PERIL IN THE DARK
As for Pant, he was worried enough by Johnny’s prolonged absence. It had
been dark for fully three hours. Having returned from his gathering of
tree hay and his brush with the jaguar, he had gone down to the creek
landing to wait for Johnny.
Two anxious hours passed and still he did not come. For a half hour he
paced the creek trail in deep and troubled thought. Over and over, as a
squirrel turns his cage, questions revolved in his mind. What was keeping
Johnny? Should he go for him? Had he been attacked, perhaps slain? Who
could tell, if he went to Daego’s camp, what would happen? Johnny had
left him in charge of the camp. If something should happen to him, should
he fail to return, the Caribs would pile into their boats and go drifting
down the river.
“No!” he exclaimed, “Johnny left me here to carry on in his absence, and
carry on it is. If he does not appear by morning I’ll send a messenger to
Daego’s camp to find out what he has to say about it.”
He did send a messenger in the morning. The millionaire half-caste
received him with the greatest courtesy. Johnny, he said, had indeed had
dinner with him and they had enjoyed quite a long chat when the meal was
over. The boy had left his camp in quite a hurry on account of the
gathering darkness. He had not seen him since that time.
Daego assumed an attitude of greatest surprise upon being told that
Johnny had not returned to his own camp and expressed the hope that he
might soon learn of his safety. The Rio Hondo was a treacherous river,
treacherous indeed.
All of which was more or less true, and at the same time a most
diabolical lie.
“He’s a crook and a scoundrel!” Pant raged to himself when the messenger
had made his report. “He’s done something to Johnny, locked him up, or
sent him up some river, a prisoner. Depend on that. But he’ll not get his
way on our side of the river!”
After laying out the day’s work for his men, Pant sat down on a red log
and indulged in some long, long thoughts.
“The way to keep a man from making trouble for you,” he told himself, “is
to make as much trouble for him as you can. A fight like this is just
like a game of chess. If you can keep a man busy getting his knights,
bishops and castles out of danger he isn’t like to make much trouble for
your king.”
For a long time he sat blinking at the little patches of sunshine that
filtered down though the tropical foliage.
“That was a capital ghost story Hardgrave told me when I was down at
Belize,” he told himself at last with a little chuckle. “Happened on one
of the islands, but I’ll bet it would work right up here. He promised to
send me up the things I need for trying it if any sort of craft comes up
this way. Don’t suppose there’s much chance, though.
“What’s that I hear?” he exclaimed, starting up suddenly.
Hurrying down the river trail, he was just in time to see four pit-pans
moving slowly up the river. The pit-pans, great dugouts sixty feet long,
were loaded with Spaniards.
“Daego’s men,” he murmured. “Re-inforcements. He doesn’t need them for
work. I wonder?”
Cold dread gripped his heart. Daego was assembling his men. This addition
would give him a force double the number of their Caribs. Could it be
that, in the absence of their leader, he meant to lead an attack at once?
There would be a fight, a battle to the finish between Johnny’s forces
and Daego’s. Caribs against Spaniards, but Pant hadn’t expected it for
some time yet.
“Wish I had the stuff Hardgrave promised to send,” he murmured. “Might
thin that force out a bit.”
The stuff Hardgrave had promised was on its way and much nearer to
Johnny’s wild lumber camp than Pant guessed. Hardgrave was on his way,
too; in fact, he was bringing the supplies up the river at that moment.
It was a strange assortment of articles that he carried in a box beneath
the seat in his little motor boat; a dozen or so of large blue toy
balloons, a bottle of phosphorus, a number of yards of cheesecloth, some
putty, three tubes of glue, two metal retorts and two packages of
chemicals.
“Goin’ up the Hondo,” he had said to a friend before he set out. “Coupla
boys up there a tryin’ to do a little stunt of bringing out some of the
red lure. Jest boys, they are; no match for that crafty Daego. Reckon
I’ll jest run up there and give ’em a little help for, after all, they’re
from the United States and so am I, though I been down here quite a
spell, and all us folks from up there has to sort of hang together.
It—it’s sort of in the blood.”
So, Pant was soon to receive re-inforcements. The re-inforcements
consisted of but one man, but there are times when one is as good as a
host.
* * * * * * * *
Morning brought bitter disappointment to Johnny. He had hoped that the
palm tree he had seen down the creek was a cocoanut tree. The milk even
of a green cocoanut is sweet and refreshing. Since ripe nuts fall the
year round, there was reason to hope too that some of these might be
found on the ground. But early morning light revealed a cohune nut tree.
True, there were great clusters of nuts hanging from this tree, but these
Johnny had been told were composed mostly of a hard shell. The meat, such
as there was of it, was dry and indigestible.
“Oh, well,” he sighed, “got to eat.”
At that he worked his way downstream to the tree. After spending a half
hour cracking three nuts, and finding their meat meager and tough, he
turned to other quarters for food.
A tropical wilderness abounds in fruit. The strangest, most unheard of
trees in the world were at Johnny’s very elbow. The fruit of many of
these was good to eat. Some might be eaten raw; others were delicious
when cooked. But some, too, were deadly poison. Which might be eaten?
Which not? This he could not tell. To his right was a tree laden with a
green cucumber-like fruit, and over to his left one that hung heavy with
long yellow muskmellons, or so they seemed to be.
“If I only knew!” he groaned. “If I only did!”
He recalled hours wasted that might have been put to good use roaming the
jungle with one of his Caribs, learning the use and value of these
plants.
“If I get back in safety I’ll never waste another hour!” he resolved.—
“I’ll learn, and learn and learn until there is not an important thing in
this wilderness that I do not have some accurate knowledge of.”
In the meantime, however, his stomach was crying loudly for food. Food?
Without doubt there was plenty at hand, but he dared not eat it.
There were fishes in the stream. He could see them calmly fanning the
water in a pool beside the rocks. Fish were always good. His mouth
watered at thought of the fry he would have on the hot rocks. But he had
no hooks. He tried a snare of tie-tie vine, but the fish were too quick
for him.
At last, despairing of his undertaking, he dropped on hands and knees to
creep away into the bush. He had not gone far before his heart was
gladdened by what he saw just before him. It was a hot, humid morning. A
peccary, a little wild pig, with her half grown brood, having without
doubt spent the cooler hours of night hunting grubs and roots, lay
stretched out on a bed of dead ferns, fast asleep. One of the young
porkers, lying with his two hind feet close together, was not twelve feet
from where Johnny lay.
“A quick grab at those feet, a sudden get-away, and I have my breakfast,”
he thought as he moved cautiously forward. “That fellow doesn’t weigh
over ten pounds dressed, but that’s enough food for two days and by that
time I’ll be back to camp.” Oh, vain hope!
Right hand out, right foot forward; left hand, left foot. So he moved
ahead. Now half the distance was covered and still the little wild pigs
slept. Now he was within arm’s length of his prey. Then, rising to his
knees, he shot out a hand. There came a wild, piercing squeal, then all
was commotion.
Quicker than he could think, the old peccary was after him.
“Insignificant little brute,” he thought. “I could brain you with a
single blow of a club.”
He had no club, had not thought of that.
A convenient tree offered protection. Clinging to his squealing prey, he
leaped to the first branch.
“Go away in a moment,” he told himself as with his clasp-knife he
silenced the squeals of the young porker.
To his immense surprise, as he looked down he saw that the ground was
literally alive with angry, grunting peccary pigs.
“Where’d they all come from?” he asked an hour later, as for the
twentieth time he adjusted his sore muscles to their cramped position.
This question no one could answer. The angry horde had apparently
declared the tree to be in a state of siege. And, though they were small,
they were terrible to look at. There were gnarled old fathers of that
herd whose ugly yellow tusks, curled twice round, stood out at the end
like spears.
“Rip a fellow to pieces before he’d gone ten steps,” groaned the boy.
As his position in this small mahogany tree with its smooth limbs became
all but unbearable, he cast about for relief. Next to this tree was a
larger one and beyond that a great, broad-spreading palm.
“If only I can reach the palm,” he told himself, “I will at least have a
comfortable place to rest and maybe grab a few moments of sleep.”
Tying the dead peccary to his back, he climbed out as far as he dared
upon his limb, then executed a sort of flying leap for the next tree. It
was a daring venture, but a successful one. Five minutes later, with the
carefully dressed peccary meat hanging nearby, he sank into a cushioned
depth of the palm tree and was soon fast asleep.
Some time later, much later, he awoke. At first, as he attempted to gaze
about him, he could not believe his senses.
“It can’t be true,” he insisted. “There has been an eclipse. I have gone
blind. It can’t be night!”
But it was. Overcome by exhaustion and the humid heat of the tropics, he
had slept the day through and a short way into the night. So had passed
the day that was to have seen his raft built and launched, to have seen
him on his way back to camp.
“And here I am!” he exclaimed in disgust.
“Well, at any rate,” he sighed, “I now have some supper and may make my
way back to the rock and cook it.”
“But can I?” he started. “What of that wild horde with their ugly yellow
tusks? Are they still waiting down there?”
For a moment he hesitated. Then, with a sudden resolve born of necessity,
he began to descend.