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Without a word Stephen dropped on to the ground, and almost instantaneously went off to sleep. When he awoke it was broad daylight. Hurka was beside him. “We must be moving now, señor,” he said. “Pita has been away for half an hour, and has just signalled to me to join him.” Stephen rose to his feet heavily.
“It has caught on something,” he said. “Now, haul in rapidly this time, Hurka, as soon as we pass the opposite point, so as to get the strain on as quickly as we can. Pita, do you keep your eye on the logs, and shout if there is anything in the way.” As soon as they had passed the half-way point on their way back to the shore, Stephen and Hurka began to pull.
Pita followed him, while close on the latter’s heels Stephen came out, and turning off at once behind the next hut, started at a run. As he did so he caught the sound of the twang of a bowstring, followed by a stifled cry and a fall, then came a loud yell, checked almost before it was uttered. But the alarm had been given, and loud shouts rose from several throats.
The grand people were richly attired; beautiful ladies watched with excited eyes the bulls, wearing their colors in rosettes of satin and glittering tinsel; the thousands of waving, brilliantly hued fans fluttered like a swarm of butterflies; the music filled the air. Pe-» pita sat in a dream of joy, the color coming and going on her cheeks, her rapture glowing in her eyes.
Pita?” he asked when his breath came quietly. “We shall float down as before, señor. It is a flat country for the next fifty miles, and the great inundations will rob the river of its power. We shall have several more rapids to pass, but I do not think they will be worse than these. Then we shall get to the falls.
He has always been trustworthy and faithful to his employers. As he says, he cannot promise to take you safely down the Madeira, but if any man can do it, he will.” Half an hour later they returned to the hut, where the Indian was sitting in precisely the same attitude in which they had left him. “Well, Pita, have you arrived at a conclusion?” Gomez asked.
“Not so much danger as there would be of the canoe upsetting if I were alone in it, for I should be powerless even to keep her straight, and she would go broadside on to a rock and be dashed to pieces.” “The señor is right, Hurka,” Pita said gravely; “we will do as he wishes. But the ropes must be long, so that if we are flung off the raft there will be no sudden pull on the canoe.
As they walked along the village the women looked curiously at them, while men watched them closely with scowling looks. “Do you see that large tree at the edge of the forest, señor?” Pita asked presently; “it has lost its bark, and the trunk is white.” “I see it, Pita.” “Well, señor, as soon as we start to-night do you make straight for that. We will join you there.
I don’t know which tribe it was that his mother belonged to, but I know that they lived in the forests on one of the greater rivers. Pita is not one who talks much of himself, or who talks much at all, but I know that he has the reputation of being one of the most daring hunters and guides in the country, and that he has gone through many adventures while travelling with traders.
There are a hundred and fifty men here, and as we wish above all things to hide the way we have gone, a gun must not be fired unless we are so surrounded that escape is impossible.” “How shall we leave the hut, Pita?” “By the back.
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