Bomba the jungle boy

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!”