THE SHOUT OF WARNING
This emotional outbreak on the part of Casson disturbed and puzzled
Bomba.
Before it, he remained inarticulate, dumb, though there stirred in
him a great longing to comfort his companion. The white men, he
thought, would have slapped him on the back and laughed and made him
feel better.
But Bomba could not do this. A strange embarrassment restrained him.
So he sat and looked at Casson and suffered with him and said nothing.
The storm was short-lived. Casson’s groping fingers unclenched, and a
long sigh shuddered through his frame.
Seeing this, Bomba gently turned him over, and, gathering some fallen
leaves, placed them as a cushion beneath Casson’s head.
“You wait and rest here,” he ordered. “I will go and get some herbs.”
This time Casson made no objection to his going. He seemed exhausted,
apathetic. His poor bruised mind no longer strove for memory. It was
doubtful that he even knew Bomba had left him.
The lad returned after a while with a handful of herbs. Over these he
poured some river water and set the pot upon a small heap made of a
few crossed sticks.
Bomba brought forth the precious supply of “fire sticks,” as he
mentally named the matches Gillis and Dorn had given him, intending
to light the fire with one of them.
With a feeling of great excitement he struck one upon a stone near
by. This had been, while in the white men’s camp, an ever recurrent
miracle, the quick spurt of flame that followed the scratching of
this strange little stick along a rough surface.
But to his astonishment and utter chagrin the fire stick failed him.
There was no response to his quick stroke upon the rock.
Bomba sat back upon his heels and regarded the match with frowning
attention. Here was something he could not understand. Under the
direction of the rubber-hunters, he had struck fire from the stick as
easily as they had themselves. What then was the matter now?
He tried another match and then another, but when they still failed
to give forth their magic fire, Bomba threw them from him with angry
violence.
With a grunt of disgust he had recourse to his old standbys of bowl
and stick, and soon had the fire going merrily.
Bomba was disturbed and worried by the incident. He could not know
that the matches had been ruined for the time during his swim in the
rushing waters of the river. Neither Gillis nor Dorn had thought to
tell him that water was bad for these queer fire sticks.
So Bomba reasoned that the fault must lie with him. He must have
lost his cunning since he had left the white man’s camp. In a vague
way he felt that he was sinking back again, back into that morass of
ignorance and loneliness from which his brief acquaintance with the
white men had inspired him with the wish to raise himself.
Was he white after all, except in the color of his skin? Had he not
lived in the jungle too long to hope to escape to that other and
mysterious one, so utterly different from the one in which he had
been brought up? He was sure that Gillis or Dorn could have struck
that match. How far he was below them! Would he ever be able to stand
on a plane with them?
But he dismissed these gloomy forebodings and turned to the work
at hand. The boiling herbs in the pot sent up a stifling, aromatic
odor. Bomba had learned the secret of herb medicine from Candido, a
poor half-witted caboclo who traveled from place to place living on
turtles’ eggs and fish and such game as he could manage to bring down
with his arrows.
Candido was the only native who had ever shown any friendliness
toward Bomba. He had told the boy the secret of the herb medicine,
and had taught him where to search for the spindly little plant along
the river’s edge.
Since then this primitive medicine had served as Bomba’s stock remedy
for all the ills of Casson and himself. It had remarkable healing and
tonic qualities. Bomba had once taken it internally for snake bite,
and since he had not died, believed implicitly ever afterward in the
panacea of Candido, the half-witted caboclo.
So now, when it had acquired the proper consistency, he made a leaf
cup and poured some of the steaming liquid into it. Lifting Casson
to a sitting position, he put the primitive cup to his lips and
commanded that he drink.
“You will feel good,” he declared, and Casson obediently swallowed
the dose.
Casson shortly afterward seemed greatly revived. He insisted on
sitting up, his back propped against a tree. From this vantage point
he watched Bomba as the boy prepared to clear away the ruins of the
fire.
The jungle boy worked hard and fast. It was no easy task to clear
away the débris, much of it still hot and smouldering, and night was
coming on. Later he would rebuild the damaged side of the hut. For
the present it was sufficient that he arrange some sort of bed for
Casson and build a fire that would keep the prowling beasts of the
forest at a safe distance.
While he worked, Bomba could feel the wistful eyes of Casson upon
him. He knew that the old naturalist was again groping, trying to
swing open that “closed door” in his mind.
The work was done at last. Leaves and branches for a bed had been
dragged within the hut. The fire was built far enough from the cabin
not to endanger it, but still close enough to warn off nocturnal
marauders.
Bomba went for water to the stream that flowed back of the dwelling,
and, returning, set the pot once more upon the fire, this time to
prepare the evening meal.
There was no food about the place, for Bomba had brought none back
from his trip to the white man’s camp. He was about to go into
the forest, weary as he was, in search of some sort of game, when
Casson’s faint voice called to him.
“There are turtle eggs,” he said. “I found them this afternoon when
I was watching the ciganas, those big brown birds with the splendid
crowns. They are there, the eggs, beyond that large flat stone.”
He pointed to the cache where he had concealed the spoils of the
afternoon.
Gratefully, Bomba seized upon the eggs and plunged them into the
boiling water. Turtle eggs were ever a luxury for the jungle-bred
palate.
When they were ready, Bomba brought them to Casson, and the two sat
cross-legged upon the ground to eat the simple repast.
Bomba was tired and ravenous. He consumed several of the eggs in
jungle fashion by clipping off the tops and then squeezing the shell
in both hands until yolk and white were forced through the opening.
It was some time before his appetite was sufficiently appeased to
permit of conversation.
Then he said to Casson:
“Why did you stay inside the hut when it was in flames? If I had not
come just when I did, you would have been burned to death.”
Casson nodded and passed a hand across his forehead in bewildered
fashion.
“That is what puzzles me,” he said. “I had walked so far through the
jungle that I was very tired, and flung myself down to rest. I must
have fallen asleep, and when I woke the hut was full of smoke. I
guessed what had happened at once, and tried to rise to make my way
from the place. But there was no strength in me——”
“The smoke made you blind?” suggested Bomba.
“No.” Again that pitiful gesture of bewilderment. “My brain was
clear. I was not dazed, as though from the smoke. It was weakness. I
could not move. I knew that unless you came and rescued me, I must
lie there and be burned.”
Bomba pondered this, brow furrowed. He was greatly worried about
Casson. The old man must be weaker than he had thought. Bomba must
take good care of him.
And this led him to speak of the Indians, the thought of whom had
been driven from his mind by the excitement of the fire.
“It is not safe for you to go far into the jungle,” he warned the old
man. “The head-hunters have come from the Giant Cataract. They will
kill you if they find you when I am not there.”
Casson shrugged his shoulders. He had long since ceased to regard his
life of great value.
“I am not afraid,” he said simply.
“But I am afraid for you,” said Bomba. “They have bad hearts. Some in
their tribe have been sick and some have died. They say you do this.
They say if they kill you, their men and women will not be sick.”
Casson smiled faintly.
“They are foolish men,” he said. “I have never done harm to anyone.
I would rather do them good if I could.”
“I know,” said Bomba. “I said that to one of them. I told him you
were a brother, a good man. But he would not listen. The medicine man
has said that you must die.”
Still Casson’s interest was only slight.
“They are like children,” he replied. “They think one thing to-day
and another thing to-morrow. Then, too, they come from far off, and
they do not know this part of the jungle. They might search for
months and not find us.”
Such optimism made Bomba desperate. What could he do against the
listless indifference of one who cared but little whether he lived or
died?
“They do not know where we are,” he admitted; “but the caboclos who
live here know. They may catch one of them and hurt him and tell him
they will kill him if he does not tell them where we live. Then he
will tell them.”
“Well, suppose he does?” sighed Casson wearily. “And suppose they
come? We will do our best. We can do no more. Maybe we can talk to
them and show them how foolish they are. If we have to fight, we will
do that. If they kill us we cannot help it.”
But this calm fatalism was by no means to Bomba’s liking. Life ran
strong in his veins, and he was determined to preserve it as long as
possible.
“Listen,” he said. “I will make this house as strong as I can. I will
pile rocks against the walls. And there is the boat in the stream
behind the hut. If you hear them coming or see signs of them in the
jungle, get into the boat and row down the river. They will have no
boats. And the river leaves no tracks. I will learn how to use the
fire stick. It will frighten them, if they hear it. Maybe they will
think that we have magic and will go away.”
They were but slender props on which the boy leaned, but his stout
heart did not quail at the odds against him. The life in the
jungle—the jungle itself—was always against him, but his quick
wit and unfailing courage had brought him through so far, and he
dauntlessly faced the future.
For a long time after this the man and the boy sat in silence. Casson
was wandering in some vague land of his own. Bomba kept repeating to
himself over and over the words that had fallen from the old man’s
lips, “Bartow” and “Laura.”
What had Casson meant? What had he been upon the point of telling?
Bomba did not know. But he was sure of one thing—that he would never
forget those two words. Some day, perhaps, he would find out what
they meant. But how? Would that closed door in Casson’s mind open?
Would the jungle boy have to search for the knowledge he craved in
the outside world—the world of the white men?
Bomba slept fitfully that night. Several times he was up to replenish
the fire. Only toward morning did he fall into a heavy sleep.
He was aroused at last by a cry from Casson—a cry of fear and horror.
Another shout, this time of warning, from the old man:
“Bomba!”