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Updated: July 29, 2025
Since then we have been as natives of the village. We have taken it by turn to nurse you, and by turns have hunted with the men.” “How long have I been here?” “Nigh six months, señor.” “Six months!” Stephen repeated; “surely not, Hurka. I never could have been ill all that time; I must have died long ago.” “You were ill for six weeks, señor, with fever.
“I should have thought,” Stephen said to Hurka, “that it would be safer to go the other way for a bit, because they would naturally suppose that we should come this way.”
The volume of water had vastly increased since they started, owing to the number of streams that had flowed into the Beni, some of these being so large that they would be considered good-sized rivers in Europe. At last, a month after starting, Hurka said that next day they would reach the confluence of the Beni and the Madeira.
We will cut a hole through that mud wall as soon as it gets dark; but we must not leave until all save the watchers are asleep, or we should have them all down upon us instantly, on the alarm being raised. When we are through them, Hurka and I will run in another direction, and make a long round before we come back to the tree, so that they will not know in which direction to seek for us.
“I was wrong,” the Indian replied. “I should have known that an attack by a jaguar was always possible; but this is the first that we have seen since starting, and I had no thought of danger in my mind. I will be more careful in the future. It must have been well hidden, for you did not see it yourself, Hurka, until it moved for its spring.”
“Then what do you gain by being there?” Hurka asked. “We gain in the trade that is carried on by our merchants selling English goods there, and buying Indian produce. The army and the civil government furnish employment to large numbers of Englishmen.
“There is a mission-station there, and if the señor likes to pause there for a day or two before descending the river he can do so.” “Not at all, Hurka. In the first place I shall be asked a great many questions which would be difficult to answer, and in the second, even two days in a mission-station would be frightfully dull.”
You have already done too much for me, by throwing away eight months of your lives in this wretched place. Few indeed would have done so much, and it is my most earnest wish that you should not sacrifice your lives for my sake in a hopeless struggle against overpowering odds.” Hurka laughed. “That is not our way, señor. We are comrades, and comrades stick to each other to the last.
They had lost all idea of direction, and had we been a few hours later the last voice would have been silenced, and when the flood subsided the canoe and its occupants would have rotted away, and no one would ever have known the fate that had befallen them.” “How do you find your way through a flooded forest, Hurka?” “It is born in us as it is born in birds to make their way back to their nests.
Both Pita and Hurka have been with parties that have been attacked and forced to fall back; but it has not been their fault, for they always warn those who employ them that the dangers are too great to be overcome.
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