Bomba the jungle boy

Through the air whizzed a gleaming, long, razor-edged knife that buried itself in the jaguar’s throat!

The stricken jaguar landed on the spot where but a moment before, Gillis and Dorn had stood, and sprawled out in a heap. It made one or two frantic digs at its throat in the attempt to dislodge the machete. But it had gone deep and the beast’s efforts were unavailing. A few convulsive struggles, and it was dead.

Amazed at this sudden end of their foe, the men approached it cautiously and prodded it with the butts of their guns. But there was no movement. The knife had done its work effectively.

Dorn’s eyes caught sight of the handle of the weapon, and he stooped down and drew it out, though he had to tug hard to get it. He held it up before his astonished companion.

“How did this get there?” asked Gillis.

“It is mine,” said Bomba, coming up and reaching out his hand to reclaim it.

“Yours?” demanded Dorn. “Why, you weren’t near enough to stab the beast!”

“I threw it,” said Bomba, wiping the knife on the grass and slipping it back into his belt.

“G—great Scott!” stuttered Dorn. “He—he threw it!”

“And threw it as straight as he shot the arrow!” ejaculated Gillis. “And with so much force that you had all that you could do to draw it out. Boy, you’re a wonder! You saved the life of one or both of us!”

“I was glad to help you,” said Bomba, showing all his white teeth in a happy smile. “But now we must put the jaguars near the edge of the woods where the others will see them.”

“What’s the idea?” queried Gillis. “So that they can’t feast on them and not be so hungry after us?”

“No,” said Bomba. “The others will not eat them. They fight and kill each other when they are angry, but they do not eat one another. But when the live ones see these dead ones, they will know that this place is not good for jaguars, and they will go away.”

“Sounds reasonable,” said Gillis. “But whether the plan works or not, what this boy says goes. I’m frank to confess that he’s got me buffaloed. If he hadn’t been here to-night, you and I would have been dead men, Dorn.”

“He’s saved the camp all right,” assented Dorn, as he directed some of the natives to drag the heavy bodies to the places that Bomba indicated.

That the sight of their dead kindred daunted whatever other jaguars might have intended to make an onslaught on the camp, seemed clear as time went on. The jungle was vocal, as it always is at night, with the strident notes of insects, the howling of monkeys, and now and then the distant bellow of an anaconda.

But the jaguars seemed to have taken themselves off. Bomba’s keen ears could no longer detect the subdued growling and purring of the four-footed raiders, the soft thud of their padding feet. Nor were his nostrils conscious of their presence.

After a full hour had passed, he relaxed his tense attitude, stretched, and yawned.

“They have gone,” he announced.

“Are you sure?” asked Gillis, eagerly.

“They have gone,” repeated Bomba. “And they will tell the others. They will not come back. I will sleep.”

“Go to it, my boy,” said Dorn. “You’ve earned it, if ever anyone did. I don’t know what we’d have done without you.”

“Our name would have been Dennis,” declared Gillis.

“I thought your name was Gillis,” said Bomba wonderingly.

“It is,” was the laughing reply. “I keep forgetting that you don’t know our slang. I mean our name would have been mud—there I go again. What I mean to say is that we would have been killed if you had not been here.”

Bomba made up his mind that he would remember these new words so that he could talk like the white men. He already had a precious collection, “goat,” “mud,” “Dennis,” “shindig.” And there had been others, too, that he would try to recall. He would tell them to Casson and show him how much he had learned. But just now he was very sleepy.

“I’ll get you some blankets to lie on,” said Gillis.

“No,” said Bomba, “I will sleep this way.”

He threw himself down on the ground near the fire, and in a moment was fast asleep.

But there was no sleep just then for Gillis or Dorn. They were too wrought up by the dreadful experiences through which they had gone to close their eyes. So they sat with their rifles on their knees until the first faint tinge of dawn showed in the east. Then they knew that the danger was past, for that night at least, and after summoning a couple of natives and placing them on watch, they threw themselves wearily on their blankets in a sleep of utter exhaustion.

Bomba was the first to awake, and for a moment found it hard to realize where he was. He sat up, looked around, and caught sight of the bodies of the jaguars. Then all the events of the stirring night came back to him.

He had borne himself well in circumstances that might have made grown men quail. He had met death face to face, and it had been a matter of touch and go whether he would escape unscathed. But the fortune that favors the brave had been with him, and he had not a scratch. He had trapped the cooanaradi. He had slain one jaguar and foiled the others. It was natural that he should be filled with a feeling of exultation.

But far above the satisfaction at his own safety was that which came from the thought that he had saved the white men. Without him, they would surely have been doomed! He had established his right to be regarded as a brother. He had vindicated his white skin.

In twenty-four hours he had gone far. A new world had opened before him. He had crossed a chasm that separated him from his own race. He had realized some of the dreams, answered some of the questions, solved some of the mysteries that for a long time past had been tormenting him.

But he realized that he still had far to go. How much these white men knew! In what a different world they moved! How far superior they seemed to him! How ignorant he was, compared to them!

But he would learn. He would ask Casson. Casson must know all the things the other white men knew. And then his heart sank, as he realized that Casson seemed to have forgotten all or almost all that he had ever known. There was little help to be expected from the man with whom Bomba lived.

He was engrossed in these meditations when Gillis opened his eyes. They fell on Bomba, and recollection came into them.

“How does our hero feel this morning?” asked Gillis, with a genial smile.

“What is a hero?” asked Bomba, with his usual directness.

“Why, you fill the bill as well as anyone I ever saw,” returned Gillis. “A hero is a man or boy who isn’t afraid.”

“But I was afraid last night,” said Bomba.

“I guess we all were,” remarked Gillis. “Well then, a hero is one who, even if he is afraid, doesn’t let fear get the best of him, but fights on and makes up his mind to keep on fighting till he dies. And that’s what you’d have done last night if it had come to that. But it’s getting pretty late, and we’ll have to get a move on.”

He shook Dorn awake, gave some orders to the natives, and soon the camp was alive with preparations for breakfast.

This time Bomba took his knife and fork at the outset, and was gratified to note that he could already handle them much better than he had on the night before.

“Well, now, my boy,” said Gillis, after they had enjoyed a hearty meal, “we’ll have to be packing and getting on our way. As we told you last night, we’d like nothing better than to have you go along with us. Still think you can’t, eh?”

“I should like to go,” replied Bomba, and the look in his eyes was much more eloquent than words. “But Casson is old and sick. He has been good to me. I have to get his food for him. He would die if I should go.”

“That settles it then, of course,” said Gillis regretfully. “But don’t you think, my boy, that we’re going to forget you. We owe you too much for that. Either we’ll come back, or we’ll send someone else to get you and Casson out of this jungle and bring you where you belong. In the meantime, we want to do something to show you how grateful we are. You saved our lives, and we want to do something for you.”

“You do not have to give me anything,” said Bomba, simply. “I was glad to help you.”

“All the same, you’ll have to take something,” put in Dorn. “The question is, what shall it be? The boy can get all the food he wants, and I don’t suppose he has any use for money.”

“What is money?” asked Bomba.

The men laughed.

“About the most important thing in the world outside this jungle,” said Gillis. “This is money,” and he took a gold piece from his pouch and spun it on the rude board that served as a table.

“It is pretty,” said Bomba.

“A good many people think so,” remarked Gillis, dryly. “Some would sell their soul for it.”

“What is a soul?” asked Bomba.

“You’re getting in deep, Gillis,” laughed Dorn.

“I sure am with this animated interrogation mark,” returned his comrade. “The soul is the best part of us, the part that makes men good and wise and brave, that makes them different from the animals.”

“Have I got a soul then?” asked Bomba.

“You sure have,” replied Gillis. “And one of the best, if you ask me. But we’re getting off the subject. We want to give you something that you would like to have. I wonder what it would be.”

His eyes roved about and caught sight of a harmonica that lay in one of the packs they had brought along for trading with the natives.

“How would you like this?” he asked of Bomba, as he picked it up and handed it to him.

Bomba examined it curiously. He liked its smoothness and its glitter.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Let me show you,” said Gillis, as he took it from him, put it to his mouth, and played a few bars of a popular air.

Bomba was amazed and delighted.

“It is like a bird!” he exclaimed. “It sings!”

“Try it yourself,” said Gillis, handing it over. “Blow your breath into it and draw your breath back.”

Bomba did so, and although the notes he brought from it were meaningless and discordant, they thrilled him with rapture. He could make music like the white men.

“Keep it,” said Gillis, highly pleased at the lad’s delight. “It’s yours.”

“It is good to give me this,” said Bomba gratefully, as he fondled his treasure. It was the first present he had ever had in his life.

“We’d feel cheap enough if we let it go at that,” said Dorn. “How about giving the boy a revolver? You saw how curious he was about firearms.”

“Right enough,” assented Gillis, as he went into the tent and returned with a shining new five-chambered revolver. “Here, Bomba, you liked the big iron stick. This is a little iron stick, but it does very much the same thing as the big one.”

“Oh, are you going to give me that?” exclaimed Bomba, scarcely able to believe his eyes.

“Sure thing,” said Gillis. “Here, let me show you how it works.”

He broke the revolver, and Bomba gave a gasp of dismay.

“You broke it!” he exclaimed in grief.

“That’s all right,” replied Gillis. “I have to do that to load it. See, this is the way it is done.”

He put cartridges in the five chambers, while Bomba watched him breathlessly. Then he snapped the stock back and looked around for a mark.

One of the dead jaguars caught his eye, and he emptied the revolver into the carcass, firing so rapidly that it seemed almost one continuous explosion.

“Now go take a look at the jaguar,” said Gillis. “You’ll find five holes that weren’t in it before.”

Bomba confirmed this with his eyes. It still seemed to him like magic, and there was awe mingled with delight in his ownership of the weapon.

“Let me put five more holes in the jaguar,” he begged.

Gillis loaded it for him and gave him directions how to hold, aim, and fire the weapon, though he and Dorn took care to take their stand behind him.

In the tyro’s hands only one more perforation marked the jaguar’s hide, the rest missing the mark through Bomba’s unfamiliarity with the weapon and his failure to allow for its kick.

“All right for a beginner,” commented Gillis. “With your natural keenness of eye you’ll be a crack shot as soon as you get used to the gun and have a little more practice. I only wish we had more time to teach you. But Casson will give you lessons, and in a little while you can shoot as straight with this as you can with your bow.”

Many boxes of cartridges accompanied the gift, and Bomba tucked them away carefully in his pouch, feeling as rich as Croesus. It had certainly been a lucky day for him when he had come across the white men!

But his delight in his treasure was dimmed when, a little while later, all preparations were completed and the party got ready to move.

The rubber hunters themselves, steeled adventurers as they were, were deeply stirred as they shook hands with Bomba and bade him good-bye. They had become strongly attached to this lad, who had come upon them so strangely, and to whom, no doubt, they owed their lives. There was tragic pathos in his loneliness in these vast wilds with only a half-demented old man to bear him company.

“You’ll hear from us again, remember that,” promised Gillis. “We’re not going to let this thing drop. We will come back or send back for you.”

“I hope so,” said Bomba. “If you do not come, my name will be mud.”

The men could not help smiling, and Bomba was proud. He was showing them that he could talk like the white men.

They waved a final farewell and took up their journey through the jungle. Bomba watched them until the underbrush hid them from view.

The world suddenly became very empty. His eyes were filled with tears.

He stood there for a long time, trying to still the ache in his heart. Then he turned his face toward the south. He must get back to Casson.

Dear old Casson! Kind old Casson! His heart thrilled with affection. He, at least, was left to him.

It was not the first time that Bomba had been away over night from the hut that sheltered him and the old naturalist. He was the provider of food, and his hunting trips had often carried him far afield. But he was always uneasy when that occurred and anxious to get back as soon as possible, for Casson was in no condition to be left alone any more than was necessary.

Having made sure that the revolver, the harmonica, and the matches were safely bestowed in his pouch, Bomba started on his homeward journey.

Refreshed by his night’s sleep and good breakfast, he made good progress for the first two hours. Then his exertions began to tell and his pace slackened, though he was still making remarkably good time, considering that for part of the way he had to hack a path through the underbrush with his machete.

On his way he passed the place of his encounter with the cooanaradi. Only the skeleton of the snake remained. And from the cleanness with which the frame had been stripped, Bomba conjectured that the ants had been at work.

Some distance further on, he came upon the ashes of a fire. Some of the embers were still smouldering and scraps of meat lay scattered about. Some natives out on a hunt had evidently stopped there for a meal.

This was a common enough occurrence and gave the lad no special concern. The Indians of the vicinity, though not especially friendly, were not hostile. They were uneasy at the presence of the whites, whom they looked upon as intruders, but up to the present they had been content to leave them alone, and Casson and Bomba on their part had held aloof from the natives as much as possible.

So Bomba was not alarmed when he caught sight of an Indian a little to one side but moving along on a forest trail that crossed the one that he was pursuing. They reached the junction of the trails at about the same time. The Indian turned and looked at the lad.

Bomba’s heart gave a sudden leap. He saw a symbol painted in ochre on the Indian’s chest. It was the symbol of the head-hunters, the ferocious tribe from the Giant Cataract!