THE MAN-EATERS
Five days later they came to a great lake which seemed to stretch away
through the depths of the forest interminably, with the trail following
its winding shores.
At the first sight of the water shining in the sunlight, Pinto showed
signs of great uneasiness.
"This must be the Lake of the Man-eaters," he said to Professor Ditson.
"I have heard the wise men of the tribe speak of it many times. All the
animals around it are eaters of men. See, perhaps there be some of their
tracks now!" and he pointed to where there showed in the soft sand what
looked like the paw-prints of a huge cat.
"Pinto," said the professor, severely, "I'm ashamed of you! The sight
of those Mayas has made your mind run on man-eaters. Don't you know a
puma's track when you see them, and don't you know that a puma never
attacks a man?"
"The perfesser's right for once," chimed in Jud. "That's the track of
what we call a mountain-lion or panther up north, an' they don't never
hurt nobody."
Pinto was still unconvinced. "Perhaps they do here," he insisted.
"You come along with me," returned Professor Ditson. "We'll explore this
lake a bit before dark." And, followed by all of the party except Will
and Jud, whose turn it was to make camp, he disappeared around a bend in
the shore.
The two who were left behind soon found a high, sandy bank where they
cleared a space and started a small fire. Just in front of them was a
tiny bay, connected with the lake by a narrow channel edged by lines of
waving ferns, while a little beach of white sand curved away to the
water in front of the camp-site.
"Here is where Judson Adams, Esquire, takes a bath," suddenly announced
the old trapper, producing a couple of cakes of tree-soap, which he had
picked along the trail, and slipping out of his clothes like an eel.
"Pinto said never to go into strange water," warned Will.
"Pooh," said Jud. "He was talkin' about rivers where them murderin'
catfish an' anacondas hide. This pool ain't ten feet across an' there's
nothin' in it except a few stray minnies"; and he pointed out to Will a
little school of short, deep-bodied fish which looked something like the
sunfish which the boys used to catch along the edges of Cream Hill Pond.
Otherwise no living creature showed in the clear water, nor could be
concealed along the bright, pebbly bottom.
"Better not," warned Will again. "This ain't your country, Jud. Pinto
seemed to know what he was talking about. Let's wait until the professor
gets back."
"Pinto will never win any Carnegie medals, an' I guess I can take a
bath without gettin' permission from the perfesser," returned Jud,
obstinately. "However," he went on, "just to show you that the old man
never takes any chances, I'll poke a stick around in this pool to drive
out the devil-fish that may be hidin' here."
Nothing happened as the old man prodded the water with a long branch cut
from a near-by tree, except that the motion of the stick seemed to
attract more and more of the chubby fish which he had first seen from
the outer channel into the pool.
"Gee," remarked Jud, "but those fish are tame! I'll bet if I had a hook
an' line I could flick out a dozen. Better come in with me, Bill," he
went on. "I promised your family that I'd see that you boys took plenty
of baths an' kept your hair brushed all through this trip."
"I'll wait till the boss comes back," said Will, laughingly.
That was enough for Jud.
"I'm my own boss!" he remarked indignantly, and waded in with a cake of
tree-grown soap clenched tightly in one hand.
His first step took him well above his knees. There was a swirl and a
flash from the center of the pool, and in an instant the whole surface
was alive with a furious rush of the short, deep-bodied fish toward Jud.
As they approached, the old man noticed uneasily their staring,
malignant eyes, and that they had projecting, gaping lower jaws, thickly
set with razor-edged, triangular teeth.
Suddenly the whole school were upon him, crowding into the shallow water
where he stood and snapping at his bare legs like mad dogs. Before he
could stir, two of them had bitten pieces of flesh out of the calves of
both of his legs. As the blood from their bites touched the surface of
the pool, the fish seemed to go entirely mad, snapping their fierce jaws
frantically and even springing clear of the water, like trout leaping at
a fly.
If they had not been so numerous that they jostled each other, or if
Jud had not been quicker than most men twenty years younger, he would
have been terribly mutilated. As it was, when he finally reached the
safety of the bank, the water which he had just left boiled and bubbled
like a caldron, and two of the fish followed him so closely that they
landed, flapping, snapping, and squealing, far up on the white sand.
When Will approached them, the stranded fish tried to spring at him,
clicking their jaws with impotent, savage fury. A moment later, as he
tried to hold one of them down with a stick, it drove its keen
wedge-shaped teeth clear through the hard wood. When the rest of the
party came back, they found Jud and Will staring as if fascinated at the
desperate, raging dwellers of the pool.
"I told you strange water not safe," said Pinto, as Professor Ditson
skilfully bandaged Jud's legs with a dressing of sphagnum moss and the
thick red sap of the dragon's-blood tree. "Look," and he showed Will
that a joint of one of his fingers was missing. "Cannibal-fish more
dangerous than anaconda or piraiba. They kill tiger and eat up alligator
if it get wounded. Once," he went on, "white man ride a mule across
river where these fish live. They bit mule and he threw man off into the
river. When I got there an hour later only skeleton left of mule. Man's
clothes lie at bottom of river, but only bones inside. You wait a
little. I pay them well." And he disappeared into the woods.
Professor Ditson corroborated the Indian.
"They are undoubtedly the fiercest and most dangerous fish that swim,"
he said. "If the water is disturbed, it arouses them, and the taste or
smell of blood seems to drive them mad."
By the time Jud was patched up, Pinto came back trailing behind him a
long length of liana, from either end of which oozed a white liquid.
This vine he pounded between two stones and threw into the pool. A
minute later the water was milky from the flowing juice, and before long
was filled with floating, motionless piranhas stupefied by the poisonous
sap. Pinto fished out several with a long stick, and breaking their
necks, wrapped them in balls of blue clay which he found along the
shore, and, first making air-holes, set them to bake in the hot coals of
the fire. When at last a smell of roast fish went up from the midst of
the fire, Pinto pulled each ball out and broke the hard surface with
light taps of a stick. The skin and scales came off with the clay.
Opening the fish carefully, he cleaned it, leaving nothing but the
savory white baked meat, which tasted and looked almost exactly like
black bass. Jud avenged himself by eating seven.
Toward the end of the afternoon, Professor Amandus Ditson left the rest
of the party reclining in that state of comfort and satisfaction which
comes after a good meal. Each day the professor devoted all of his spare
time toward realizing the greatest ambition of his life, to wit, the
acquirement of one full-grown, able-bodied bushmaster. To-day armed with
nothing more dangerous than a long crotched stick, he strolled along the
trail, leaving it occasionally to search every mound or hillock which
showed above the flat level of the jungle, since in such places this
king of the pit-vipers is most apt to be found. Two hundred yards away
from the camp, the trail took a turn, following the curved shore of the
great lake, and in a few minutes the scientist was entirely out of sight
or sound of the rest of the party. At last, finding nothing inland he
turned his steps toward the lake itself. On some bare spaces showing
between the trail and the edge of the water, he saw more of the
puma-tracks like those which Pinto had pointed out earlier in the day.
Remembering the Indian's fear the scientist smiled as he examined the
fresh prints of big pads and long claws.
"Harmless as tomcats," he muttered to himself.
A moment later something happened which upset both the professor and
his theories. As he straightened up, a hundred pounds of puma landed
upon him. The legend of the lake, as far as pumas were concerned, was
evidently correct. Harmless to man in other places, here, it seemed, the
great cat stalked men as if they were deer. This one intended to sink
the curved claws of her forepaws in the professor's shoulders, and, with
her teeth at his throat, to rake his body with the terrible downward,
slashing strokes of the catamount clan. Fortunately for himself, he had
half-turned at the sound which her sudden spring made among the bushes.
Instead of catching his throat, the panther's fanged jaws closed on the
upper part of his left arm, while her forepaws gripped his shoulders,
which were protected by a khaki coat and flannel shirt. Professor Ditson
promptly caught the animal's throat with his sinewy right hand and held
the great beast off at arm's length, thus keeping his body beyond the
range of the deadly sickle-like hind claws. For a moment the puma's
luminous gooseberry green eyes stared into his, and he could see the
soft white of her under parts and the long, tawny tail which is the
hall-mark of her family. As he sank his steel-strong fingers deeper into
the great brute's throat, Professor Ditson abandoned all hope of life,
for no unarmed man can hope to cope successfully with any of the great
carnivora.
"A dozen zoölogists have lied in print!" he murmured to himself,
indignantly.
Even as he spoke, he tried to wrench his left arm free. He immediately
found, however, that it was impossible to pull it straight out from
between the keen teeth. Sinking his fingers deeper into the puma's
throat, he squeezed it suddenly with all of his strength. Involuntarily,
as the wind was shut off from her lungs, the gripping jaws relaxed
enough to allow the scientist to pull his arm through them for a few
inches sidewise. Again the puma caught the moving arm, a few inches
lower down. Again, as the man gripped her throat afresh, she relaxed her
hold, and he gained an inch or so before the sharp teeth clamped tight
again. Inch by inch, the professor worked the full length of his arm
through the fierce jaws which, in spite of the khaki sleeve and thick
shirt beneath, pierced and crushed terribly the tense muscles of his
arm.
Throughout the struggle the tawny beast kept up a continual grunting,
choking snarl, while the man fought in utter silence. At last the whole
length of the professor's left arm had been dragged through, until only
his hand itself was in the mouth of the puma. Shoving it down her hot
gullet, he gripped the base of her tongue so chokingly that the
struggling panther was unable to close her jaws, and, for the first time
during the fight, the professor was free from the pain of her piercing
teeth.
In a desperate struggle to release the grip which was shutting off her
breath, the puma lurched over and fell full length on her back in the
loose sand, dragging the man down with her, and the professor found
himself with his left hand deep in her gullet, his right hand still
clutching the beast's throat desperately, while his knees, with the
weight of his body back of them, pressed full against her ribs on each
side. As they struck the ground he sank his elbows into the armpits of
the puma beneath him, spreading her front legs and pinning them down, so
that her frantic claws could reach inward only enough to rip his coat,
without wounding the flesh beneath. Once on the ground, the panther
struggled fiercely, pitching and bucking in an effort to release herself
from the man's weight so that she could be in a position to make use of
the curved scimitars with which all four of her paws were armed. The
loose sand shifted and gave her no purchase.
As they fought, Professor Ditson felt his strength leaving him with the
blood that flowed from his gashed and mangled arm. Raising himself a
little, he surged down with both knees and felt a rib snap under his
weight and the struggling body relax a trifle. For the first time he
dared hope to do what no man had done since the cavemen contended with
their foes among the beast-folk, and to his surprise noted that he was
beginning to take a certain grim pleasure in the combat. The fury of the
fight had pierced through the veneer of education and culture, and
Professor Amandus Ditson, the holder of degrees from half a dozen
learned universities, battled for his life that day with a beast of the
forest with all the desperation and fierce joy which any of his
prehistoric forebears might have felt a hundred thousand years ago.
It had become a question as to which would give up first--the man or
the beast. Fighting off the waves of blackness which seemed to surge up
and up until they threatened to close over his head, he fought
desperately with clutching hands and driving knees, under which the thin
ribs of the puma snapped like dry branches, until at last, with a long,
convulsive shudder, the great cat stopped breathing. Even as he felt the
tense body relax and become motionless under his grip, the blackness
closed over his head.
There the rest of the party, alarmed by his long absence, found him an
hour later. His gaunt body was stretched out on the dead panther and his
right hand was sunk in the long fur, while his left hand and arm were
buried to the elbow in the fierce gaping mouth and his bowed knees still
pinned the great cat down. Around the dead beast and the unconscious man
sat four black vultures. Thrusting forward from time to time their
naked, red, hooded heads, they seemed about to begin their feast when
the rescuing party arrived. With his face hidden in the panther's tawny
fur, Professor Ditson seemed as dead as the beast that lay beneath him.
It was not until Hen had pried his fingers away from the puma's throat
and carefully drawn his gashed hand from the beast's gullet that his
eyes flickered open and his gaunt chest strained with a long, labored
breath.
"I was wrong," were his first words. "The _Felis concolor_ does
occasionally attack man. I'll make a note of it," he went on weakly, "in
the next edition of my zoölogy."
"I was wrong, too," burst out Jud, pressing close up to the exhausted
scientist and clasping his uninjured hand in both of his. "I thought you
were nothin' but a perfesser, but I want to say right here an' now that
you're a _man_."
The danger, however, was not yet over. The scratches and bites of a
panther or a jaguar, like those of a lion or tiger, almost invariably
cause death from blood-poisoning if not immediately treated. Under
Professor Ditson's half-whispered directions, they stripped off his
clothes, washed away the blood and dirt with clear water, and then,
using the little surgical kit which he always wore at his belt, injected
a solution of iodine into every scratch and tooth-mark.
"It is necessary," said the scientist, gritting his teeth as the
stinging liquid smarted and burned like fire, "but I do not believe that
life itself is worth so much suffering."
The rest of the party, however, did not agree with this perhaps hasty
opinion, and persisted in their treatment until every puncture was
properly sterilized. Then, bandaged with great handfuls of cool sphagnum
moss and attended by the faithful Hen Pine, the professor slept the
clock around. While he was asleep, Will and Pinto slipped away together
to see if they could not bring back a plump curassow from which to make
broth for him when he finally woke up; while Jud and Joe, with similar
good intentions, scoured the jungle for the best-flavored fruits they
might find.
Will and his companion found the birds scarce although they slipped
through the jungle like shadows. As they penetrated deeper among the
trees they were careful to walk so that their shadows fell directly
behind them, which meant that they were walking in a straight line,
along which they could return by observing the same precaution. As they
reached a tiny grove of wild oranges, Will's quick eye caught sight of
something which gleamed white against the dark trunks, and the two went
over to investigate. There they saw a grisly sight. Coiled in a perfect
circle were the bones of an anaconda some fifteen feet in length. Every
vertebra and rib, and even the small bones of the head and the
formidable, recurved teeth, were perfect, while in all the great
skeleton there was not a fragment of flesh nor a scale of the skin
remaining. Strangest of all, inclosed by the ribs of the snake was the
crushed skeleton of a large monkey, which likewise had been cleaned and
polished beyond the skill of any human anatomist or taxidermist. Some
terrible foe had attacked the great snake while lying helpless and
torpid after its heavy meal and had literally devoured it alive. The
face of the Indian was very grave as he looked at the gleaming bones
before him, and he stared carefully through the adjoining thickets
before speaking.
"Puma bad man-eater," he said at last; "cannibal-fish worse; but
anicton most dangerous of all. He eat same as fire eats. He kill jaguar,
sucurucu, bushmaster, alligator, Indian, white man. He afraid of
nothing."
"What is the anicton?" inquired Will, frightened in spite of himself.
Even as he spoke, from far beyond in the jungle came a strange, rustling
whisper which seemed to creep along the ground and pass on and on
through the woods like the hiss of spreading flames.
"Come," said the Indian, briefly, "I show you." And he led Will farther
out into the jungle through which the menacing whisper seemed to hurry
to meet them.
Soon small flocks of plain-colored birds could be seen flying low, with
excited twitterings, evidently following the course of some unseen
objects on the ground. Then there came a rustling through the
underbrush, and, in headlong flight, an army of little animals,
reptiles, and insects dashed through the jungle. Long brown wood-rats
scuttled past, tiny jumping-mice leaped through the air, guiding
themselves with their long tails, while here and there centipedes, small
snakes, and a multitude of other living creatures sped through the brush
as if fleeing before a forest fire.
Suddenly, through a corner of the jungle thrust the van of a vast army
of black ants. Through the woods they moved in lines and regiments and
divisions, while little companies deployed here and there on each side
of the main guard. Like a stream of dark lava, the army flowed swiftly
over the ground. As with human armies, this one was made up of different
kinds of soldiers, all of whom had different duties to perform. Most
numerous of all were the eyeless workers, about half an inch in length,
armed with short, but keen, cutting mandibles. These acted as carriers
and laborers and reserves, and, although blind, were formidable by
reason of their numbers. Larger than the workers, measuring a full inch
in length, were the soldiers, with enormous square heads and mandibles
pointed and curved like pairs of ice-tongs. These soldiers would drive
in each mandible alternately until they met in the body of their victim,
and when they met they held. Even if the body of the ants was torn away,
the curved clinging jaws still clinched and bit. With the soldiers came
companies of butchers, whose jaws had serrated teeth which sheared and
cut through flesh and muscle like steel saws. Besides these, there were
laborers and reserve soldiers by the million.
Pinto told Will that a large ant-army would take twenty-four hours to
pass a given point even when traveling at full speed. As they watched
this army, Will saw an exhibition of what it could do. A large agouti in
fleeing before them had in some way caught its leg in a tangle of vines
and, squealing in terror, tried in vain to escape. Before it could
release itself, the rush of the army was upon it, and it disappeared
under a black wave of biting, stinging ants, which methodically cut up
and carried off every fragment of the animal's flesh, and passed on,
leaving behind only a picked skeleton.
As Will watched this hurrying, resistless multitude, although well
beyond the path of its advance, he felt a kind of terror, and was
relieved when the Mundurucu started back for camp.
"Nothing that lives," said Pinto, as they turned toward the trail, "can
stand against the black army."
The next day Jud and Joe joined in the hunt, leaving Hen to nurse the
professor. Following a deer trail back from the shore, they came to a
patch of swampy woods a mile from the lake. There Will discovered a
mound some five feet high made of rushes, rotting moss, leaves, and
mold.
"Is that a nest of ants?" he called to the Indian, pointing out to him
the symmetrical hillock.
Pinto's face lighted up.
"No," he said, "that a nest of eggs. We dig it out, have good supper
to-night."
"It must be some bird," exclaimed Jud, hurrying up, "to make a nest like
that. Probably one of them South American ostriches--hey, Pinto?"
"You'll see," was all that the Indian would say as he began to dig into
the soft, spongy mass. The rest of the party followed his example. By
the time they had reached the center of the mound, digging with sticks
and bare hands, the matted, rotting vegetation felt warm to the touch,
and this heat increased as they approached the base of the nest. Down at
the very bottom of the mound, arranged in a circle on a bed of moss,
they found no fewer than twenty-four white eggs as large as those of a
duck, but round and covered with a tough, parchment-like shell.
Pinto hurriedly pouched them all in a netted game-bag which he had made
for himself out of palm-fiber.
"Want to see bird that laid those eggs?" he asked Jud.
"I sure would," returned the old trapper. "Any fowl that builds a
five-foot incubator like that must be worth seein'."
"Rub two eggs together and she come," directed Pinto, holding out his
bag to Jud.
Following the Indian's suggestion, Jud unsuspectingly rubbed two of the
eggs against each other. They made a curious, penetrating, grating
noise, like the squeal of chalk on a blackboard.
Hardly had the sound died away, when from out of a near-by wet thicket
there came a roaring bellow that shook the very ground they stood on,
and suddenly the air was filled with the sweet sickly scent of musk. Jud
turned as if stung by a fire-ant, to see a pair of green eyes glaring at
him above the jaws of a great alligator which had been lurking in the
darkness of the jungle. As it lay there like an enormous lizard, the
dark gray of its armored hide hardly showed against the shadows. On each
side of the fore part of the upper jaw, two cone-shaped tusks showed
white as polished ivory, fitting into sockets in the lower jaw. Even as
Jud looked, the upper jaw of the vast saurian was raised straight up,
showing the blood-red lining of the mouth gaping open fully three feet.
Then, with a roar like distant thunder, the great reptile raised its
body, as big as that of a horse, upon its short, squat legs, and rushed
through the brush at Jud with a squattering gait, which, however,
carried it over the ground at a tremendous rate of speed for a creature
eighteen feet long.
It was Jud's first experience with an alligator, and with a yell he ran
down the slope like a race-horse. Unfortunately for him, on a straight
line downhill an alligator can run faster than a man, and this one began
to overtake him rapidly. As he glanced back, the grinning jaws seemed
right at his shoulder.
"Dodge him! Dodge him!" yelled Pinto.
At first, Jud paid no attention, but ran straight as a deer will
sometimes run between the rails to its death before a locomotive when
one bound to the side would save it. At last, as Will and Joe also began
to shout the same words over and over again, the idea penetrated Jud's
bewildered brain and he sprang to one side and doubled on his trail. His
pursuer, however, specialized in doubling itself. Unable to turn rapidly
on account of its great length, and seeing its prey escaping, the
alligator curved its body and the long serrated tail swung over the
ground like a scythe. The extreme end of it caught Jud just above the
ankles and swept him off his feet, standing him on his head in a
thorn-bush from which he was rescued by Pinto and Will, who had followed
close behind. The alligator made no further attempt at pursuit, but
quickly disappeared in the depths of a marshy thicket.
"Whew!" said Jud, exhausted, sitting down on a fallen log and mopping
his steaming face. "That was certainly a funny joke, Mr. Pinto. About
one more of those an' you won't go any further on this trip. You'll stay
right here--underground."
The Mundurucu was very apologetic, explaining that he had not intended
to do anything worse than startle the old man, while Will and Joe
interceded for him.
"He only wanted to see you run," said the latter, slyly. "Nobody can run
like Jud when he's scared."
"No, boy," objected the old trapper, "I wasn't exactly scared. Startled
is the right word. It would startle anybody to have a monstrophalus
alligator rush out of nowhere an' try to swallow him."
"Certainly it would," agreed Will, gravely. "Anybody could see that you
weren't scared, you looked so noble when you ran."
Peace thus being restored, the whole party returned to camp, where that
night Professor Ditson, who was feeling better, gave a long discourse on
the difference between crocodiles, alligators, and caymans.
"If that had been a crocodile," he explained "you wouldn't be here now.
There's one species found in South America, and it's far faster than any
alligator. Look out for it."
"I most certainly will," murmured Jud.
That night at supper, Pinto proceeded to roast in the hot coals the
whole clutch of alligator eggs except the two which Jud had dropped in
his excitement. For the first time in a long life, the old trapper
refused the food set before him.
"I've et monkeys an' dragons an' cannibal-fish without a murmur," he
said, "but I draw the line at alligator's eggs. They may taste all
right, but when I think of their dear old mother an' how she took to me,
I'm just sentimental enough to pass 'em up."