, it also appears miraculous to me; for why should I be able to understand a language that I have never studied, spoken, or even heard before? It seems impossible, upon the face of it, doesn’t it? Yet, although I know that I never was abroad until I came over here in theAdventure, I have, from the earliest days of my childhood, had a feeling, amounting sometimes to conviction, that sometime in the past I dwelt in just such another land as this; a sound, an odour, has brought to me vague, elusive memories of a country of vast forests, great, shining rivers, stupendous mountains, and island-dotted lakes crowned with vast buildings constructed in a style of architecture such as these eyes of mine have never beheld in England. Then again I seem to be able to recall gorgeous pageants in which I took a prominent part, and at which, in the presence of an innumerable people, I assisted in the performance of strange rites. Such scenes come to me most vividly in my dreams at night; and there are occasions when those dreams are so realistic that when I awake I am puzzled to decide which is the dream and which the reality. And—strangest thing of all—on all these occasions I have spoken the language which I spoke with Vilcamapata to-day! I recognised him, or rather his type of countenance, the moment I set eyes upon him, for I have beheld many such in my dreams. And ever since I have been in this country I have had the feeling of one who, after a long absence, finds himself again among familiar and homelike surroundings. Those are the facts; but I cannot explain them any more than you can explain to me why that fire throws out heat.”

On the following morning the up-river journey was resumed, much to the grief of the villagers, who seemed to have taken a most extraordinary liking for the Englishmen, possibly because of some fancy that the presence of the white men would bring good luck to the village and its inhabitants. But neither Stukely nor Dick was minded to delay their journey, and met the pressing invitation of the Indians to remain with them by repeating their explanation that a long journey lay before them, and that there were urgent reasons for the utmost haste. Whereupon the headman of the village, through Vilcamapata, petitioned that a party might be permitted to accompany the palefaces two days’ journey up the river, in order that they might transport their friends’ boat past certain rapids and a cataract which would be met with at that distance above the village. This statement as to the existence of the rapids and cataract being confirmed by Vilcamapata, Stukely graciously gave the required permission; and when, after an early breakfast, the little expedition set out, it consisted not only of the two Englishmen and Vilcamapata, but also of twenty Indians in two canoes, who were vastly astonished when, a fresh and favourable breeze happening to be blowing, they saw the white men step their mast, unfurl their sail, and go scudding upstream against the current at a speed which taxed their utmost energies to keep pace with. But the wind died away about noon, and then nothing would satisfy the Indians but that they must take the boat in tow, which they did, with the result that Dick and Stukely were spared a long and hot afternoon’s paddling. Moreover, not content with this, when the time came for them to camp for the night, the friendly Indians insisted on building a hut for Dick and Phil to pass the night in, one half of the party undertaking this task while the other half plunged into the woods, to return, some three-quarters of an hour later, loaded with fruit and game of various descriptions, the choicest portions of which they placed in the white men’s hut.

The next day’s journey was, in all essential particulars, the counterpart of that which preceded it, except that about mid-afternoon they arrived at the foot of the rapids, of the existence of which the Indians had warned them. These rapids were very much more formidable than those which they had first encountered, the channel being considerably narrower and the current consequently far more rapid; also the river bed was here full of enormous rocks and boulders, over and between which the water rushed and leapt and boiled in a turmoil of fury that no boat or canoe could possibly have faced. Furthermore, the rapids were nearly a mile and a half in length, beyond which was about a mile of comparatively quiet water, and then came a cataract of over a hundred feet in perpendicular height, with another half-mile of rapids beyond it, before the river once more widened out sufficiently to be navigable. Had the two adventurers been alone they would certainly have been compelled to abandon their boat at this spot; but the Indians made light of the difficulty, beginning by building a hut for their white friends, as on the day before, on a small open plateau near the foot of the rapids, while half a dozen of their number explored the banks on either side of the river in search of a practicable road, by means of which the boat could be carried up past the rapids and the cataract to the navigable water beyond. This they eventually discovered in time to effect the portage before dark. Then, more fruit having been found, and game taken on the way back, a great fire was kindled, and a farewell feast was held in honour of their paleface friends, which was wound up with some of the most weird and extraordinary singing and dancing that the Englishmen had ever heard or seen.

On the following morning the Indians escorted Phil, Dick, and Vilcamapata to the spot where, beyond the cataract and the upper rapids, their boat, with all its contents intact, rode safely in the placid waters of a little bay where the river widened out and navigation was once more possible. Here at last the kind-hearted natives bade a reluctant and sorrowful farewell to Dick and Stukely; the bitterness of parting being mitigated by a promise on the part of the white men that, in the event of their returning by way of the river, they would not fail to make a stay of at least a week in their friends’ village.

Now, with a long stretch of unobstructed navigation before them, they had time to improve their acquaintance with Vilcamapata, who was never tired of expressing his gratitude to Dick and Stukely for having saved him from a terrible death. But it soon became apparent that, for some inexplicable reason, he regarded Stukely as much the more important personage of the two, his devotion to Phil being of such a pronounced character that it almost amounted to worship. This, of course, might have been accounted for to some extent by the fact that Stukely was able to converse with him in his own tongue, and the rapidity with which Phil attained to proficiency in the Peruvian language was a never-ending source of wonderment to Dick. But there was evidently something more than this in it, something which he did not offer to explain, and upon which Stukely did not care to question him, fearing that, if he did so, such an exposure of ignorance on his part might result in a weakening of his influence over the Peruvian, while from this influence he hoped to obtain certain very important advantages. A rather remarkable circumstance, which gradually revealed itself in the course of Phil’s conversations with the ex-priest, was that the latter did not seem to be in the least surprised that Stukely should be desirous of penetrating Peru; on the contrary, he appeared to regard it as quite a matter of course; nay, more, it almost appeared as though Stukely’s visit had been long expected, and was a thing to be rejoiced over. At least this was the impression which Stukely gathered from remarks and expressions dropped by Vilcamapata from time to time; and he would greatly have liked to have questioned the man upon the subject, and learned precisely what he meant by such references; but forbore for the reasons above stated. When at length Stukely cautiously hinted that the object of his journey was the acquisition of wealth, the ex-priest, far from exhibiting surprise or displeasure, displayed the utmost satisfaction, and eagerly assured Phil that he could place him in possession of all the wealth that he could possibly desire. Upon Phil asking where the wealth was to come from, the Peruvian replied that when the country fell into the hands of the Spaniards an enormous quantity of gold, silver, and uncut gems had been concealed in a secret chamber of the temple of which he had been a priest; that it was there still; and that he was quite prepared to reveal the hiding-place to his English friends, feeling assured that they would use it in the manner which had been intended when it was first concealed. This again was a distinctly cryptic remark, of which neither of the Englishmen could possibly guess the meaning; but Stukely replied that Vilcamapata might rest assured that they would employ it wisely and well; and with that answer the Peruvian seemed perfectly satisfied. But when he was asked to describe the whereabouts of the temple, he could only very vaguely indicate it as being built on an island situated in the midst of a sacred lake; that the lake lay at an immense distance to the southward, under the shadow of a rather remarkable snow-capped mountain; that the way thither was encompassed with dangers from wild animals, hostile Indians, and—worst of all—Spaniards; and that, if they were fortunate, they might possibly reach the place in about four moons of diligent travel. Four moons, or months, of diligent travel! It seemed an immense distance; for “diligent travel” through the virgin forest—and Vilcamapata gave them to understand that a very considerable part of the distance would have to be traversed by land—meant something like an average of fifteen miles a day; and fifteen miles a day for one hundred and twenty days meant a journey of eighteen hundred miles! But they were not dismayed; for by this time they had come to have unlimited confidence in themselves. They were daily becoming more learned in woodcraft, being now able to traverse at least three miles of forest in the time that it had originally taken them to travel one mile; familiarity had caused them to lose completely their original dread of wild animals and noxious reptiles and insects; and as for Indians and Spaniards—well, they believed they could always circumvent either or both of them; while, so far as the length of the journey was concerned, what was four months, if there was a fortune to be gained at the end of it? So with light hearts they pressed forward day after day, always following the river, until at length they were obliged, first to abandon their boat in consequence of the increasing number of rapids and falls, and take to a light canoe instead, which they were easily able to transport overland when necessary; and finally they reached a point where the river was no longer navigable, even for a canoe, and they were obliged to take to the forest.

But although they could no longer travel by water they still clung closely to the river, as it was their only source of supply of drinking water; moreover, it happened to lead pretty nearly in the direction of their route. They were now proceeding up a valley, hemmed in on either side by mountains ranging in height from ten thousand to fifteen thousand feet, yet so dense was the forest through which they were travelling that they seldom caught a glimpse of them, except in one particular instance where they frequently sighted a majestic, snow-capped peak right ahead of them when they encamped in a clearing close to the river.

At length a day came when the noble river, upon the broad bosom of which they had journeyed for so many days, dwindled to a tiny brook brawling over a rocky bed, across which they could leap, the forest grew thin and stunted, degenerated to a few scattered scrub oaks, and finally ceased altogether, and they found themselves confronted by a mountain barrier, the bare rocks of which were interspersed with patches of grass, upon some of which were grazing small flocks of most extraordinary animals, such as they had never seen before, but with which Vilcamapata was evidently quite familiar. There were three distinct species of them, although they all bore a striking resemblance to each other, being about the size of donkeys, but having long necks, heads somewhat like those of sheep, and legs and feet resembling those of camels. Vilcamapata informed the Englishmen that these animals were known respectively as alpacas, llamas, and vicuñas, and that the first were used by his countrymen for food, while their wool was woven into garments; the second were used as beasts of burden, and the third were valuable principally for their hair and hides.

The river was now left behind; but this caused the travellers no inconvenience, for the mountains which they were ascending, were most of them snow-capped, and tiny rivulets of ice-cold water, formed by the melting snow, were frequently met with, so that they were at no loss for water wherewith to quench their thirst. But as they pressed on, climbing ever higher and higher, they began to suffer very severely, first from cold, and next from mountain sickness, due to the steadily increasing rarefaction of the atmosphere. Vilcamapata, however, had a remedy for both evils, for he killed three alpacas and stripped off their skins to serve as wraps for himself and his companions, to protect them from the cold; while, as soon as the first symptoms of mountain sickness declared themselves, he produced from his pouch a quantity of leaves of the marvellous coca, and bade the Englishmen chew them, which they did; whereupon not only did the sickness disappear, but they felt no further need of food, while their strength was restored to them in a manner that seemed absolutely miraculous. It cost them three days of arduous labour to cross this mountain range; but the evening of the third day found them once more encamped in the tropical forest beside a tiny stream that flowed to the southward and eastward, while, on the farther side, the valley sloped away into a still deeper depression.

Six days later, having meanwhile traversed about a hundred miles of stifling tropical forest, travelling all the while in a due southerly direction, and having crossed two important streams running in an easterly direction, to say nothing of numberless rivulets, they came to the bank of a third stream, also running almost due east; and here Vilcamapata announced that it would be necessary to build a canoe, as he now proposed to take to the water again. Upon Stukely pointing out to him that this river, like those others that they had recently crossed, flowed east, whereas he understood that their own route lay to the southward, the Peruvian replied that such was certainly the case; but that although the river which they had now reached ran eastward, it eventually discharged into another, by travelling up which they would in process of time come very near to their destination; and that although the distance which they would have to travel by water was very much greater than the direct overland route, they would be able to accomplish it in a much shorter time, and with considerably more ease and comfort to themselves. With this reply the Englishmen were obliged to be content; accordingly while Dick and the Peruvian proceeded to hunt for a suitable tree out of which to construct a canoe, within a reasonable distance of the river bank, Stukely, taking his bow and arrows, went off into the forest in search of game.

There had been a time when he would have hesitated to go very far into those depths of green shadow alone, for fear of losing himself; but that time was now long past for both the young Englishmen. They had grown quite accustomed to travelling through the pathless forest, to wandering hither and thither in it in pursuit of game, and mechanically to note while doing so a thousand signs, quite imperceptible to the novice, whereby they were enabled to return with certainty to the spot where they had temporarily fixed their camp. Therefore on this occasion, as on many others, Stukely, with a word of explanation to his companions, plunged unhesitatingly into the labyrinth of tangled undergrowth which covered the soil between the boles of the giant trees, instinctively taking the direction in which he would be likely soonest to come upon the track of game.

Yet he might have been excused had he hesitated to enter such a maze as that which reared itself within less than a hundred yards of the spot which the party had fixed upon for their temporary camp, for there was no semblance of a path through it, and the mode of progress consisted simply in entering at the spot where the tangle was thinnest and, still following the line of least resistance, in that way make one’s devious way forward. Progressing in such a fashion, it would have been quite possible, nay more, almost inevitable, that one unaccustomed to such a mode of travel should become hopelessly lost within the first five minutes; but not so Stukely or Dick; they had learned to preserve their bearings by noting the moss growing on the trunks of the trees, the direction in which their principal branches pointed, and a hundred other apparently trivial signs. But it was a weird place in which to be alone, for, apart from the green twilight produced by the filtration of the light through the dense canopy of foliage that shut out all view of the sky overhead, the under-brake was so thick that it was seldom possible to see more than a yard or two ahead, and it was impossible to say what strange or thrilling sight might at any moment meet the gaze. Then there was the uncanny silence of the place, the kind of silence that caused an involuntary movement on tiptoe and the holding of the breath for fear of breaking it, yet which was broken at recent intervals by stealthy, unaccountable rustlings, or sudden, violent commotions beginning close at hand and gradually dying away in the distance. These strange, sudden, unaccountable sounds, caused in all probability by a boa-constrictor, a buck, or some other creature startled into quick movement by the scent of a human being, wafted to their nostrils by an errant draught of air, were even more startling to the nerves than the distant roar of the jaguar, or the call of the bell bird which irresistibly suggested the incongruous idea that at no great distance in those gloomy forest depths would be found a church!

But Stukely was thoroughly accustomed to these and the various other strange sounds that so frequently broke the silence of the forest, and if he noted them at all it was merely as a hunter notes sounds that guide him toward his game, or warns him of possible dangers. It was not, however, in such a spot as this that he expected to find game, it was in the open glades that occur here and there, where for some unaccountable reason an acre or so of ground is entirely free from trees, or at all events from undergrowth, and where the soil is covered with thick, rich grass, upon which the deer love to graze, and which they seem capable of scenting for miles. So he pushed forward, worming his way through the tangled brake with an ease and celerity that would have seemed absolutely miraculous to him three months earlier, and ever, as he went, his glances darted hither and thither, searching for the stronger light which should reveal to him the whereabout of one of those open glades, or, incidentally, a venomous snake or other noxious creature lurking in his path.

At length, when he had been thus engaged for about an hour, and had travelled a distance of about two miles, a somewhat stronger light away on his right front conveyed to him the welcome intimation that such an open glade as he sought was at hand; and ten minutes later he emerged from the forest to find himself confronted by a scene of so extraordinary a character that he halted abruptly and rubbed his eyes, uncertain for the moment whether what he beheld was reality or the effect of a disordered imagination.

Back to IndexNext