CHAPTER VIII DEATH AHEAD
Peccary meat was Johnny's supper. A dry supper it was, and old FatherGloom sat across the fire from him while he ate. To have wasted a wholeday; to face a second night of vigil; to recall those pairs of burning,greedy, red eyes; to know that with the passing of the hours the ownersof those eyes must certainly grow bolder; all this was depressing in theextreme. To add to this set of depressing circumstances, a small thinghappened; a very small thing indeed, but fraught with great consequences.There were not many mosquitos in this place at this time. The streamswere swift, and at this time of year there were no water holes forbreeding them.
For all this, a single mosquito, drifting in from nowhere, alighted onJohnny's hand and began to drill. He had half finished his task when,without thinking, Johnny crushed him at a blow.
Instantly the boy's mind was filled with foreboding. He had been bittenby a mosquito! One thing Hardgrave had said to him:
"Johnny, wherever you are, don't ever lie down to sleep, not even in thedaytime, without a mosquito-bar net over you. Malaria. The mosquitoscarry it. It's the only way you can get it."
In camp they always slept beneath canopies.
"But out here," Johnny grinned a wry grin, "what's the chance? Well, ifthat was a malaria mosquito he's got me loaded up good and plenty, andthere's no use bothering my mind about it."
He did not bother his mind, but it bothered him. In his imagination hesaw himself delirious with fever, insensible to his surroundings,wandering down narrow trails, tripped by vines, torn at by brambles.Watched from every dark hole and tree top by wild beasts, he saw himselfstruggle on until burned out by fever, exhausted by aimless, senselessendeavor, he at last lay down to die.
Shaking himself free from the haunting spectre, he threw fresh wood uponthe fire.
He slept little that night, and welcomed the dawn less eagerly than hehad the day before. He felt a desire to be idle, a dreamy indifferencecreeping over him.
"It's the tropics," he told himself. "Everyone slows up down here. Theheat and the humidity makes you want to drag your feet, to loaf, to sitand dream. But I must not! I must act! Act! Now!"
At that he went at the task of building a raft and before noon it wascompleted.
A crude affair it was, to be sure. Dry logs of different lengths; therewas no axe for hewing them. All these, bound clumsily together with toughtie-tie vine, made up the raft that eventually carried Johnny away fromthe great rocks and swiftly down the river. As far as he could see ahead,branches formed a perfect arch over the water, and at places hung so lowthat it was necessary for him to lie flat down to avoid being dragged offinto the water.
He bade farewell to his rocky home with no regrets, but with somemisgivings after all. He was to drift off into the unknown. What awaitedhim there? Who could tell?
"It--why, it's like death," he thought.
With this mood there drifted into his mind a bit of verse:
"I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air, I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care."
He felt a strange tightening at the throat as the words escaped his lips,and he blessed the teacher who had given them to him for just such a timeas this.
Many and strange were the sensations that came to him as he driftedsilently, swiftly beneath this cathedral-like arch of trees. A greenparrot screamed at him as it fluttered away; a black monkey with a whiteface, clinging to a limb by a foot and his tail, scolded at him as hepassed. A slow-moving snake, hanging from a tree trunk, darted out ablack tongue. The jagged corner of the clumsy raft, catching on a snag,hung there while the water, warm as soapsuds, washed over the raft.
Loosened, the raft whirled on. More swiftly now they moved. The currentwas gaining strength. Rocks appeared, one to the right, one to the left,and one amid stream. The arch of trees rose higher. A patch of blueappeared. Rising to his feet, Johnny struggled with all his might,darting his pole first one side and then the other, to keep the raft offthe rocks. Then suddenly, without warning, he was seized by anoverhanging vine and dragged clear of the raft.
That was a tragic moment. With his raft went his last bit of food; andwith it, too, for a moment his last bit of hope. With an eye out fordrifting alligators, he swam strongly after the runaway raft.
Fortune favored him. For a moment the raft, caught in a corner betweentwo rocks, hung motionless and in that moment, breathless, exhausted, heclimbed aboard. At the same instant he sensed the presence of a wakenedalligator nearby.
Quite motionless he lay for a full moment as the raft rushed on. This wasno time for inaction. Faster, ever faster glided the raft; faster, fasterthe trees flew by.
And now a new catastrophe threatened. A sharp rock had cut one of thetie-tie vines that bound the raft. In another moment the raft might betorn in bits, leaving Johnny in the water, beyond hope. Seizing a freshvine, he passed it over the ends of the logs and by exerting all hisstrength drew them to place and bound them there.
And now came a respite. Suddenly the river broadened. Blue sky appearedabove him. He was floating slowly on the surface of a small lake.
Drawing his feet up under him, he gave himself over to much needed restand enjoyment of the scene that lay before him. Surely here was beautyuntouched by the hand of man. Had man's eyes ever looked upon it? Surelyno eyes of civilized man. Yet what a gleaming of blue waters, what ablending of matchless green and faultless blue!
If he did not allow his mind to linger long on all this matchless beautyof spreading palms, clinging vines and reflecting water, it was becausethe more practical side of his nature sought two things--a native hut anda cocoanut palm tree. One of these would be a boon indeed.
And one appeared. A leaning cocoanut tree hung over the water at the veryspot where the lake ended and the current grew swift again. He saw it atthe moment when his raft, caught by a stronger current, shot forward. Atthat same moment came a disturbing sound, a deep, low thunder that he didnot wholly understand.
In his confusion of thought he all but lost his opportunity. Leaping tohis feet, he struck at the palm with his long pole. Once, twice, threetimes he clubbed it, and with the third blow a ripe cocoanut camehurtling down to splash in the water beside his raft.
With a little cry of joy he dropped his pole and all but sprang in thewater after it. Restraining this impulse, he dropped on hands and kneesto reach for it. It was just beyond his grasp. The pole--yes, with thepole he could drag it to him. Sending the pole sweeping out over thewater, he was about to bring the fugitive dinner to him when the raft,striking a submerged rock, whirled about and left him three full yardsfrom the prize. At the same time there came to his ears again that dullthunder.
"Can't be a storm," he said, scanning the sky. "Clear as a bell."
Sadly he watched the cocoanut as, abreast of his strange craft, but justout of reach of his pole, it drifted onward. Within that brown husk wasdelicious, refreshing drink and nourishing food.
Fate seemed to mock him. The current having carried the cocoanut withinhis reach, quickly whirled it away again. Then, tempting him, it whirledit close only to catch it and fling it at last into a backwater eddywhere it was lost to him forever.
"That thundering sound is growing more distinct," he told himself as,resigned to his loss, he settled down for a moment's rest. "I wonder whatit is."
Then of a sudden he knew and the realization stunned him.
"Falls!" he said, leaping excitedly to his feet. "Falls in this river.Falls straight ahead!" The next moment he lay stunned, half unconsciouson the raft. He had been struck on the head by an overhanging limb.
How long he lay there he will never know. Enough to say that when at lasthe struggled back to a sitting position the thunder of the falls filledall the air, while the trees and bushes, as if borne on by a cyclone,sped by him at unbelievable speed.
"Gotta stop!" he groaned. "Gotta get offa here somehow! Death in thefalls. Won't do! Gotta g
et off!"
With a mighty effort he dragged his scattered senses together. The nextinstant he found himself gripping the tough branches of a red mangrovetree, while his raft shot on to its doom.
With a sinking sensation about his heart and a dull pain in his head,Johnny saw his hope of an early return to camp disappear downstream. Onthat raft was tied a bit of peccary meat, the only morsel of food he hadin the world. Yet where there is life there is hope, and after climbingcarefully back over the limb that had saved him, he descended the tree tothe ground.
An hour of struggling forward, sometimes through thickets, sometimes overrocks or through water to his waist, he ended at the top of a steepprecipice that stood thirty feet above the side of a most beautifulwaterfall.
"Beautiful things at times become terrible," he told himself. "My raft isgone; my dinner with it. These beautiful falls took them. No use to wastetime in vain regrets. I've got to get down some way."
After exploring every corner he became convinced that there was nosuggestion of a rugged stairway anywhere.
"Have to be some other way," he thought wearily. Having glanced at atowering sapodilla tree, he noticed that a wild fig vine grew up itsside.
"Make a rope of it. Let myself down," he said, beginning to unlace hisshoes.
Having climbed the tree for a distance of forty feet, he cut the vine andbegan stripping off a stem an inch in diameter. It was a long anddangerous task, for these vines, with a grip of death, in time hug thevery life out of a tree. But in time he won and, attaching one end of thevine rope to the trunk of a tree, dropped it over the precipice. He thenbegan nimbly following down.
"Looks like a cocoanut palm there by the pool at the foot of the falls.If it is, I know where I get my supper."
It was indeed a cocoanut palm, a low one, standing not more than ten feetfrom the ground, but bearing cocoanuts all the same. He had not descendedhalf way before he could count them. There were many green ones and threethat were brown and ripe.
"Um-yum-yum!" he smacked his lips as he seemed to feel the rich whitemilk go gurgling down his throat.
He was still looking at that tree and trying to figure out how he couldbest reach it, when he suddenly discovered that he was all but at thebottom.
He had given no thought to what that landing might be like. He glanceddownward, then with hands that trembled so he could scarcely open andclose them he made desperate efforts to climb back.
Had he dropped another foot he must surely have fallen into the jaws of amammoth alligator. The beast was asleep with his mouth wide open.Grinning terribly, his yellow tusks looking like rows of sharpenedspikes, he lay there quite motionless. What would have been theconsequences had the boy dropped that remaining foot? Would the alligatorhave tumbled in great fright into the water? Would his terrible jaws haveclosed like the iron gates of a prison? Who can tell? Who would care toperform the experiment that he might know?
* * * * * * * *
In the meantime Pant had not been idle. Good old Hardgrave, a plain manfrom Arkansas with the courage of a knight and heart of a king, hadarrived. He had anchored his motor-boat with its wheezy engine close tothe creek landing, then had unloaded his cargo of chemicals, retorts, toyballoons and cheesecloth.
"Where's Johnny?" he asked the moment he stepped on land.
"Just what I was going to tell you."
"Tell it, then."
Pant did tell--told all he knew.
"Huh!" the old man grunted. "He'll come back. Daego's got him hid outsomewhere. Wouldn't quite dare kill him outright. Leastwise, I don'tthink so. Can't tell about that half-caste strain in his blood, though."
"He'll come back," echoed Pant, "but meantime we've got to carry on thework. 'Twouldn't do to disappoint Johnny when he comes back. We got toget all this red lure down by the water ready for the trip down."
"What's worse," said Hardgrave, "we've got to do just what you said aminute ago; keep old Daego guessing. Don't like his taking up more men.Looks bad. May come over here like a young army any time, bent on drivingus out. Got any place for this?" He pointed at his miscellaneous cargostacked on the bank.
"Have to use Johnny's office, I guess."
The next morning, Gesippio, a Carib who bunked close to the office, saidto his work mate, "There was devil doin's in that office of Johnny's lastnight."
"Devil doin's?"
"Devil doin's! First the whole place was lit up like it was busting withflames. Seemed like every crack was shootin' flames. Then all was darkagain. Pretty soon there came a blue blaze, sort of low-like, and ahissin' sound like the old Serpent, the Evil One, might o' made. Then allof a sudden, sendin' me all of a heap, there came a most terrible bang.After that I didn't hear no more."
From that time on the cabin that had been Johnny's office was keptcarefully locked day and night.