The sun was sinking slowly when the plane appeared above the valley.
There was only jungle below. Jungle, and the languid river which now
flowed sluggishly into a wide and shallow pool in which drowned trees
formed a mass of substance neither land nor marsh nor river. The
river now contracted to a narrow space and showed signs of haste, and
even foaming water, and then again flowed placidly onward, sometimes
even a hundred yards in breadth. Shadows of the mountains to the west
were creeping toward the opposite hill-flanks, darkening the thick
foliage and sending flocks of flying things home to their chosen
roosts.
The sound of the plane was a buzzing noise, which grew louder to a
sharp drone as it seemed to increase in size, and became a dull
monotonous roar as it dipped toward the waters of the stream. It
floated downward, very gently, and circled as if regarding a certain
spot critically, and resumed its onward flight. Again it circled,
anxiously, now, as if the time for alighting were short.
It seemed to hesitate in mid-air, and dived, and circled up-stream and
came down the valley again. It sank, and sank, lower and lower, until
the white of its upper wings was hidden by the tall trees on either
side.
A _jabiru_ stork saw it from downstream, solemnly squatting on four
eggs which eventually would perpetuate the race. The _jabiru_ was
about forty feet above the water and had a clear view of the stream.
The stork squatted meditatively, with its long, naked neck projecting
above the edge of its nest.
* * * * *
The plane dipped ever lower, its reflection vivid and complete upon
the waveless stream below it. Ten feet above the water. Five--and
swift ripples from the rush of air disturbed the unbroken reflections
behind. It was almost a silhouette against the mirrored appearance of
the sunset sky. And then a clumsy-seeming boat body touched water with
a vast hissing sound, and settled more and more heavily, while the
speed of the plane checked markedly and its motors roared on
senselessly.
Then, abruptly, the plane checked and partly swung around. The
_jabiru_ half-rose from its eggs. The motors were bellowing wildly
again. As if tearing itself free, the plane sheered off from some
invisible obstacle, one of its wing tip floats splashed water wildly,
and, with the motors thundering at their fullest speed, it went toward
the shore with a dragging wing, like some wounded bird.
It beached, and the _jabiru_ heard a sudden dense silence fall. A man
climbed out of the boatlike body. He walked to the bow and dropped to
the shore. He peered under the upward slanting nose of the boat-thing.
The _jabiru_, listening intently, heard words.
Then, quite suddenly and quite abruptly, and generally with the
unostentatious efficiency with which Nature manages such things in the
tropics, night fell. It was dark within minutes.
* * * * *
The noise of Bell's scrambling back onto the deck of the amphibian's
hull could be heard inside the cabin. He opened the door and slipped
down inside.
"There ought to be some lights," he said curtly. "Ribiera did himself
rather well, as a rule."
He struck a match. Paula's eyes shone in the match-flame, fixed upon
his face. He looked about, frowning. He found a switch and pressed it,
and a dome-light came into being. The cabin of the plane, from a place
of darkness comparable to that of the jungle all about, became
suddenly a cosy and comfortable place.
"Well?" said Paula quietly.
Bell hesitated, and took a deep breath.
"We're stuck," he said wryly. "We must have struck a snag or perhaps a
rock, just under water. Half the bottom of the hull's torn out.
There's no hope of repair. If I hadn't given her the gun and beached
her, we'd have sunk in mid-stream."
Paula said nothing.
"Things are piling on us," said Bell grimly. "In the morning I'll try
to make a raft. We can't stay here indefinitely. I'll hunt for maps
and we'll try to plan something out. But I'll admit that this business
worries me--the plane being smashed."
* * * * *
He passed his hand harassedly over his forehead. To have escaped from
Rio was something, but since Paula had told him Ribiera's plans, it
was clearly but the most temporary of successes. Cabinet ministers are
not so commonplace but that the scandalous and horrifying crime that
was imputed to Bell and Paula would be printed in every foreign
country. Newspapers in Tokio would include the supposed murder in
their foreign news, and in Bucharest and even Constantinople it would
merit a paragraph or two. Assuredly every South American country would
discuss the matter editorially, even where The Master's deputies did
not order it published far and wide. There would be pictures of Bell
and of Paula, labeled with an infamy. In every town of all Brazil
their faces would be known, and those who were The Master's slaves
would hunt them desperately, and all honorable men would seek them for
a crime. Even in America there would be no safety for them. The Trade
does not exist, officially, and a member of the Trade must get out of
trouble as he can. As an accused murderer, Bell would be arrested
anywhere. As worse than a mere murderess, Paula....
She was watching his face.
"This morning," she said queerly, "you--you quoted '_Nil
desperandum_.'"
Bell ground his teeth, and then managed to smile.
"If I looked like I needed you say that," he said coolly, "I deserve
to be kicked. Let's look for something to eat, and count up our
resources. The thing to do is, when you fall down--bounce!"
He managed a nearly genuine grin, then, and to his intense amazement,
she sobbed suddenly and bent her head down and began to weep. He
stared at her in stupefaction for an instant, then swore at himself
for a fool. Her father....
* * * * *
Half an hour later he roused her as gently as he could. It was
helplessness, as much as anything else, that had made him leave her
alone; but a woman needs to weep now and then. And Paula assuredly had
excuse.
"Here's a cup of coffee," he said practically, "which you must drink.
You can't have had anything to eat all day. Have you?"
That question had haunted him too. She had been a prisoner in
Ribiera's house for half an hour, possibly more. And Ribiera had in
his possession, and used, a deadly, devilish poison from some unknown
noxious plant. Its victim took the poison unknowingly, in a morsel of
food or a glass of water or of wine. And for two weeks there was no
sign of evil. And then the poison drove its victim swiftly mad--unless
the antidote was obtained from Ribiera. And Ribiera administered the
antidote with a further dose of poison.
If Paula had eaten one scrap of food or drunk one drop of water while
Ribiera's captive....
She understood. She looked up suddenly, and read the awful anxiety in
his eyes.
"No. Nothing." She caught her breath and steadied herself with an
effort of the will. "I understand. You tried not to let me fear. But I
ate nothing, touched nothing. I have not that to fear, at least."
"Drink this coffee," said Bell, smiling. "Ribiera was a luxurious
devil. There's canned stuff and so on in a locker. He was prepared for
a forced landing anywhere. Flares and rockets will do us no good, but
there are a pair of machetes and a sporting rifle with shells. We
don't need to die for a bit, anyhow."
* * * * *
Paula obediently took the coffee. He watched her anxiously as she
drank.
"Now some soup," he urged, "and the rest of this condensed stuff. And
I've found some maps and there's a radio receiving outfit if--"
Paula managed to smile.
"You want to know," she said, "if I can endure listening to it. Yes.
I--I should not have given way just now. But I can endure anything."
Bell still hesitated, regarding her soberly.
"I've heard," he said awkwardly, "that in Brazil the conventions...."
She waited, looking at him with her large eyes.
"I hoped," said Bell, still more unhappily, "to find this place
Moradores, where you said you had some relatives. I hoped to find it
before dark. But before I landed I knew I'd missed it and couldn't
hope to locate it to-night. I thought--"
"You thought," said Paula, smiling suddenly, "that my reputation would
be jeopardized. And you were about to offer--"
Bell winced.
"Of course I don't mean to act like an ass," he said apologetically,
"but some people...."
"You forget," said Paula, with the same faint smile, "what the
newspapers will say of us, Senhor. You forget what news of us the
cables have carried about the world. I think that we had better forget
about the conventions. As the daughter of a Brazilian, that remark is
heresy. But did you know that my mother came from Maryland?"
"Thank God!" said Bell relievedly. "Then you can believe that I'm not
thinking exclusively of you, and maybe we'll get somewhere."
Paula put out her hand. He grasped it firmly.
"Right!" he said, more cheerfully than ever before. "Now we'll turn on
the radio and see what news we get."
* * * * *
Into the deep dark jungle night, then, a strange incongruity was
thrust. Tall trees loomed up toward the stars. A nameless little
stream flowed placidly through the night and, beached where
impenetrable undergrowth crowded to the water's edge, a big amphibian
plane lay slightly askew, while a light glowed brightly in its cabin.
More, from that cabin there presently emerged the incredible sound of
music, played in Rio for _os gentes_ of the distinctly upper strata of
society by a bored but beautifully trained orchestra.
The _jabiru_ stork heard it, and craned its featherless neck to stare
downward through beady eyes. But it was not frightened. Presently,
instead of music, there was a man's voice booming in the disconnected
sounds of human speech. And still the _jabiru_ was unalarmed. Like
most of the birds whose necks are bald, the _jabiru_ is a useful
scavenger, and so is tolerated in the haunts of men. And if man's
gratitude is not enough for safety, the _jabiru_ smells very, very
badly, and no man hunts his tribe.
* * * * *
Bell had been listening impatiently, when a sudden whining, whistling
noise broke into the program of very elevated music, played utterly
without rest. The sound came from the speaker, of course.
He frowned thoughtfully. The whistling changed in timbre and became
flutelike, then changed again, nearly to its original pitch and tone.
Paula was not listening. Her mind seemed very far away, and on
subjects the reverse of pleasurable.
"Listen!" said Bell suddenly. "You hear that whistle? It came on all
at once!"
Paula waited. The whistling noise went on. It was vaguely discordant,
and it was monotonous, and it was more than a little irritating. Again
it changed timbre, going up to the shrillest of squealings, and back
nearly to its original sound an instant later.
Bell began to paw over maps. The plane had been intended for flight
over the vast distances of Brazil, and there was a small supply of
condensed food and a sporting rifle and shells included in its
equipment. Emergency landing fields are not exactly common in the back
country of South America.
"Here," said Bell sharply. "Here is where we are. It must be where we
are! No towns of any size nearby. No railroad. No boat route. Nothing!
Nothing but jungle shown here!"
* * * * *
He frowned absorbedly over the problem.
"What is it?" asked Paula.
"Someone near," said Bell briefly. "That's another radio receiver, an
old fashioned regenerative set, sensitive enough and reliable enough,
but a nuisance to everyone but its owner--except when it's a godsend,
as it is to us."
The music ended, and a voice announced in laboriously classic
Portuguese, with only a trace of the guttural tonation of the
_carioca_, that the most important news items of the day would be
given.
Paula paled a little, but listened without stirring. The voice
read--the rustling of sheets of paper was abnormally loud--a bit of
foreign news, and a bit of local news, and then....
She was deathly pale when the announcement of her father's death was
finished, and she had heard the official view of the police
reported--exactly what Ribiera had told her it would be. When the
voice added that a friend of the late Minister of War, the Senhor
Ribiera, had offered twenty contos for the capture of the fugitive
pair, who had escaped in an airplane stolen from him, she bit her lip
until it almost bled.
* * * * *
"I know," he said abstractedly. "It's as you said. But listen to that
whistle."
The news announcement ceased. Music began again. The whistling
abruptly died away.
"I just found some coils," said Bell feverishly, "that plug in to take
the place of the longer-wave ones. I'm going to try them. It's a
hunch, and it's crazy, but...."
There were sharp clickings. The radio receiver was one of those
extraordinarily light and portable ones that are made for aircraft. In
seconds it was transformed into a short-wave receiver. Bell began to
manipulate the dials feverishly. Two minutes. Three. Four.
The speaker suddenly began to whine softly and monotonously.
"Regeneration," said Bell feverishly, "on a carrier-wave. It can't be
far off, that receiving set."
Suddenly a voice spoke. It was blurred and guttural. Infinitely
delicate adjustments cleared it up. And then....
Bell listened eagerly, at first in triumph, then in amazement, and at
last in a grim satisfaction. Reports from Rio on a short-wave band of
radio frequencies were passing from Ribiera to some other place
apparently inland. It was Ribiera's own voice, which quivered with
rage as he reported Bell's escape.
"_I do not think_," he snapped in Portuguese, "_that full details
should be spoken even on beam wireless. I shall come to the_ fazenda
_to-morrow and communicate with The Master direct. In the meantime I
have warned all sub-deputies in Brazil. I urge that all deputies be
informed and instructed as The Master may direct._"
* * * * *
Another voice replied that The Master would be informed. In the
meantime the deputy for Brazil was notified.
This list of bits of information chilled Bell's blood. This man, of
Venezuela, had been denied the grace of The Master by the deputy in
Caracas. He would probably use the passwords and demand the grace of
The Master of sub-deputies in the State of Para. To be seized and
Caracas informed. The deputy in Colombia desired that the son of
Colonel Garcia--upon a hunting-party with friends in the Amazon
basin--should be attached to the service of The Master. His father had
been so attached, and it was believed had smuggled a letter into the
foreign mail warning his son. If possible, that letter should be
intercepted. And from Paraguay the deputy requested that the family of
Senor Gomez, visiting relatives in Rio, should be induced to regard
the service of The Master as desirable....
The orders ceased abruptly. Ribiera acknowledged them. The whining
whistle cut off. And Bell turned to Paula very grimly indeed.
"Pretty, isn't it?" he asked in a vast calmness. "Apparently every
nation on the continent has some devil like Ribiera in charge of the
administration of this fiendish poison. Every republic has some fiend
at work in it. And they're organized. My God! They're organized! The
Master seems to supply them with the mixture of poison and its
antidote, and they report to him...."
* * * * *
Paula nodded.
"That was what my father had written down for you," she said quietly.
"Any man who can be lured to eat or drink anything these men have
prepared is lost. He gains no pleasure, as a drug might give. He is
entrapped into a lifetime of awful fear, knowing that a moment's
disobedience, a moment's reluctance to obey whatever command they
give, will cause his madness."
"I'm trying to think what we can work out of this," said Bell shortly.
"Some things are clear. There's a radio receiving set nearby, which
listened to those short-wave reports. Within five or six miles, at
most. We're going to find that to-morrow. And there's a central point,
a _fazenda_, where one may talk direct with The Master, whoever and
wherever he may be. And--judging by Ribiera--my guess is that The
Master has the same hold upon them that they have on their underlings.
Ribiera is too arrogant a scoundrel to make obsequious reports if he
were not afraid to omit them." He was silent for a moment, thinking.
Then he said abruptly, "Try to get some sleep, if you can. That pistol
of Ribiera's--you have it handy? Keep it where you can reach it in the
dark. I'm going to watch, though."
Paula settled herself comfortably, and looked queerly across the dimly
lit little cabin at him.
"My friend," she said with the faintest of quavering smiles, "Please
do not reassure me. I have the courage of endurance, at least. And--I
do not fear you."
* * * * *
It seemed to Bell, listening in the darkness that fell when he turned
off the switch, that she stayed awake for a long time. But when she
did sleep, she slept heavily.
Bell had a raft of canes afloat beside the amphibian when she waked.
He was sweat-streaked and bitten by many insects. He was tired, and
his clothes were rags. But the raft was nearly twenty feet long, it
would easily float two persons and what small supplies the plane
carried, and it could be handled by a long pole.
"Hullo," he said cheerfully when she climbed on top of the waterlogged
hull of the plane. "We're nearly ready to start off. I'm sorry I can't
advise you to try to refresh yourself in the river. There are some
fish in it that are fiends. One of them took a slice out of the side
of my hand."
"_Piranhas!_" she exclaimed, and was pale. "You should have known!"
_Piranhas_ are small fresh-water fish of the Brazilian rivers, never
more than a foot and a half long, which prove the existence of a
devil. Where they swarm in schools they will tear every morsel of
flesh from a swimmer's body as he struggles to reach shore, and leave
a clean-stripped skeleton of a mule or horse if an animal should essay
to swim a stream.
"I'll ask, next time," said Bell ruefully. "I'd planned a swim. But if
you'll fix some coffee while I finish up this raft, we'll get going. I
don't think we're far from some place or other. I heard what sounded
suspiciously like a motor boat, about dawn."
* * * * *
She looked at him anxiously.
"Of course," said Bell, smiling, "if the boat belonged to whoever
listened in on the Rio broadcast _and_ the short-wave news, he won't
be especially friendly, though he should be glad to see us. But I've
been studying the map, and I have a rather hopeful idea. Let's have
coffee."
He grinned as long as she was in sight, and when he went into the
cabin of the plane he seemed more cheerful still. But the idea of
floating down this nameless little jungle stream upon a raft of canes
was not one that he would have chosen. It was forced upon him. To
travel through the jungle itself was next to impossible with a girl,
especially as they were dressed for city streets and not at all for
battling with dense and thorn-studded undergrowth. And to stay with
the plane was obviously absurd. Sooner or later they had to abandon
it, though the moment they did desert it they would be encountering
not only the impersonal menace of the jungle, but the actual enmity of
all the human race. The raft was the only possibility.
* * * * *
It floated smoothly enough when they started off, with Bell working
inexpertly with his long pole to keep it in mid-stream. He was, of
course, acutely apprehensive. In country like this a rapid could be
expected anywhere. The jungle life loomed high above their heads on
either side, and the life of the jungle went on undisturbed by their
passage. Monkeys gaped at them and exchanged undoubtedly witty
comments upon their appearance. Birds flew overhead with raucous and
unpleasant cries. Toucans, in particular, made a most discordant din.
Once they disturbed a tiny herd of peccaries, drinking, which regarded
them pugnaciously and trotted sturdily out of sight as they came
abreast.
But for one mile, for two, the stream flowed smoothly. A third.... And
Paula pointed ahead in silence. A dug-out projected partly from the
shoreline. Bell wielded his long pole cautiously now, and drew closer
and ever closer to the stream bank. Paula pointed again. There was
even a small dock--luxury unthinkable in these wilds.
The raft touched bottom. And suddenly from somewhere out of sight
there came a horrible and a bestial sound. It was a scream of
blood-lust, of madness, of overpowering and unspeakable rage.
Following it came cackling laughter.
Paula went white.
"The _fazenda_," said Bell softly, "of the sub-deputy who was
listening in on Ribiera last night. And it sounds as if someone were
very much amused. Some poor devil...."
Paula shuddered.
"I'm going ashore," said Bell, smiling frostily. "There's nothing else
to do."