THE SKELETON
Bomba knew at once that the poor remnant of humanity that lay before
him was not that of a native of the country.
He knew it by the character of the hair that still adhered to the
scalp, by the fragments of skin that still were in evidence.
And he knew by the clothes, which, though tattered into shreds, were
similar to those that had been worn by Gillis and Dorn, by the men of
the Parkhurst family. They were of heavy khaki cut after the civilized
fashion.
Some hunter, no doubt; a hunter after big game or a hunter of rubber
trees, who had come into the dark recesses of the Amazonian jungle.
Various signs indicated that the body had been there for some time. How
the man had died would never be known. Somewhere in the civilized world
he was marked down as “missing.” The jungle kept its secrets well.
Bomba stood looking down at the skeleton with a strange feeling in his
heart. This man had been white! He had been a brother to Bomba, of the
same blood, of the same race! A sense of kinship tugged at the lad’s
heart.
And because he had been white, Bomba determined that the poor remains
should have decent burial. He sought out a suitable piece of wood and
with his machete fashioned a rude spade. With this he set to work and
soon had dug a grave in the soft and muddy ground.
He lifted the skeleton reverently and bore it to the grave. As he did
so, something dropped with a metallic sound. He paid no attention to
this at the moment, but bestowed the bones carefully in the grave.
Then he covered it and rolled great stones over the top that the last
resting place of the stranger might be undisturbed.
He knew little of prayer. He had seen, to be sure, the incantations
that the medicine men made to their gods. But something confused and
vague shaped itself in his mind, an unspoken request that all might be
well with the white man, wherever his spirit might be. For was not the
white man Bomba’s brother?
He was turning away when his eye caught sight of the something that
he had heard drop to the ground. He looked at it indifferently for a
moment and then he pounced upon it eagerly.
It was a belt of cartridges!
He handled the objects with a delight beyond all bounds. It was like a
gift from the gods. With a trembling hand he took his revolver from its
pouch. The cartridges fitted perfectly!
Bomba was in a frenzy of rapture. He wanted to shout, to dance, to
sing. Now he had another effective weapon, a formidable addition to his
machete and his bow and arrows.
“I gave the white man burial, and he has given me these,” he said to
himself. “He knew that Bomba, too, was white! He knew that Bomba was
his brother!”
Where there were cartridges there were likely to be weapons, and
Bomba scanned the surrounding spaces carefully. But neither rifle nor
revolver was to be seen. Bomba conjectured that natives, passing, might
have found and appropriated these as curiosities, though they did not
know how to use them. The fact that the cartridge belt had not been
disturbed was probably due to a superstitious repugnance to touch a
dead body for fear it would bring evil fortune.
It was with a vastly increased confidence that Bomba at last betook
himself from the scene.
His steps now turned toward a trail about which he had learned from the
caboclos of the district, a trail that after long journeying would lead
him to the river and to Jaguar Island, where Japazy dwelt.
If Bomba could find and keep to this trail, it would lead him more
quickly to his destination and lessen the danger of his becoming lost
in a section of the jungle into which he had not yet penetrated.
It was two days later that Bomba came upon the trail he sought. He
recognized it with a feeling of joy and thanksgiving.
“Bomba is sure now of finding the way to Jaguar Island,” he told
himself. “If Japazy is there, all may be well. If not, Bomba will have
his long journey for nothing.”
As he struck out along the trail the lad was seized by a desire for
speed that was almost panic. Again and again the thought came to him,
giving new stimulus to his steps:
“I may be an hour too late. I may be only a minute too late. If I reach
the island and find Japazy gone, what then? He is Bomba’s one hope.
Without the knowledge Japazy has, Bomba is doomed to live in the jungle
forever. Bomba will never know about Bartow and Laura and the boy they
called Bonny. Bomba must put wings to his feet.”
All that day he flogged himself along with this thought, stopping only
to tear off and eat a strip of the tapir meat that he had brought with
him from the village of Hondura.
Bomba could not go without food, but he could go without sleep, or at
least do with very little.
But exhausted nature took its toll after he had traveled through the
long hours of the night and faced a gray-streaked dawn, spent and
haggard-eyed.
Sleep weighted his eyelids, dragged at his feet. Bomba lay down and
slept.
In his sleep he dreamed. It was a terrible dream, and in it he was
back again in the heart of the Moving Mountain. Flames licked at him
hungrily, strange grumblings and roarings resounded about him, and yet
he could make no move to escape.
With a mighty gasping effort, Bomba heaved his body beyond the reach of
the fire--and opened his eyes!
Instantly he was wide awake. Night had crept upon him while he slept,
and now upon the wings of darkness rode a fearful storm filling the
jungle with wailings and thunderings.
Bomba leaped to his feet and looked about him.
“I have slept the day away!” was his first angry thought. “If Bomba
does not find Japazy it will be his own fault!”
But this consideration was soon swept aside by the realization of his
own immediate peril.
With every moment the storm increased in fury. So far, it had been wind
and thunder and lightning, but no rain. Now the heavens opened and the
rain descended in blinding torrents.
Bomba was at a loss as to where to fly for shelter. His surroundings
were strange to him. He had slept in a thorn thicket that had protected
him from the inroad of wild beasts, but now offered little refuge from
the storm. He knew of no cave or native hut in the immediate vicinity.
While he hesitated, there was a rending crash above his head.
He leaped back, but not in time. A tree, as though uprooted by a
giant’s hand, crashed to the ground, bearing all before it.
Bomba felt himself flung through the air, was conscious of a piercing
pain in the back of his head, and then for a time knew nothing.
How long he lay pinioned beneath the branches of the tree, Bomba did
not know. But when he woke again to a knowledge of his surroundings he
found that the storm still raged through the jungle. His head ached
fiercely and he felt dizzy and sick.
His head was resting in something sticky and soft. Bomba thought
at first that it might be blood from his head, for he remembered a
terrific blow as he fell.
Both hands were imprisoned by the branches, but after considerable
effort he managed to free one of them. This he moved cautiously about
to the back of his head. There was a bump on it as big as an egg, but
he could discover no gash in the scalp.
His head then was not lying in a pool of blood. It was imbedded in the
thick oozy mud of a swamp.
By a great strain he lifted his head a trifle and heard the thick suck
of the ooze as it reluctantly released its prey.
Then did Bomba’s heart almost misgive him. He could reconstruct now
what had happened. The outflung branches of the tree had swept him over
the border of the treacherous ygapo near which he had been sleeping.
He lay now, half upon solid ground and half in the swamp. The branches
of the tree pinioned the lower part of his body, but his head and
shoulders rested in the thick muck. Then, with a thrill of horror, he
realized that he was sinking deeper. He knew how readily the ygapo
engulfed anything that ventured upon it.
Had his whole body lain in the ooze and had his unconsciousness
persisted much longer, he would already have been in so deep that to
extricate himself would have been impossible. But the solid ground
beneath the lower part of his body gave him a certain purchase, and he
strained to the utmost to raise his head and shoulders so as to make
their weight as light as possible.
His plight was desperate. The branches of the tree reached to his
shoulders. He could manage to use only his left hand and arm, for the
right one seemed to be numb. It had no sense of feeling. Bomba knew
that it must have received a hard blow, perhaps be broken.
With the free use of his machete he might have hacked a way through to
freedom, although even with the aid of the knife it would have been a
slow and painful process.
But the machete was in his belt near that right hand that had no sense
of feeling. To get at it with his left he would first have to break
away the branches that pressed so heavily upon his chest. And to do
this with his bare hands seemed impossible.
Bomba tried to hold his head above the ooze, raising it by the sheer
strength of his shoulders until the straining muscles could no longer
bear the weight. And when, groaning, he let his head sink back, the mud
sucked at it gloatingly.
“This, then, is the end of Bomba,” the lad muttered to himself
gloomily. “He would have liked to die on his feet, fighting. But he
must die here alone like any trapped beast of the jungle.”
The jungle! There lay the nub of his bitterness. Why should he be in
the jungle, he a white boy, whose rightful heritage of a life with his
own kind had been denied him by a cruel fate? Why did he not have a
home like that of Frank Parkhurst, a father who was proud of him, a
mother who loved him? Why had he been fated to have his life placed
every day in jeopardy? He had been cheated of what belonged to him
equally with every other boy of the white race.
“I shall never see Casson now, if he be still alive,” he murmured.
“Japazy, the half-breed, will die with the secret that I seek still
hidden in his heart.”
Then his anger at fate turned against himself.
“Bomba was a fool to sleep,” he gritted through his clenched teeth. “If
he had been awake, he would have seen the storm approaching and would
have found some cave or overhanging rock for shelter. Bomba is a fool
and deserves to die.”
He began tearing at the branches with his one free hand, though he knew
he could not lift that weight from his chest. He lifted his head and
tried to reach the twigs with his teeth. He was half mad with rage and
black despair.
Then, in a turning of his head, he saw a sight that chilled his blood.
His body became instantly as rigid as stone.
Not ten feet from him he saw a mass of coils that he recognized from
the markings as that of the Brazilian rattlesnake, the jararaca.
The mass lay almost motionless and, except for an occasional slight
heaving as from breathing, the reptile might have seemed dead. The
head was not visible.
Was it sleeping? Or had it perhaps been wounded, swept to that place as
Bomba had been by the branches of the tree?
If the reptile were sleeping, any movement of Bomba’s might wake it.
Even if it were wounded, it would certainly make an effort to destroy
the lad if it should discover him.
It seemed only a matter of dying in one way or another. Either the
snake or the swamp would bring him death. In either case his death
would be a horrible one.
Oh, if he were only on his feet, machete in hand!
There was a movement of the sluggish coils. Bomba watched them with a
horrid fascination, scarcely daring to breathe.
Gradually the coils unwound. The hideous triangular head came in sight.
The reptile looked slowly about as though deciding which way to go.
Then the snake saw Bomba!