THE PIT
For several days the treasure-hunters made their camp near the shores of
the great lake, waiting for the slow healing of Professor Ditson's
wounds. Here and there, through open spaces in the forest, they could
see the summits of mountain-ranges towering away in the distance, and
realized that the long journey through the jungle was nearly over.
Beyond the lake the trail stretched away along the slopes of the
foot-hills, with plateaus and high pampas on one side and the steaming
depths of the jungle on the other.
One morning Professor Ditson felt so much better that Hen Pine, who had
been acting as his special nurse, decided to start on an expedition
after fresh vegetables. Shouldering his ax and beckoning to Joe, for
whom the giant black had a great liking, the two struck off from the
trail beyond the lake into the heart of the jungle. Before long they saw
in the distance the beautiful plume-like foliage of a cabbage-palm
outlined against the sky. A full seventy feet from the ground, the
umbrella-like mass of leaves hung from the slim, steel-like column of
the tapering trunk, buttressed by clumps of straight, tough roots, which
formed a solid support to the stem of the tree extending up ten feet
from the ground. It took a solid hour of chopping before the palm fell.
When at last it struck the earth, Hen cut out from the heart of the
tree's crown a back-load of tender green leaves folded in buds, which
made a delicious salad when eaten raw and tasted like asparagus when
boiled.
As they turned back, Joe saw something move in a near-by tree. Looking
more closely, he noticed a crevice in the trunk, across which was
stretched a dense white web. Behind this crouched a huge spider. Covered
with coarse gray and reddish hairs, its ten legs had an expanse of fully
seven inches. The lower part of the web was broken, and in it were
entangled two small birds about the size of a field-sparrow. One of them
was dead, but the other still moved feebly under the body of the
monster. Picking up a long stick, Joe started to rescue the fluttering
little captive.
"Look out!" shouted Hen, who was some distance away. "That's a
crab-spider and mighty dangerous."
Paying no attention to the other's warning, Joe with one sweep of his
stick smashed the web and, just missing the spider, freed the dying
bird, so that it fell to the ground. As he whirled his stick back for
another blow, the terrible arachnid sprang like a tiger through the air,
landing on the upper part of Joe's bare left arm, and, with its red eyes
gleaming, was about to sink its curved envenomed mandibles deep in the
boy's flesh. Only the instinctive quickness of Joe's muscles, tensed and
trained by many a danger, saved him. With a snap of his stick he dashed
the spider into the underbrush.
"Did he get you?" shouted Hen, anxiously.
"I think not," said Joe.
"You'd most certainly know it if he did," returned the great negro,
examining the boy's arm closely. Although it was covered with loose
reddish hairs from the monster, there was no sign of any wound.
"That was a close call, boy," said Hen, carefully blowing the hairs off
Joe's skin. "You am goin' to be mighty discomfortable from dese ere
hairs; but if he'd done bit you, you might have died."
Hen was a true prophet. Some of the short, hard hairs became fixed in
the fine creases of Joe's skin and caused an almost maddening itching
which lasted for several days.
The next day, for the first time since his meeting with the puma,
Professor Amandus Ditson tried walking again. His left arm was still
badly swollen and inflamed and his stiffened and bruised muscles gave
him intense pain when he moved, but, in spite of Hen's protests, he
insisted upon limping a mile or so down the trail and back.
"If a man gives in to his body," he remarked impatiently, when Hen
remonstrated with him, "he will never get anything done."
The second day he walked still farther, and the third day, accompanied
by the faithful Hen, who followed him like a shadow, he covered several
miles, exploring a path that ran through the jungle parallel with the
trail.
"Some one's been along here lately, Boss," said Hen, pointing out
freshly broken twigs and marks in the earth.
"Probably the same hunting-party that we met before," returned the
professor, indifferently. "They won't--" He broke off his sentence at
the sound of a little sick, wailing cry, which seemed to come from the
thick jungle close at hand.
"What's that?" said Hen, sharply, raising his heavy machete.
Without answering, the scientist turned off the trail and, raising the
bushes, exposed the emaciated body of a little Indian girl about four
years old. A tiny slit in the side of each nostril showed her to be a
member of the Araras, a friendly tribe of forest Indians akin to the
Mundurucus, to whom Pinto belonged. As she looked up at Professor
Ditson, her sunken face broke into a smile.
"White man!" she whispered, in the Arara dialect which both Professor
Ditson and Pinto understood. Then, pointing to herself with fingers so
wasted that they looked like birds' claws, she whispered her own name,
"Ala," the Indian name for those gentle, beautiful little birds which
Europeans have christened "wood-stars."
The stern face of the scientist softened to an expression that even Hen
had never seen there before. In spite of his injured arm, it was
Professor Ditson who lifted up the little girl and carried her back to
the camp. There the rest of the party found them when they returned with
one of the plump curassows which Pinto generally managed to bring back
from every hunt. From this, Hen Pine hurriedly made hot, nourishing
broth, with which the professor slowly fed the starved child until she
dropped off to sleep, holding tightly to one of his long gaunt fingers.
Several hours later the little girl woke up, seeming at first much
stronger, and at once began to talk in a little voice faint as the chirp
of a distant cricket. From her half-whispered sentences the professor
learned that her father and mother had both been killed in a foray of
the Muras. Not many months after their death, Ala herself had fallen
sick of one of the forest fevers so fatal to Indian children, and had
been abandoned by the tribe.
In spite of her starved condition, Ala was an attractive child. Instead
of the usual shallow, shiny black eyes of Indian children, hers were big
and brown and fringed with long lashes, and when she smiled it was as if
an inner light shone through her wan, pinched little face.
At once she became the pet of the whole party, and although she, in
turn, liked them all, it was Professor Ditson who always held first
place in her heart. If he were long away from her, she would call
plaintively, "_Cariwa! Cariwa!_" the Arara word for white man. Sometimes
she would sing, in her tiny voice, folk-songs which she had learned from
her mother, all about the wonderful deeds and doings of armadillos,
agoutis, and other South American animals.
Before long, however, in spite of careful nursing, she began to sink
rapidly. Then came days when she sang no more, but lay too weak even to
taste the fruits which the boys were always bringing in to her from the
forest. At last one night Professor Ditson, who always slept close
beside her, heard a little far-away voice whisper in his ear, "White
man, dear, dear white man!" and felt the touch of her hand against his
cheek. A moment later, under the light of the setting moon, he saw that
Ala had gone where there is no more sickness nor pain and where little
children are safe forever.
Later on, when the rest of the party roused themselves before sunrise
for another day, they found the scientist sitting grim and impassive in
the star-shine, still holding the tiny cold hand of the little Indian
girl in his. When old Jud found that clenched tightly in Ala's other
hand was the shell of a tree-snail, all white and pink and gold, which
he had given her days before, the old man broke down and sobbed as he
looked at the peaceful little figure.
Under the light of Achenar, Canopus, and the other eternal stars which
flared through the blackness of the tropical night, they buried her deep
at the foot of a vast paradise tree which had towered above the forest
hundreds of years before the first white man ever came to South America
and whose mighty girth will be standing when the last Indian of that
continent has passed to his forgotten fathers. As Professor Ditson
repeated over the little grave what part he could remember of the
Service for the Dead, from the heart of the jungle sounded the deep,
coughing roar of a jaguar as it wandered restless through the night.
The next day camp was broken and once more the party followed the trail
through the forest. At first the gloom and grief of the little Indian
girl's death hung over them all. Then, little by little, the healing of
the forest began to be felt. The vast waiting trees, the bird-songs, the
still beauty of the flowers all seemed to bring to them the joy and hope
and faith which is the portion of wanderers among the solitudes and
silences of earth.
The trail still ran, a dividing line between the steaming jungle on one
side and the plateaus and foot-hills on the other. Behind the latter
towered range after range of mighty mountains, among whose chill heights
were hidden forgotten Inca cities and the lost treasure-lake of
Eldorado. On the mountain side of the trail the trees were set farther
apart and belonged to families from the temperate zone, while here and
there were small parks covered with short grass, with bare, treeless
slopes beyond.
It was in such a country, after several days to travel, that Pinto,
Jud, and the two boys started on a hunt, while the others made camp.
They had been out less than an hour when the sharp eyes of the old
trapper spied two strange animals feeding in an open space hedged in by
thickets. They had long, banded tails, which clanked and rattled as they
moved. Moreover, they wore armored hides, set with square plates of bone
and ringed around the middle with nine horny bands, while big pricked-up
ears, like those of the rabbit, and long sheep eyes made them appear to
the old trapper as among the strangest animals he had ever met.
"Armadillos," whispered Pinto, delightedly, as he too caught sight of
them. "Spread out and we'll catch 'em both. Better 'n roast pig to eat."
In a minute the four hunters had made a wide circle around the unwary
animals. It was not until they were close to them that the pair took
alarm. Stopping their feeding, they suddenly squatted with their fore
legs off the ground, much as a woodchuck might do. Instead of curling up
like porcupines and trusting to their armor for protection, as Jud had
expected them to do, they suddenly dropped on all fours and rushed and
rattled down the slope toward the old trapper, like two small armored
tanks, almost as fast as a rabbit would run. Jud was as much surprised
as if he had seen a tortoise start to sprint. Going like race-horses,
they bore down upon the old man.
"Hi! hi! stop! shoo!" bellowed Jud, waving both his arms over his head.
"What'll I do to stop 'em?"
"Trip 'em up," volunteered Will, from where he stood.
"Catch 'em by the tail!" yelled Joe. "Don't let 'em scare you."
In another minute they were upon him. Dodging his outstreched hands,
their wedge-shaped heads plunged between his legs. Jud's feet flew up,
and he sat down with a startling bump, while, rushing and clanking
through the bushes, both of the armadillos disappeared in the depths of
the thicket. The old man rose slowly and felt himself all over.
"I'd just as soon try to stop a racing automobile with my two hands as
to head off a scared armadillo," he observed indignantly. "They got no
right to run that way. Their business is to curl up an' be caught."
"Never mind, Jud," said Will, comfortingly; "you had the right idea, but
you tackled 'em a mite too high."
That day, as they rested after lunch, Will wandered up toward the
mountains, as usual studying his beloved birds. Along the pampas-like
stretches of the plateaus and up among the hills, he found the bird life
very different from what it was in the jungle. It was Pinto who taught
him the bassoon notes of the crested screamer, changing at times to the
long roll of a drum, and pointed out to him "John o' the mud-puddles,"
the South American oven-bird, which, unlike the northern bird of the
same name, builds a mud nest a foot or more in diameter, strengthened
with hair and weighing several pounds. The birds mate for life, and have
a quaint habit of singing duets while standing facing each other. Then
there was another bird which Pinto called the "fire-wood gatherer,"
which built great nests of sticks in trees, dropping a wheelbarrow load
of twigs under each nest. Of all the new birds, the boy liked the one
called the "little cock" the best. These were ground-birds some nine
inches long, with little tails that stuck straight upward, and bristling
crests on their heads. Looking like small bantam roosters, they scurried
around through the brush, following the travelers inquisitively and
giving every now and then a loud, deep chirp. Whenever Will would chase
one, it would scurry off, chirping with alarm, but always returned and
followed him through the grass and brush.
As the days went by, Professor Ditson became more and more uneasy, and,
when camp was pitched, overtaxed his unrestored strength by hunting
through dark nooks in the jungle and peering and prying among tangles of
fallen trees or the rare ledges of rock which showed now and then among
the waves of green. At last he told the rest of the party the cause of
his anxiety.
"In a few days more," he said, "we shall begin to climb the foot-hills
of Peru. Under my contract with Mr. Donegan, we were to collect a
bushmaster before we began the search for emeralds. So I would suggest
that we make our camp here and scatter out through the jungle until one
of us is fortunate enough to discover a specimen of this rare and
beautiful serpent. Let me beg of you, however," he continued earnestly,
"to use the utmost care in catching a bushmaster. They are easily
injured."
Jud's face was a study. "I will," he promised. "I'll bet there isn't any
one on the continent of South America who will use more care than me."
The next day the first hunt began. Armed with long, forked sticks, the
six adventurers poked their way painstakingly through the thickest parts
of the jungle, but without any success so far as bushmasters were
concerned, although Pinto aroused a fine specimen of a boa-constrictor,
one of the smaller boas of South America, which flowed through the
forest like a dark shimmering stream, while Jud scared up another
hideous iguana, it being a disputed question as to which ran away the
faster.
Toward the end of the afternoon Will found himself some distance from
the others, following what seemed a little game trail, which zigzagged
back and forth through the jungle. At one point it led between two great
trees, and there Will caught sight of a blaze on either side of the
path. As he stepped forward to examine the marks more carefully, a
dreadful thing happened. The ground under his feet suddenly sank away
without a sound, and the next moment he found himself at the bottom of a
jug-shaped pit some fifteen feet deep, whose sides curved in so sharply
that not even a monkey, much less a man, could climb out. The opening
had been covered over with the stretched skins of animals, stitched
together and cunningly hidden under turf and leaves.
Although shaken and half-stunned by his sudden fall, the soft earth
floor of the trap saved him from any serious injury. Far above he could
see the light streaming in through the irregular hole which his weight
had made in the covering which masked the pit. All too late Will
realized that the blazes on the sides of the game path had been warnings
for human beings to avoid the pitfall which they marked. The neck of the
great earthen bottle was some five feet in width, but at the base it
widened into a space fully double that distance across. As the boy's
eyes became accustomed to the half-light below, he found that he could
see the sides and the bottom of the pit more and more clearly, and,
scrambling to his feet, he started to explore its full circumference.
At the first step came a sound which no man born of woman has to hear
more than once in order to stand stone-still--a fierce, thick hiss.
Stopping dead in his tracks, Will moved slowly back until he was
pressing hard against the earthen wall behind him. Even as he stopped,
from the half-darkness before him, with a dry clashing of scales, glided
into the center of the pit, with sure, deadly swiftness, the
pinkish-yellow and black-banded coils of a twelve-foot serpent. From its
eyes, with their strange oval pupils, a dark streak stretched to the
angles of the mouth from which a long, forked tongue played like a black
flame. As the fierce head crested the triple row of many-colored coils,
Will saw the curious hole between eye and nostril, the hall-mark of a
deadly clan, and knew that before him was the king of all the
pit-vipers--the dreaded bushmaster.
He stared into the lidless, fatal eyes of the snake, as they shone
evilly through the dusk until it seemed as if his heart would stop
beating and icy drops stood on his forehead, for he knew from talks had
with Professor Ditson that bushmasters possess a most uncertain temper,
and he feared that this one might instantly attack him. Once he tried to
move to a point farther along the circumference of the earthen circle.
At the first stir of his cramped muscles, the great snake hissed again
and quivered as if about to strike. Will settled despairingly back,
resolved to move no more; yet ever his thoughts kept running forward to
the long, dark hours which were to come, when he would be alone through
the night with this terrible companion. Then if, overcome by sleep or
cramp, he should move, he feared horribly to be stricken down in the
dark by the coiled death that watched him.
Suddenly, as he set himself against making the least stir of a muscle,
he heard from the jungle through the broken covering of the trap, the
same far-reaching whisper of death which had sounded when he was hunting
with Pinto. A moment later, with staring eyes, he saw a black stream
move sibilantly down the opposite wall of the pit, and realized that the
blind black ants of the jungle were upon him--and that there was no
escape.
Slowly the head of the moving column approached the bottom of the pit,
and Will remembered in sick horror how the ants had torn away shred
after shred of living flesh from the tortured body of the agouti. As the
insatiable, inexorable mass rolled toward him, the bushmaster seemed
either to hear or scent its approach. Instantly its tense coils relaxed,
and it hurried around and around three sides of the pit, lashing upward
against the perpendicular walls in a vain attempt to escape. In its
paroxysm of terror, it came so close to the motionless boy that its
rough, sharp scales rippled against his legs. Only when the van of the
ant-army actually reached the floor of the pit and began to encircle its
whole circumference did the great serpent seem to remember Will's
presence. Then, as if entreating the help of a human being, it forced
itself back of him, and, as the ants came nearer, even wound its way
around Will's waist in an attempt to escape.
For a moment the fearful head towered level with the boy's face.
Instinctively, Will's hand flashed out and caught the bushmaster by the
neck. It made no attempt to strike, nor even struggled under the boy's
choking grip; only the coiled body vibrated as if trembling at the
approach of the deadly horde. For a moment the advance of the ant-army
seemed to stop, but it was only because, in accordance with its tactics,
the head of the column began to spread out until the base of the pit was
a solid mass of moving ants and the black tide lapped at Will's very
feet. Half-turning, and placing his ankles instead of his heels against
the sides of the wall, the boy gained a few inches on the rising pool of
death that stretched out before him, while the straining body of the
bushmaster vibrated like a tuning-fork.
By this time, the opposite wall of the pit was covered and the whole
circle of the base of the cone-shaped pit black and moving, except the
little arc where Will stood. The ants were so close that he could see
the monster heads of the leaders, and the pit was full of the whisper of
their moving bodies flowing forward. Will shut his eyes and every muscle
of his tense body quivered as if already feeling their ripping, shearing
mandibles in his flesh.
Just as the front line of the fatal legion touched his shoes, something
struck him on the head, and he opened his eyes to see a liana dangling
in front of him, while the light at the entrance of the pit was blurred
by old Jud's head and shoulders. With his free hand, Will reached
forward and seized the long vine, to find it ending in a bowline-knot
whose noose never gives.
"Slip it under your arms," called down the old trapper, hoarsely, "an'
hang on! We'll pull you up."
It was the work of only a second to carry out the old man's
instructions. Thrusting the loop over his head and under his arms, the
boy gripped the tough vine with his left hand and tightened his clutch
around the unresisting body of the great bushmaster.
"I won't leave you behind for those black devils," he murmured, as if
the snake understood, and tugged at the liana rope as a signal that he
was ready to start. In an instant he was hauled aloft, just as the ants
swarmed over the space where he had stood. Fending himself off from the
slanting walls with his feet, Will went up with a rush and through the
opening at the top almost as fast as he had entered it. Close to the
rope stood old Jud, with face chalky-white as he watched the army of
ants pouring down into the pit, while Hen, Joe, and Pinto, and even
Professor Ditson, hauled with all their might on the vine.
Jud had become uneasy at Will's long absence and had tracked him to the
entrance of the trap just as the army-ants reached it. His shouts had
brought the rest, and it was Hen Pine who, with his machete, had cut the
supple liana and knotted the noose which had reached Will just in time.
Directed by Jud, his rescuers hauled on the vine so vigorously that the
boy shot out of the pit and was dragged several yards along the ground
before they knew that he was safe.
Jud hurried to help him up, but promptly did a most creditable
performance in the standing-back broad-jump.
"Bring your machete here, quick!" he shouted to Hen; "a bushmaster's got
the kid!"
"No," corrected Will, scrambling to his feet with some difficulty and
waving off Hen with his unoccupied hand, "the kid's got a bushmaster."
Professor Amandus Ditson was delighted to his heart's core.
"That is the finest specimen of the _Lachesis mutus_," he remarked, as
he unwound the rough coils from Will's waist, "that has ever been
reported. Whatever happens now," he went on, relieving Will of his
burden, "the trip is an unqualified success."
"The man's easily satisfied," murmured Jud, watching from a safe
distance the professor grip the snake by the back of its neck and push
it foot by foot into a long snake-bag which he always carried for
possible specimens. When at last the bag, filled with snake, was tied
tightly, it looked much like a long, knobby Christmas-stocking. The
professor swung it carelessly over his shoulder like a blanket-roll.
"No snake ever bites through cloth," he remarked reassuringly. "Now for
the Inca Emerald!"