  Could Johnny have witnessed the dismay and confusion caused by his sudden escape he would have felt far less concerned over his present plight. The first eager pursuers crashed wildly about in the jungle, rushing forward at every sound only to discover that it was made by another hunter instead of the hunted. Their shouts brought other men pouring from the huts and a half score of dogs, who jumped about and added to the din with their senseless yelping. Daego shouted directions, but his shouts were either unheard or not clearly understood. Then he made an attempt to set the dogs on Johnny’s trail. There were dogs a-plenty to overtake Johnny and slay him but for one thing—dogs are never eager to enter a tropical jungle. Unaccompanied by his master, the native dog seldom goes far into that tangled mass of vegetation. There are reasons enough for this. Poisonous snakes, ten feet long, lurk in the decay at the base of great trees. Jaguars, prepared to pounce upon a dog, lie flat along great branches, and the uncouth “mountain cow” (tapir) is all too ready to tear him to pieces with her sharp hoofs. So, though urged on by their enraged masters, the dogs did not venture far and soon enough came crawling back, their defeat registered by drooping tails. So Johnny Thompson was safe. And yet, was he safe? As the dull agony of exhaustion left him, he began, in a slow, numb sort of way, to remember where he was. He was in a tropical jungle. It was early dusk and the coming night would be made hideous by the barking of alligators, the scream of wild parrots and the hoarse call of jaguars. To move down the trail after darkness would be dangerous. Curled on that trail might be a great snake whose fangs offered sure death. Further movement might call a jaguar to leap upon him from the tree tops. On the other hand, if he went forward on this trail he might come to water. Already his throat was parched, his tongue swollen. Then, too, a small stream meant a certain amount of protection and a possible fire. He had matches in his pocket, a small box of them. As he thought of these he wrapped them in his handkerchief for safer keeping. Then of a sudden a more terrible realization came to him. Not only was he in a tropical jungle, but he was lost. “Lost!” he whispered in an awed tone. “Lost!” “Lost!” the strange rustle of palms seemed to answer back. It was true, must be true. Hardgrave, who had spent years in the jungle, had warned him: “Don’t ever dare to enter that jungle without a guide, not to go even a few rods. If you do, you’re lost.” “Rods,” Johnny repeated, “I’ve gone miles!” As he thought of it now, he realized that he must have crossed scores of these low, criss-crossings paths. Should he will to attempt it, he could not in a thousand days find his way back to Daego’s clearing over that dry sponge-like patch. “Nor any other place,” he told himself. “I’m lost! Lost!” At first the thought left him so weak that he could not move. But in time strength and courage came flooding back. He was young, strong, resourceful. There was a way out. He would find it. Daego was doubtless at this moment sitting in his cabin smoking cigarets and contemplating the day when he would move across the river and take charge of Johnny’s deserted camp. “That will never be!” Johnny told himself, setting his teeth hard. To his surprise, as his hand went to his knee he found his clothing wet. “Must have crossed some small stream and in my wild fear, never knew it. No more of that. I’ll be calm. I must be calm—and I must think clearly.” “A stream,” he mused, “means water for drinking and a place of greater safety. What’s more,” he exclaimed, attempting to spring to his feet only to be tossed back by closely woven vines and branches, “that means a way out. A small stream flows into a large one; the larger one into one still larger, and in time one comes to Rio Hondo, the old Black River. There I might find a rotting native cabin and perhaps a dugout for floating down to my camp. But first I must find the beginning. There is a beginning to all things.” He contemplated the gathering darkness. There was yet a little time. Which way should he go? He shuddered at the thought of going back. There seemed to be an equally good chance ahead. So, slowly, always with an eye out for those terrible snakes, he crept forward into the gathering gloom. As time went on he struggled forward, and as the darkness deepened it seemed to him that he must, Tarzan-like, spend the night in some great mahogany or Santa Maria tree. The thought was depressing. His throat ached from thirst. There were jaguars in the trees. Exhausted as he was, he might fall asleep and plunge from the tree to his death. As this thought came near to a conviction and when hope had all but fled, he rounded a sudden turn in the trail and his eyes were half blinded by a light which was much brighter than the gloom to which his eyes had been accustomed. The light was at the spot where the bush and the trail appeared to end,—a distance of less than a hundred yards. What could it mean? Had fate played a trick on him? Had he followed a circle in the jungle, only to return to Daego’s camp? Was this some other clearing? If so, whose could it be? For a moment he remained there motionless, staring. Then, with a speed born of sudden hope and maddening fear, he sprinted forward toward the light. Even as he moved forward the light faded, and night, such night as only the jungle knows, settled down over all. Driven half mad by this sudden fading of his dreams, throwing all caution aside, Johnny rushed straight on until, with a sudden gasp, he threw himself backward. One foot had plunged into water. In another second he would have pitched head-foremost into some stream; what stream he could not know. The thing he did know very soon was that out in the water some little distance away gleamed two red balls. “The eyes of an alligator,” he murmured. “Well, anyway, here is water.” He drank greedily. As he attempted to pierce the darkness about him, he was able to guess what it was that had caused the unusual light. The sky, dimly visible through overhanging branches, was filled with black clouds. There had come, without doubt, one of those last sudden flashes of sunsets which gleam out, then are lost forever. This light shining upon the water had been dazzling in its intensity. Because of its very intensity the following darkness had appeared quite complete. Once his eyes had become accustomed to the feeble light, Johnny was able to distinguish some of the black bulks about him. Downstream, hanging far over the water, was a palm. Upstream he caught the dim outline of some dull gray masses. “Rocks, I hope,” he murmured as he moved slowly in that direction. There was now reason enough for caution. Sharp-nosed alligators of these streams sometimes slept on the banks. To disturb one was to invite disaster. To break a twig or make any other unusual sound might be to call other wild creatures to attack him. So, parting the branches with great care, he moved on cautiously until with a grateful heart he put a hand out to touch a huge rough boulder. Mounted upon this heap of rough rocks, of which there were five, each as large as a sleeping elephant, he breathed more freely. “Now for a little fire,” he thought. “All wild things fear fire.” It was not long until the stream, which appeared to be some twenty feet wide at this point, was lighted by the blazing flames of quick burning palm leaves. Sudden as was the blaze, even more sudden was its fading. Looking away from the red glow of coals, Johnny tried to peer into the dense darkness that followed. He could distinguish only the red gleam of eyes. They were all about him; upon the water, on the bank, in the tree tops. Monkeys, fierce black little creatures, chattered from the tallest trees. From the ground sounded many odd grunts, which the boy could not interpret. Coming down the river, like a dimly lighted floating burial procession, were the silent alligators. “It’s all very strange and—and somewhat spooky,” he told himself. With a shudder he seized a dully glowing brand and, having fanned it into flame, went boldly forth in search of wood. This time he would gather more substantial material. His fire must last longer, much longer, for somehow he must snatch a little sleep. Waving his firebrand before him in one hand, he gathered fuel with the other. Some dead ferns and palm branches, the fallen branch of a black tamarind, the half rotted stem of a yamra, some large branches of a tree quite unknown to him, all these would send the light of his fire gleaming out into the night for hours to come. Soon, with his fire glowing cheerily, he settled down on a chair-like rock crevice and with head bent forward, hands hanging down before him, every muscle relaxed, he tried to induce sleep to come. It did not come at once. His mind worked on. Across its silver screen there passed a long procession of pictures. The trip up the river, the wild forest, the dark Caribs all about him, the silent black river, Daego seated before the table, money, twenty thousand dollars fluttering before him, the surprised look of the Spaniards as the table tore through the wall, then the jungle, the terrible uncertain jungle with its wild perils and its noisesome nights. Then, as will happen when half thoughts and half dreams come, the reel changed. He was sitting with old Hardgrave, his friend who had seen sixty-eight summers, twenty-five of them in the tropics. In the cool shade of the hotel porch at Belize the old man was showing him a crudely drawn map and was pointing to a spot on that map. “If you ever get to that spot,” he seemed to hear him say, “you’ll find Indian gods. I have seen them. Three of them, a black one, a blue one, and one of pure gold. I don’t say you’ll come back to tell anyone about it,” the old man smiled a queer smile. “They say it’s dangerous to go up there and I reckon it is. Truth is, no one knows the way there and back. It’s up in the bush somewhere. That’s all anyone knows. It’s all I know, and I’ve been there once. “You may be sure I didn’t mean to go there,” he reminisced. “They found me sick with a fever, the Indians did, and carried me to their village in the bush and cured me up. Wanted me to stay on with them. Seemed to sort of take a liking to me. I told them I wouldn’t. “At first they said I didn’t have any choice in the matter. Took me to see some bones, human bones. White man’s bones I’d say from the size of them. Then they took me back to the village. “Something changed their minds, though. I don’t know what. One day they blindfolded me and took me through the bush and downstream for a whole day. When my eyes were uncovered I found myself in a dugout on a part of the Rio Hondo that I knew. “So, Johnny,” he added with a rare smile, “if you really want some Maya gods, you just hunt that place up. They’ve got some black ones, and some that are green, and at least one of pure gold.” Johnny did want one or two of these Maya Indian gods. A very good friend had asked him to bring back one or two for his collection. He had promised to perform this commission. “I had no notion they were so hard to get,” he told himself now. “It would be strange if I should stumble upon those Mayas up here somewhere,—strange and rather startling. “Black gods and green ones, and at least one of pure gold,” he repeated, half asleep. Then of a sudden he started up. His fire was burning low. After throwing on a fresh supply of fuel, he thought more clearly of the consequences if he should fall into the hands of these strange bush people. He was not at all sure that, once they had found him, they would allow him to return. “And then,” he thought, “our camp would fall into the hands of Daego unless—unless Pant were strong enough and resourceful enough to hold his own against that wily half-caste rascal. “Poor Pant,” he murmured, “what will he think when I don’t return? I hope he doesn’t start a big fight right off the bat. He must not. I must return. Somehow I must get back. I’ll do it, too! See if I don’t! I’ll make some sort of raft and float down this stream from nowhere to somewhere.” At that he fell asleep and, as the fire burned low, the glow of eyes from the river, in the trees, on the ground, moved closer and ever closer. |
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