A COLD RECEPTION
The San Blas Indians live on islands of the archipelago which guards the
coast close to the line between Columbia and Panama. Most of the islands
are quite small and are occupied, in some cases, by no more than three
families; in others by more, and on the largest of the islands there is
a city, close-packed huts crowding each other with very little free
space. On this island, really the capital, the Indians live in goodly
numbers, getting their food and doing much of their work by going to the
mainland shore in canoes.
Before they approached the San Blas island colonies, Tom spoke of a
matter that had been worrying him a great deal.
“We ought to have a plan,” he suggested. “If we go and ask about a
girl—my sister—they won’t tell us, especially if they have kept her a
prisoner.”
“I think you’re right,” Cliff acknowledged. “We could say we are
traders, couldn’t we?”
“That would not help us to get to the inland tribes, if she is not on
the islands,” Bill objected.
“We could pretend we are looking for gold,” Nicky contributed.
Mr. Gray shook his head. They were all, except Andy at the engine and
the colored pilot, Bob, at the wheel, seated in the little cabin eating
dinner.
“No,” Mr. Gray said with his headshake. “The San Blas Indians are not
much interested in gold. There is another tribe, the Chucunaque Indians,
living on the mainland, and in the interior, who are really a part of
the same original stock as the San Blas people, and they are very
decidedly antagonistic to white people for the very reason that Nicky
has suggested. These Indians think that white men are all trying to find
gold, and the Indians say, according to the information I have, that
gold is what has destroyed the Indians.”
“I don’t see how,” Nicky declared.
“They argue somewhat to this effect: the white man wants gold. He comes
among the Indians to look for it. He bribes them with his fiery liquors
and he fights them and degrades them.”
“That’s so, too,” Cliff nodded. “Whenever you see Indians after white
men have been in their country, you see a decayed race. Look at our own
‘Redskins’—they have lost their country and live on reservations and
only since the Government saw what was happening and did something to
protect them have they been able to protect themselves and try to get
back some of their self-respect.”
“That is exactly what the Chucunaque Indians are afraid of,” Mr. Gray
told them. “The Government of Columbia has tried to colonize their
country but they have fought every effort and the Government had to give
up because the Indians won’t let a white man get into their lands. They
have drawn a sort of sacred ring around themselves and no one can get
into the country without their permission, and once in, will never be
heard of again unless the Indians let him go.”
“That doesn’t look very promising,” Tom said despondently.
“But if we had a plan, as you said,” Nicky said hopefully, “only—what
kind of a plan would fit that sort of people?”
Jack, who kept his face shaved and clean and who took pride in his new
respectability, had been listening without comment; he spoke up.
“One thing I do know, from Porto Bello and other places,” he said, “is
that the Indians are all pretty sickly. Now, back in Colorado, I used to
be a sort of ‘jack-leg’ doctor, a rough-and-ready kind of a doctor, I
admit—but I knew something about medicine and so on. If we had some
medicines, now, and any books——”
“The very thing!” cried Tom, exultantly. “We have a medicine kit on
board, and it tells how to use things—first aid and all that!”
“And we have plenty of zinc ointment, and other remedies that are useful
for skin diseases and so on,” Mr. Gray declared. “I know enough about
tropical exploration to provide those things, and we have them.”
“Then, maybe I could pose as a great medicine man,” Jack suggested. “Not
that I would be, you see, but I could do some things, maybe.”
“And we know first aid,” Nicky cried, eagerly. “The Scouts all know
first aid and how to take care of hurts and stings and cuts.”
Tom found an objection.
“But they would only let you go through the guarded circle,” he said.
“And where would the rest of us get in?”
“He could take me as a sort of second-string medicine man,” Bill spoke
up. “Two of us could do all that was necessary. If we found Tom’s sister
at all, either two could help to get her free or it would be
impossible.”
“Yes,” agreed Mr. Gray. “Numbers would not count; we couldn’t expect to
fight against them in their own country. Those Indians still use the
old, primitive bows and poisoned arrows.”
The three chums looked at one another disconsolately.
“It looks as though we’ll be left out,” Nicky said.
“We’ll have to make the best of it, then,” Cliff stated.
“After all, the main thing is to locate my sister,” Tom added.
Nevertheless, it cast a damper on their usually gay spirits for in every
previous adventure the chums had been inseparable, had participated in
every exciting episode and had really brought every adventure to a happy
termination.
When they talked it over, however, they decided to make the best of the
situation as it then appeared, burying their personal desires for the
good of their cause.
Toward sunset they came to one of the first small islands of the
archipelago, and saw three huts nestling among the palms. From a
distance, with glasses, they made out a number of people standing on the
shore.
“They seem to be watching for us,” Nicky declared. “How do they know we
are coming, do you suppose?”
“Maybe Henry Morgan has been here and told them we might come,” Cliff
suggested.
“Look!” said Tom, excitedly pressing the glasses into Cliff’s hands.
“They’re running away!”
“To get ready for a welcome,” Nicky offered.
“No,” cried Cliff, “they’re tumbling into three canoes!”
“I see the canoes with my naked eye,” Tom agreed. “They are pushing off
from shore—they’re paddling away as fast as they can go it!”
It was a fact, and when the cruiser came near enough to lay-to and hail,
there was no response and when the chums, in the boat, rowed to the
rough corral beach there was not a soul on the island!
“That’s funny!” Nicky declared.
“They don’t seem to like company!” Cliff added.
Tom made no comment as they rowed back.
At a half dozen other islands, the next day, the same thing happened.
Small groups gathered to watch their approach, then, as though driven by
some fear of them, scrambled into canoes and disappeared among the
islands or toward the mainland.
“Do you suppose they are as afraid of white people as all that?” Cliff
wondered.
“Let’s all keep out of sight when we come in sight of the next island,
only have Bob, who is dark and might look at a distance like an Indian,
on deck,” whispered Nicky. Cliff and Tom agreed, and when Mr. Gray, Bill
and Jack, all three puzzled, heard the plan, they agreed.
The change in their plan seemed to make no difference. As they came
within sight of the next islet, canoes filled and were driven hastily
into hiding.
“I can’t understand it,” Cliff stated.
“Nor I,” Bill acknowledged, and Jack conceded the same thing.
Tom still remained mute, his face very sober.
Finally they reached a fairly clear harbor at the largest of the
islands. While they dropped anchor they watched anxiously, for there
were many canoes, of different sizes, busily traversing the waterway
between the island and the distant shore.
Except for giving the cruiser a wide berth, however, the canoes appeared
not to know that it existed.
All the next day the company waited for the approach of a canoe. With
the early sunrise a fleet of canoes, filled with women—who seemed to do
all of the paddling and all other work—set out for the mainland, paying
no attention whatever to the cruiser. At evening the fleet came back.
“We ought to do something,” Nicky urged, always anxious to act. “Let’s
land and find out what’s what!”
“You cannot hurry an Indian,” Mr. Gray counseled. “We must wait to see
what they will do.”
“More can be gained by patience than by forcing them to move,” Bill
supplemented the older man’s counsel.
And so they let another day pass.
Then a canoe approached. It contained three of the older Indians, dark,
steady, stolid men. They made gestures indicating that they desired the
boat to go away.
Bill, standing at the bow, beckoned to them, and held out for them to
see, some very flashy glass ornaments.
“For Big Chief!” he called, in Spanish.
The canoe lay quiet; the men did not move.
A long half-hour passed.
Then the men nodded, paddled closer and waited.
“Present—for Big Chief!” repeated Bill, and bent low over the coaming
and rail to hand them several brightly polished silver belt-buckles, a
glittering glass pendant, and some strings of gay beads. He handed them
down into the canoe.
The men considered them without expression. Then one looked up.
“What you want?” he asked.
“Want visit chief—give more present—show Indians how get well. We bring
big medicine.”
Taking the ornaments but hiding any show of appreciation, the men
paddled swiftly toward shore.
“I hope it works!” Bill said, rather nervously, dragging an old cigar
lighter from his pocket and snapping its steel wheel with his thumb to
ignite its wick so he could light a cigarette.
“Darn these things!” he grumbled when it failed. “Always out of whack!
And matches are so wet you get _one_ to strike out of a whole packet!”
“Let me have it,” suggested Tom. “I can turn the flint and clip the
wick. I used to do it for my—for my father.” Bill nodded, handed him the
implement and struck match after match, finally getting a light.
Tom worked over the lighter until it operated three out of four times,
filled it with gasoline from the drip of the slightly opened carbureter
drain, and, carefully closing the drain again, slipped the lighter in
his pocket as Andy called him to help get out the after anchor, because
a huge, stormy cloud was rapidly coming over and the cruiser must be
well secured. Tom forgot all about the lighter in the ensuing
excitement, for a terrific tropical wind and rain came up and everyone
had plenty to do to keep the cruiser from dragging onto reefs.
Early the next morning the canoe approached again; the storm was all
over and the harbor was like glass as the roughly hewn craft slid gently
up to the cruiser’s side.
All of the party assembled on deck to see what would happen.
One of the older trio in the canoe stood erect and surveyed the company
with expressionless, stolid gaze. Finally he spoke.
“Who doctor?” he asked. They pointed to Jack.
The man nodded, beckoned to Jack. The latter climbed, in his neat,
borrowed clothes, into the canoe.
Then the trio waited. “They want the presents,” Bill suggested and he
and Tom hurried to secure more gifts with which, if possible, to win the
good will of the chief.
When they returned, instead of taking the gifts, the men beckoned and
gestured for them to descend into the canoe, and so it was that Tom,
Bill and Jack were taken to the island while the others, with what
patience they could, mastered their disappointment and waited.
Noon came, and no one returned. Afternoon wore on and still nothing
happened, no canoe put off from shore.
Just before dusk the fleet of canoes carrying the women who did the
washing, prepared the food and other things on the mainland, came home;
still the trio did not return to the cruiser. Cliff and Nicky did not
voice their worry for they saw the uneasiness in Mr. Gray’s expression
and did not wish to add to his concern.
Just before dark the canoe returned. Tom had hardly gotten on deck with
his two companions and the canoe disappeared in the dusk when Nicky and
Cliff demanded an explanation.
“Well,” Tom started his explanation, “I don’t think it looks very good.
They took us to shore, and the island is fairly packed with the huts
they live in, and there is a big, sort of open, hut in the middle, and
they took us there.”
“The chief lived there, I guess,” Nicky broke in.
Tom nodded. “Yes,” he agreed. “He was in a hammock, lying there as
though he were asleep, and he had a lot of his chief men sitting on low
stools around his hammock. The rest of the place was simply packed with
people, men and women.”
“It must have been a sight!” Cliff declared.
“It was. And they took us to stools in the center and let us sit down.
There we sat and sat and sat!”
“I know,” Nicky agreed. “They keep you waiting for the chief.”
“Finally Bill got tired of it and stood up and made a ‘talk’ in his best
Spanish, with signs and everything. He pointed to Jack, and said he was
a doctor—of course we had given the chief our gifts at first and he
didn’t bother to thank us. Bill made a good speech, if they understood
it; they didn’t show whether they did or not!”
“Wooden Indians was a good name for them,” Bill said, coming up.
“Then we sat and sat and sat some more,” Tom went on. “It got to be noon
and the place began to get pretty strong, with the heat and the sweating
and packed people. But nothing happened.”
“It got so bad, finally,” Bill took up the story, “I felt like I had to
have a smoke, and so did Jack. They hadn’t brought any sick people to be
doctored, or made a move. And nobody talked. So I hauled out my stuff
and rolled two cigarettes. And then—here’s where Tom comes in. Go ahead,
Tom.”
“Bill didn’t have any matches—he’d used up all his packet the night
before,” Tom explained. “So he felt around and looked blank and Jack had
one match and he struck it and the head was wet so it didn’t go off.”
“That was bad,” Nicky declared. “They’d suspect you weren’t very good
makers of magic.”
“But wait!” Bill urged, and motioned to Tom.
“It wasn’t anything I did,” Tom demurred. “It was just having forgotten
that I fixed Bill’s cigar lighter—and when we needed it we had it. I
pulled it out and flicked it and it lit!”
“Magic!” chuckled Jack.
“And did it surprise them?” demanded Bill, knowing that he answered
himself.
“They were as excited as babies with new pinwheels,” Tom said. “The
chief beckoned to me and I had to go over and light the thing a half a
hundred times, and then let him try—and of course he couldn’t!”
“Tom’s stock went up about two million points!” grinned Jack.
“But it did help us,” Tom became serious. “That is—it helped us to learn
what we were wondering about—why everybody runs from us on the other
islands. But it makes our problem that much harder, too, at the same
time!”
“How can that be?” demanded Nicky.
“This way,” Tom explained, despondently. “The chief called a man who
speaks some Spanish and had him tell us. Two white men have come here
already, a few days ago. I think it was Henry Morgan and Mort Beecher.
They said they were great doctors, and they did have some medicines and
they put stuff on the Indians and told them they would be cured of their
sores and so on in a week.”
“They came in a sailing sloop,” Bill added. “It landed them and went on
down the coast toward South America, but it is coming back in a week or
so.”
“But what makes that mean anything to us, beyond the fact that they got
here first?” asked Mr. Gray.
“Henry and Mort—if that’s who it was—told the Indians they are the only
true medicine men, and they said that men would come soon and pretend to
be as great—but they would be evil and undo all the good. And this is
the diabolical part of their story—” he paused and bent forward
impressively, to add:
“They said that if their medicine did not cure—it is because the evil
ones that are coming—us!—are working with devil-medicine!”
“Good grief!” exclaimed Nicky. “That is wicked talk!”
“It has terrified the Indians,” Bill agreed. “And it was only because
Tom’s trick with the lighter caught the chief’s fancy and impressed him
that he told us. He warned us to go away. He can’t trust us, of course.”
“That does make it hard for us to do anything!” Cliff declared.
“Hard—” Nicky sniffed. “But not impossible—never say die!”
“I won’t,” Tom cried. “But what will we do?”
“Yes,” agreed Cliff, dejectedly, “what?”