FROM OUT THE FLAMES
In a few bounds Bomba was close beside the blazing hut.
As he rushed forward he shouted hoarsely:
“Casson! Casson! Where are you?”
A groan was his only answer. But it was enough, for it told him that
his only friend and comrade was entrapped within. Already he might
have been burned beyond any possibility of rescue.
Bomba acted quickly. The cloth about his body had been saturated
during his progress through the swamp. This he tore from him and
swiftly bound it about his nose and mouth. For this much he knew—that
to inhale that writhing, forked-tongue demon men called fire meant
certain death.
To adjust the cloth took but a few seconds. Gathering his wiry
muscles beneath him, he sprang for the flame-filled doorway of the
hut.
For a moment it seemed to him that the whole world was an inferno of
flame. His flesh was seared by the terrific heat.
Then he was through it! The interior of the hut was filled with
smoke, the heat almost unbearable. Bomba’s eyes were smarting,
blinded. He could only grope about, stumbling, calling to Casson in a
strange, cracked voice.
He almost gave up hope. He decided that Casson and he must perish
there together. Then his groping fingers touched something that moved
and groaned.
Could he get Casson outside the hut before the flimsy walls of it
collapsed, burying both of them in the burning debris?
Even as Bomba asked himself the question, he gathered the wasted form
of Casson in his strong young arms.
Choking, blinded, staggering, he stumbled with his burden in the
direction he thought the doorway would be. He came in violent contact
with a wall, and was almost flung down with his helpless burden.
His lungs fairly begging for a breath of air, eyes smarting
agonizingly with smoke, he regained his balance and struggled on.
He pressed Casson’s nose and mouth close against the cloth that
covered his own and groped forward until at last he found the doorway
of the hut. A moment’s pause, a gathering of forces, then a mad
plunge through the devouring flame into the open air beyond.
Bomba laid Casson on the ground at a safe distance from the blazing
structure, and with a swift motion tore the cloth from his own nose
and mouth. This, which had begun to scorch from the frightful heat,
he flung to the ground and trampled upon with his sandaled feet.
Then he passed a hand over his smarting, tear-filled eyes, and bent
to examine Casson.
The old naturalist was conscious, and looked up at the boy with a
pleading look.
“I’m all right,” he panted, his breath coming painfully. “Never mind
me. Save the hut.”
Weak as he was, he half-raised himself on his elbow and stared wildly
at the hut, the only home he knew.
Bomba with one hand pushed the old man back not ungently on the
ground.
“Bomba will put out fire,” he said, in the soothing tones one would
use to a frightened child. “You sit quiet, Casson. Watch.”
Without further delay, Bomba, set to work to save the threatened
habitation that had sheltered him and his companion for so many years.
Luckily, the bulk of the fire was thus far confined to one part of
the hut. Bomba picked up a bucket, used by Casson and himself to
boil the game that the boy’s hunting expeditions brought back to the
cabin.
With this he worked like a madman, carrying water from a stream
that ran a few yards in the rear and dashing it over the untouched
portions of the hut.
When this was thoroughly saturated, he began work with his machete
tearing down one flaming wall and then beating out the fire with a
huge palm-leaf broom that Casson had used to keep the interior neat.
It was hard and discouraging work. More than once Bomba felt that he
was fighting a losing battle. Not only was the hut in danger of being
destroyed, but the jungle to the rear of it was threatened.
Many of the trees near by were rubber trees, and this thought helped
to spur Bomba to renewed activity. Those were the kind of trees
that Gillis and Dorn had been seeking—seeking for the Apex Rubber
Corporation, whatever that might mean.
Bomba had no idea of the millions of rubber trees there must be in
the length and breadth of the Amazonian jungle. All he knew was that
the white men regarded them as precious. Very well then, he would
guard these from fire until Gillis and Dorn should come to claim
them. It was good to be able to do something for these white men who
had been so good to him.
So to save the trees as well as his home, he toiled on with dogged
persistence, while Casson watched him with feverish, half-wild eyes.
It was a long time coming, but victory came at last. Half of the hut
had been torn or burned away and the last smoldering spark had been
extinguished.
Tired, his brown skin scorched in a dozen places, the boy flung
himself down beside Casson, panting.
“You see,” he said, his bright eyes full of triumph, “Bomba did not
let the fire touch the rubber trees.”
Casson looked puzzled.
“Rubber trees?” he repeated vaguely.
“Back there,” said Bomba, with a wave of his hand. “White men want
rubber trees. They hunt them with the caboclos. I save some for them.”
There was a boyish elation in his tone that penetrated even Casson’s
bewildered senses. He put out a wavering hand to Bomba, and for the
first time noticed how badly the boy was burned.
“You will blister,” he said.
Bomba looked down indifferently at his bronzed skin.
“Yes,” he returned. “You are burned, too.”
Without further speech, he rose silently and disappeared in the
jungle. He reappeared a short time later, carrying handfuls of the
river mud. This he smeared thickly over Casson’s hands and face,
tearing open the tattered shirt of the old naturalist to see if his
chest was burned.
Then he vanished again, to return with more mud which he spread over
his own burns. Then he sat down beside the old man for a few minutes
of well-earned rest.
“The hut is bad,” he said, after a few moments of contemplation. “It
is almost half gone. I will fix it.”
Cody Casson made no reply.
He was a frail old man, bent with the weight of what seemed at least
seventy years. He had a finely shaped head and features that must
have once been pleasing, though now deeply seamed with the wrinkles
of exposure and hardship. His expression was kindly and benignant.
His eyes were blue and had once been clear and penetrating, though
now they had the bewildered vacuous look that comes to the half
demented.
As he sat there now he seemed to be puzzling over something.
Presently he looked up at Bomba with an expression that the boy knew
well, having seen it there many times before.
The aged man was trying to remember, trying to recall something
concerning past events of his own life of which Bomba knew nothing.
“You said”—Casson spoke slowly and painfully as though trying to
force his thoughts to keep pace with his words—“you said something
about—white men. You mean—what did you mean?”
A curious shyness fell on Bomba. He could not tell Cody Casson all
that was in his mind concerning these white men, could not explain
to him the vague but enchanting vistas this chance meeting with
his kind had opened up to him. How could he explain to another
what he could hardly explain to himself? He was a creature of the
wild, inarticulate, feeling the more deeply because he had no words
adequate to express his thoughts.
Questioned now by Casson, he could give only the bare facts
concerning his encounter with the rubber hunters, how he had made his
way to them following the report of the iron stick, how he had helped
them fight off the hungry jaguars, and how subsequently they had
presented him with the harmonica, the matches, and the revolver.
He exhibited these treasures with great pride, and even played a few
weird and mournful notes on the harmonica.
“This,” he lifted the revolver carefully in one brown hand, “they
said you would show me how to use. They told me something about it.
It is like your iron stick. It shoots blue fire and a thing they call
a cartridge. See, they gave me some of them,” and with face eager and
eyes glowing he brought forth the boxes of ammunition.
Casson was staring at the jungle boy in a queer, half-fascinated way.
Bomba was frightened. He broke off in the midst of what he was saying
and timidly touched the arm of the old man.
“You are sick?” he asked anxiously. “I will go to the ygapo and bring
back herbs.”
He was half-way to his feet when Casson’s nervous grip on his arm
halted him.
“No, no! I am not sick!” he cried. “You are a white boy, as white as
those men are. You should not be living here, buried in the jungle.
All right for an old man, all right for—old—Casson.” The disjointed
sentence wavered into silence.
Bomba regarded the old man eagerly, anxiously. In his heart a strange
excitement was throbbing. Was the door that at times had been partly
opened to be swung wide at last? Was he to learn something about—what
strange words had the white men used?—“folks,” “relations”?
That he was white he had known for a long time and secretly exulted
in it. But what did it mean to be white?
Primarily he knew that it referred to the color of the skin. His
was different from that of the caboclos that ranged the rivers,
different from that of the Indians who lived in the heart of the
jungle.
But it must mean more than that. To be white meant not only to look
different, but to act differently, to think differently, to live
differently. What inner thing was it that made those who wore white
skin for a covering, like himself and Casson and Gillis and Dorn,
different from the brown or copper-skinned natives?
It was a problem too deep for Bomba, a problem that perplexed while
it fascinated. Instinctively he knew that Cody Casson had the answer,
or at least that he had possessed it in the days before the explosion
of the fire stick.
The boy turned to the naturalist with a movement animal-like in its
swiftness. He wanted to question him, to find out the truth, but he
did not know how to begin.
But Cody Casson, groping in his mind, spoke suddenly of his own
accord.
“I try to remember,” he muttered while Bomba bent closer to him,
anxious to let not a word escape. “I try, but something closes like a
door in my mind, locking me out, locking me out——”
It was pitiable to see him trying to goad his poor twisted brain
into action. Bomba sat as though carved in stone, fearing that any
movement on his part might hinder the revelation that seemed on the
brink of utterance.
Casson began again, the words coming more quickly and with feverish
intensity.
“It is for you I want to remember, Bomba; for you! I owe it to you.
I am trying to think, trying—the door again—Bomba, help me to push
back the door. There, I almost had it! Bartow—push, push hard,
Bomba—trying to remember—Laura, dear sweet Laura—Oh, I can’t! I
can’t! The door is shut. Gone—gone——”
The last word was a shriek.
With a groan of despair, Cody Casson turned over on his face, thin,
veined hands outflung to clutch the jungle growth, his form convulsed
with a passion of sobs.