grew on the opposite side of the canal; and it was at once apparent that
there was a sufficiency to meet the requirements of the party; while at
a further distance of about a mile they came to a bed containing enough
rashes to construct a _balsa_ capable of supporting a single man, or
possibly two men. Huanami cut one of the rushes for Earle's inspection,
and dividing it up into short lengths, showed that it was a bamboo-like
growth, hollow in structure and divided into a series of watertight
compartments by partitions occurring at every notch, rendering it
exceedingly light and buoyant. The average length of the rushes was
about twelve feet, but by a kind of interlacing system a raft, or
_balsa_, of almost any required dimensions could be constructed.
No time was lost by the party in getting to work upon the first _balsa_,
Huanami cutting great quantities of long, tough bents and plaiting them
up into a kind of rope, while the rest of the Indians cut the reeds. It
was necessary for them to get into the water to do this; but luckily,
the reeds first attacked grew in shallow water, only up to the men's
knees, and while they all worked together, shouting and splashing
vigorously the while, Dick and Earle, armed with repeating rifles,
mounted guard on the bank, holding themselves ready to open fire upon
any marauding alligator or other creature that might threaten to
interrupt the work. No interruption occurred, however, and in less than
an hour the reeds were all cut and the construction of the first _balsa_
was begun. Huanami proved himself an adept in the art of _balsa_
construction, and when noon arrived, and with it the hour for the
mid-day meal, the first _balsa_ was complete and ready for service,
including a pair of paddles, also ingeniously made of reeds.
When at the conclusion of the meal the _balsa_ came to be tried, it was
found to possess buoyancy enough to carry two men safely and
comfortably; the return march along the bank to the spot where the
remainder of the fleet was to be built was therefore immediately
commenced, the builder and his load of impedimenta proceeding by water
at the same time. The _balsa_, it may here be explained, was a very
simple affair indeed, consisting merely of a flat bundle of reeds,
firmly bound together in such a way as to form a sort of raft. The one
already built was about ten feet long and about five feet broad, by
about a foot in depth; but while strong enough for its purpose, it was,
after all, very light, and quite capable of being capsized should an
enterprising alligator take it into his head to attack it; during the
short march to the big reed bed, therefore, Dick and Earle decided that
the next _balsa_ should be constructed of a capacity to accommodate the
entire party, and therefore be heavy and bulky enough to resist anything
short of a concerted attack by a herd of alligators. The construction
of such a craft was of course a somewhat formidable undertaking, though
the other Indians showed themselves apt pupils of Huanami, and the task
was only completed when the sun had already disappeared and darkness was
closing down upon the scene.
On the following morning the voyage across the lagoon was begun
immediately after breakfast, and accomplished not only without mishap
but without adventure of any kind; for, strangely enough, not one of the
creatures which had been observed disporting themselves in the water
during the preceding night was now visible; indeed, so far as
appearances went, there might not even have been so much as a fish in
the lagoon. A sharp look-out was maintained for the beast that had been
shot at during the night, but neither alive or dead was anything seen of
him. One fact, however, was established during the passage across, and
that was, that the depth of water in the lagoon was far greater than had
hitherto been suspected, a depth of no less than thirty fathoms being
found nearly all the way across except quite close to the margin.
The journey across consumed close upon two hours, for the _balsa_, while
buoyant enough to support the whole party and their belongings, was,
from the very character of her construction, unwieldy and difficult to
propel; but she arrived safely at last on the south-western shore of the
lagoon. Then a number of canal-like channels being found penetrating
the firm ground, as on the side already traversed, the question arose
whether the journey should be resumed on foot, or an attempt should be
made to continue it on the _balsa_, through the medium of the water
channels. Dick was of opinion that the latter would be the more
expeditious way, it being far easier for the Indians to tow the _balsa_
loaded with all the belongings of the party, than it would be for them
to carry their loads as heretofore; and this plan was accordingly
adopted.
Unfortunately, perhaps, they were obliged to abandon the _balsa_ about
mid-afternoon, the water channel abruptly coming to an end, and thus
necessitating a return to their original mode of travel.
Earle was profoundly disappointed that during practically the entire
day's journey none of the denizens of the swamp had chosen to reveal
themselves, for he had all the naturalist's enthusiasm for the discovery
of new and strange creatures, and was especially anxious to secure a
specimen of the "cross between a frog and a kangaroo" seen and shot by
Dick, and, later, shot at by himself; but, so far as appearances went,
the part of the swamp which they were now traversing might be
tenantless. At length, however, just as the day's journey was drawing
to a close, a bit of luck came his way. For while he and Dick were
glancing about them in search of a suitable spot upon which to camp for
the night, an animal suddenly made its appearance in the open, not more
than fifty yards away, and Earle instantly flung up his rifle and shot
it. It was as big as a donkey and resembled a hare in every respect,
except that it had ears shaped like those of a mouse, while its coat was
of short hair instead of fur. It was entirely new to Earle, and he was
much gratified at securing it, as were the others of the party, for its
flesh proved to be very juicy and palatable.
Their next adventure occurred during the afternoon of the following day.
They had just passed beyond the confines of the swamp, and were
travelling over somewhat rising ground toward a line of forest
stretching right athwart their path, when, during a temporary halt,
which Dick was utilising to scan the surrounding country through his
field-glasses, he caught a momentary glimpse of what he imagined to be
Indians, moving stealthily about among the boles of the trees,
apparently reconnoitring the party. He directed Earle's attention to
them, and after an eager search with his glasses, the American also
caught sight of them, and agreed with Dick that their movements were
suspicious, and that it would be wise to be prepared for a sudden
attack. They loaded their repeating rifles, each stuck a pair of
automatic pistols in his belt, and when the march was resumed, went on
ahead, accompanied by Inaguy, with the object of establishing a parley
with the strangers.
But when, some ten minutes later, they arrived at the outskirts of the
forest, there was no sign of them, and no response to Inaguy's repeated
calls in several different Indian dialects. It was not only a puzzling
but also a disconcerting circumstance; for the failure of the strangers
to reply seemed to indicate a hostile disposition; and for the party to
plunge into the depths of the forest with a band of hostile Indians
dogging their footsteps, or perhaps preparing to ambush them, seemed to
Earle the opposite of good generalship; after considering the matter,
therefore, it was decided to camp for the remainder of the day, at a
sufficient distance from the forest to render a surprise attack
impossible, and there await developments.
This was done, and for about an hour after the camp was pitched,
sentinels being posted about halfway between it and the border of the
forest to give timely notice of a threatened attack, nothing happened.
Then one of the sentinels shouted that there were people moving among
the trees, upon which Dick and Earle, fully armed, moved out to
reconnoitre, with King Cole as usual at their heels.
The sentinel was right, as the pair ascertained immediately that they
brought their field-glasses to bear upon the part of the forest
indicated by the Indian. The undergrowth, consisting mostly of bushes
and shrubs, was fairly dense, rendering it impossible to see beyond a
yard or two into the forest, but by diligent and patient search the two
leaders were able to discern certain dark objects, which they identified
as heads, moving hither and thither, and pausing from time to time to
peer out at them through parted boughs. Then suddenly a frightful roar
was heard, immediately taken up and answered by many others, the bushes
swayed as heavy bodies irresistibly forced a way through them, and some
twenty monstrous figures bounded into the open and came charging down
upon the little group, emitting loud, savage roars as they came, with
the foam flying from their champing jaws.
"G-r-r-eat Caesar's ghost!" exclaimed Earle in amazement, as the
creatures broke cover; "what have we here, anyway? Whatever they may
be, they are certainly not human. And savage--they're as full of gall
as a wagon-load of catamounts! This is where we have to shoot to kill,
Dick, and don't you forget it. We can't begin too soon either, so get
busy, my lad. Darn that Indian! he's scooted. Well, I guess he's
better out of the way after all."
Earle might well be excused for the astonishment he betrayed at the
sight of the enemy. As he had said, they were certainly not human; they
were, in fact, gigantic apes, somewhat resembling gorillas in their
general appearance, though considerably bigger, their stature being, on
Earle's first hasty estimate, quite six feet. They were covered with
rather long, coarse, shaggy hair, of so dark a brown as to appear almost
black, the hair of the head and face being much longer than on the rest
of the body. Their arms were immensely long in proportion to their
lower limbs; from their build they appeared to be endowed with amazing
strength, a suggestion which was fully confirmed by the consummate ease
with which they flourished boughs of trees of formidable size with which
they had armed themselves.
They came charging down upon the two white men and the now madly raging
King Cole in a series of long bounds, springing from the ground and
landing upon it with both feet together, each leap being accompanied by
a deep, bellowing roar, the volume of which testified to immense power
of lung, while their small, deeply set eyes blazed with fury.
"Shoot from the wings, inward," ordered Earle, "then we shall not waste
two bullets upon the same beast. You begin with the one on your extreme
left."
As Earle spoke he threw up his rifle, and pressing the trigger, neatly
dropped the beast on the extreme right of the advancing line, while Dick
brought down his mark with a broken leg. But these casualties had not
the slightest effect upon the others, who continued their charge without
the smallest sign of a check.
"Keep cool and shoot straight," admonished Earle, as his rifle spoke a
second time and another foe crashed to earth with a .35 soft-nosed
bullet through his brain. Dick, on the other hand, very much less
hardened than Earle for such a nerve-trying experience as this, grew a
little flurried, and caught his next mark in the shoulder, shattering
the bone and goading the beast to a condition of absolutely maniacal
fury, but failing to stop him until he had sent a bullet through the
brute's lungs, when he halted, coughing up a torrent of blood. And so
matters proceeded until the two men had emptied their Remingtons, the
ten shots accounting for seven dead and two put _hors de combat_.
There was no time to reload, for the monsters still continued the
charge, apparently quite unconscious of, or supremely indifferent to,
what had happened to their companions; the two men therefore dropped
their empty rifles, and each whipped a seven-shot Colt automatic from
his belt, and continued his fusillade. Those Colt pistols were
formidable weapons, of .45 calibre, at close quarters quite as effective
as the rifles; and before the beasts succeeded in closing, all but four
were down.
Of those four, King Cole tackled one, launching himself like an arrow at
the creature's throat, with a low snarl of concentrated rage, and
sinking his fangs deeply in the muscular, hairy neck, the claws of his
two fore feet firmly gripping the huge shoulders of the beast while the
strong claws of his powerful hind feet tore open the abdomen and
practically disembowelled his adversary. And as the pair went down,
roaring, snarling, and fighting desperately, Earle thrust the muzzle of
his Colt into the yawning jaws of another and sent the heavy bullet
crashing upward through the brute's skull at the precise instant that
the powerful jaws snapped like a trap upon the barrel of the weapon.
Meanwhile, the remaining two hurled themselves upon Dick. One of them
he shot clean through the heart as the brute sprang upon him, and
although there can be no doubt that the creature instantly died, the
momentum of his spring was sufficient to dash the lad to the ground and
send his pistol flying. And before he could regain his feet or draw his
remaining pistol, the last survivor was upon him, with a ponderous club
upraised to dash out the youngster's brains. Like lightning the blow
fell; but instinctively and without premeditation Dick just managed to
dodge it; and such was the force of the blow that the club snapped short
off in the brute's great hairy hand. And now the knowledge of boxing
that the young sailor had aforetime somewhat painfully acquired, came to
his aid, for as his ferocious antagonist crouched over him, his great
tusks bared and dripping foam, while the little eyes burnt red with
deadly hate, Dick threw his whole strength into a right-hander, which
caught the beast fair and square on the point of the chin with a crash
that sent the head violently back and caused the vertebrae of the neck
to crack, following up the blow with a punch in the wind that fairly
knocked the beast out of time for the moment. That moment proved
sufficient to save Cavendish's life, for it afforded him time to whip
the remaining pistol from his belt and discharge it full in the brute's
face as it gathered itself together for what would in all probability
have proved a fatal leap, so far as Dick was concerned.
CHAPTER NINE.
THE SCULPTURED ROCKS.
"Bravo! Dick, old chap," exclaimed Earle, turning to his friend, with
one hand outstretched in offered help while the other grasped a smoking
pistol--"well fought! Are you hurt at all?"
"N-o, I think not," replied Dick, a little doubtfully, as with the help
of the other's proffered hand he scrambled to his feet. "That fellow,
there"--pointing to the body of the ape that had hurled him to the
ground--"pretty nearly knocked the wind out of me, while the other did
his level best to dash my brains out, and I've barked my knuckles rather
badly against his chin; but otherwise I think I'm all right, thanks.
And you?"
"I?" returned Earle. "Oh, I'm as right as rain. Say, Dick, that was
something like a scrap at the last. What? Guess if it hadn't been for
old King Cole, we'd have been in rather a tight place. Look at the
beggar. Ugh! he is not pleasant to look at when he's real riled, is he?
He has brought off his kill all right, and I guess we'd better leave
him to it a bit. I believe I don't particularly want to interfere with
him just now. Let's draw off a bit and have a look at one of those dead
brutes out yonder. I rather want to examine one; for I guess this is an
entirely new species of monkey."
"They look to me very much like gorillas," remarked Dick.
"They do," agreed Earle. "But, all the same, they are not gorillas.
There are no gorillas on this continent, so far as is known. The
gorilla is, I believe, peculiar to Africa. And these creatures, though
they certainly somewhat resemble gorillas in a general way, have certain
points of difference, the most important of which is the shape of the
skull, while another is their much greater bulk. I have shot several
gorillas; but I never saw one to come near any of these brutes in point
of size. By the way, where is the one you stopped with a broken leg?
We may as well put him out of his misery."
The creature in question was nowhere to be seen; but they eventually got
upon his trail and followed him up to the border of the forest, into
which he had evidently retreated; and they came to the conclusion that,
as he had contrived to get thus far, they would leave him alone and give
him a chance to recover. Then they found one of the dead apes, and
Earle subjected the carcass to a long and exhaustive examination, making
copious notes and discoursing learnedly meanwhile, though it is to be
feared that his remarks and explanations left Dick but little the wiser.
It was close upon sunset when at length they returned to the camp,
where they were shortly afterward joined by King Cole, once more calm
and in his right mind.
They took the precaution to surround the camp with a circle of fires
that night, to ward off a possible attack, posting a sentinel at each
fire for the double purpose of keeping it going and maintaining a watch.
The belt of forest which the explorers entered on the following day
proved to be of no very great extent, the passage through it occupying
but a day and a half. Emerging from it, the party crossed a splendid
savannah, abounding in game, chiefly of the antelope variety, and large
birds somewhat resembling bustard, the tameness of which seemed to
indicate that man was practically unknown to them, while it enabled them
to replenish their larder with the utmost ease. This savannah extended
for a distance of about ten miles, and terminated among the foothills of
a range of mountains of very moderate height stretching right athwart
the path of the explorers. Among those foothills the party pitched
their camp at the end of the day's journey.
The next day's march conducted them into country the character of which
was different from any hitherto traversed by them. It was exceedingly
rugged and broken, treeless, the soil covered with a short, rich grass,
which would have rendered it ideal as grazing country, dotted here and
there with small clumps of bush, some of which were fruit-bearing, while
at frequent intervals great outcrops of metamorphic rock were met with,
which time and weather had in many cases wrought into extraordinary
shapes.
It was near noon when the party entered a narrow ravine bordered on
either side by vertical sandstone cliffs of about a hundred feet high,
and here they came to a halt and pitched their camp; for no sooner had
they fairly entered the ravine than they found themselves confronted by
a splendid example of those extraordinary sculptured rocks which have
excited the wonder and admiration of the few travellers in South America
who have been fortunate enough to find them.
In the present case the sculptured rock consisted of a stretch of
sandstone cliff about two hundred and fifty feet in length by about a
hundred feet in height, practically vertical, the entire surface of
which was covered with panels presenting a series of pictures portraying
what appeared to be a genealogical record of certain customs and
ceremonies, mostly of a religious character, of some gone and forgotten
race of people. The work was executed in fairly high relief, and the
drawing of the figures, of which there were thousands on the entire
sculptured surface, evidenced artistic ability of a truly remarkable
character, including a considerable knowledge of perspective. The
panels portraying religious ceremonies indicated that the sun and fire
were, or symbolised, the principal deities worshipped; and there was
abundant evidence that human sacrifice was common. All this was, of
course, absorbingly interesting to Earle, as was the light which the
sculptures threw upon the personal appearance and costumes of the people
portrayed. If the artist--or artists, for there must have been
thousands of them to have produced such a magnificent and colossal piece
of work--could be believed, the departed race boasted some exceptionally
fine examples of male and female beauty, while the costumes bore more
than a casual resemblance to those pictured on the ancient monuments of
Egypt. Earle announced with finality that he intended to remain in camp
on the spot, not only until he had minutely and exhaustively examined
the sculptures, but also until he had photographed them as a whole and
some separately. That probably meant at least a week's sojourn where
they then were.
The proposed arrangement suited Dick Cavendish admirably, for the
prolonged halt appealed to him as something very much in the nature of a
holiday, especially when Earle declared that he would need no assistance
in his photographic operations, so that Dick would be free to amuse
himself in any way he pleased. Dick was rapidly becoming as keen a
naturalist, in a way, as Earle; once or twice, during the morning's
march, he had observed some particularly gorgeous butterflies flitting
about, and he promised himself that he would spend at least a portion of
his sojourn in the ravine in an endeavour to secure a few specimens.
There was one duty, however, which he at once recognised must fall upon
him, which was the supply of the camp with meat, and accordingly, upon
the conclusion of the mid-day meal, when Earle started to get his
photographic gear ready for the campaign among the sculptures, Dick took
his rifle and, accompanied by two of the Indians, proceeded up the
ravine in search of game. The country rapidly became wilder and more
picturesque as they went, to such an extent indeed that Dick quickly
made up his mind to pay it another and more leisurely visit; and after
about an hour's tramp, which carried him into a labyrinth of rocks, he
got a splendid shot at a creature strongly resembling a bighorn, which
he neatly bowled over and with it triumphantly returned to camp.
On the fourth morning of the party's sojourn in the ravine, Dick,
accompanied as usual by two Indians, set out, immediately after
breakfast, in search of meat for the day. Game was not particularly
plentiful in that region, but the lad preferred to take his chance of
finding something in his accustomed haunts, rather than tramp all the
way back to the savannah, and accordingly he proceeded, as usual, right
up the ravine, until he arrived at a point where a branch route led off
toward the left. Hitherto he had not tried his luck in that particular
direction, but he decided to do so now; and after about half an hour's
tramp, upon surmounting the crest of a ridge, he found himself looking
down into a small circular basin, surrounded by rocky cliffs, the bottom
of which was a smooth, grassy plain, in which, as luck would have it,
several antelopes were grazing. The nearest of these, a fine fat buck
to all appearance, was at least a thousand yards away, which was much
too long a shot for Dick to risk; and he therefore set out to stalk the
animal, leaving the Indians where they were to follow as soon as the
buck should fall.
There were clumps of bush growing quite close up to the base of the
encircling cliffs, offering admirable cover for stalking, as well as a
certain amount of shelter from the sun's scorching rays, and of these
Dick gladly availed himself, ultimately succeeding in bringing down the
buck with a three-hundred yard shot. Then, while waiting for the
Indians to come and break up the quarry, the young man flung himself
down in the shadow of a clump of bush to rest.