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Before all stood a powerful, magnificently proportioned savage belted with a wide girdle of squirrel tails, decked with necklaces of jaguar teeth and ebony nuts, crowned by plumes which in loftiness and splendor surpassed all other headgear present the great chief Monitaya. At the shore, beside a row of empty canoes, Yuara was waiting.
Then they found themselves in what seemed a labyrinth of poles and hammocks. Through this confusion Yuara passed with familiar step, and in his wake the travelers went to a central fire around which was a comparatively clear space.
The boat of Yuara started, and once more the flotilla was on its way. For an hour or more it swung on among the forested hills before the telegraph instrument was put to use. Then it paused, and the sonorous voice of the xylophone spoke to the jungle. A period of waiting brought no reply. The canoe moved on for a mile. Again the mallets beat the wood in the ascending scale of the call.
Then, when the slashed arm had been thoroughly cleansed and bound, Lourenço spoke once more to the savages. "The medicine of the wise white man and the air spirits have saved Yuara from the death demon. Yuara has fought as a man of his tribe should fight, and so has lived when he would have died.
"We shall have to wait now, comrades, until Yuara tells his father and the chief about us," Lourenço said. "So let us take off our packs and rest." He set the example by laying his rifle on the ground, unslinging his pack, squatting beside it, and coolly rolling a cigarette. Apparently he was paying no attention whatever to the savages, who watched his every move.
At the first halt, which did not come until nearly sundown, the Americans discovered that one of the men in the fore canoe was Yuara, who had been lying in the bottom of the craft and sleeping all the afternoon. From him Lourenço attempted to get information as to the reason for Suba's enmity but in vain. The tall fellow spoke not a word in reply, and his face remained unreadable.
The Americans stopped. "What's the idea?" demanded McKay, looking along the innocent-appearing path. "Probably a man trap, Capitao," answered Pedro. "Follow us." "Let's see the trap first." Lourenço called to Yuara, who stopped and grunted two words. "Si, it is a trap. A pit, Yuara says." Yuara spoke again, and Lourenço added: "He says we must not touch it.
"You remember that the day after our return a canoe was sent downstream to a point where the wooden bars could be beaten and heard by Suba's men, and that a warning against the Red Bones and Schwandorf was given in that way. Yuara has become anxious to know more, so he is here." "If he sticks around he'll learn a lot," predicted Tim.
"'Since the white man has said he goes to visit the chief Monitaya, and since by some demon's power the white man has saved the life of Yuara, who is a man of Suba, the men of Suba will allow him to go in peace from this place. But Suba will see that he and his companions go to Monitaya, who will know how to deal with his visitors.
Yuara and his companion meanwhile were being interrogated by both Lourenço and Monitaya, who in turn enlightened them as to the present state of affairs. At the promise of war the faces of the Suba men lit up. "Yuara comes only on a visit to learn news," Lourenço told the rest.
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