Bomba the jungle boy

At sight of the cayman, Bomba, for one awful instant, felt as though he were paralyzed. Strength seemed suddenly to have left his arms and legs.

But only for a moment. The next instant the instinct of self-preservation asserted itself, and he shot forward like an arrow.

He knew he could not reach the shore before the dreadful thing would be upon him. But he would struggle till the last. As a final resource he had his knife.

But what would that knife avail against murderous jaws armed with a score of knives? One nip from those jaws could sever his leg from his body, or, if they caught him at the waist, could bite him in half.

His arms and legs were working like piston-rods. He was fairly leaping through the water. But behind him was coming a fearsome thing that could swim still faster.

Still Bomba sped on, his eyes fixed on the land steadily drawing nearer, even though the lad had the conviction that his feet would never press that land again.

The muscles in his strong arms were strained until it seemed as though they would burst. He breathed with difficulty. His head, surcharged with blood, felt as though it were encircled by an iron band that was eating its way into it.

One hurried glance over his shoulder showed him that the cayman was gaining. The distance between them had sensibly diminished.

As a whole world of thoughts is said to pass through the brain of a drowning man, so Bomba reviewed in those terrible moments the things that had come into his life.

One thought tore a sob from his aching throat. It was of Casson, poor, gentle, bewildered Casson, left alone to face the perils of the jungle, the jaguar, the sucurujus, the dreaded boa constrictor, and those human foes, perhaps more terrible still, bent on his destruction.

There was another grief, a longing bitterly poignant though but vaguely understood, that stirred his soul to the depths with agony.

The white men! He would never know now about that mysterious world from which they had come, to which at this moment they were returning. He would not know. He would not know!

The words beat themselves over and over in his brain, while his straining muscles labored to snatch a few more moments from eternity.

He cast one more look behind him. The hideous brute was nearer now, the fangs in its frightful jaws gleaming as the cayman clove the water.

Now it was close upon him! Bomba’s legs were instinctively drawn up to his body to escape the slash of those dreadful jaws. His hand reached for his knife.

What was that his dimming eyes saw directly ahead of him? Bomba’s heart leaped with renewed hope as he saw that the flat object floating almost within his reach was a rude raft—four hollow logs strapped together with bush cord. The work of caboclos, probably, who had later discarded it for a more convenient mode of river travel—the regatao or river canoe.

Could he reach it? The splashing of the alligator was close behind him. The brute was preparing for its spring. Every moment Bomba expected to feel the clamp of those iron jaws, to be dragged beneath the swirling surface to the slime and ooze of the river bed, to be feasted on at leisure.

The boy summoned all his expiring strength in one last effort. A mighty spurt carried him a few feet ahead. He must get hold of that raft. It spelled safety, deliverance from a horrible fate. Extinction threatened him, and like any other creature of the wild he fought madly for his life.

Another moment and those hungry jaws would fasten on him, tear his straining soul from his mangled body.

Now the raft was only an inch from his frantic fingers—half an inch! He touched it! He grasped it, lifted himself, slipped back, made one last effort, pulled himself out and sprawled at full length upon the raft!

He was not a second too soon. Even as he fell prone, two vicious jaws snapped savagely. The cayman lurched against the raft, tipping it to such an angle that Bomba was almost thrown into the water.

But the boy held on desperately, and the raft righted itself.

Again the brute returned to the attack. This time it flung its body half upon the raft and its jaws snapped within an inch of the lad’s legs.

There was a heavy paddle lying on the raft. Bomba snatched it up and brought it down with all his force on the cayman’s snout.

The brute winced, but still continued its efforts to climb up on the frail structure. Then Bomba jammed the stick through the gaping jaws deep into the brute’s throat.

There was a grunt of pain and rage, and the cayman fell back into the water that was speedily dyed with the blood that came from the wound. There was no more fight left in the creature. It swam around for a moment, glaring with its malignant eyes at the human banquet it had counted on, and then sank slowly from sight.

Bomba had won. But it had been a terrific experience. He sat down on the raft, too utterly worn out for the moment to move a finger.

But if his body was exhausted, his mind was still active. The same subjects that had tormented him a few minutes ago in his dreadful extremity now appeared in a roseate glow.

The white men! He would see them again. Or if not Gillis and Dorn, others of their kind. His kind, too, he thought with a thrill of exultation.

As he lay there, his brown body glistening with river water might have belonged to any native Amazonian. His sturdy body and rippling muscles, too, might have been those of a caboclo, a native waterman.

But not his eyes. The dreaming look that now clouded their bright watchfulness was a heritage of white men—the striving of a soul for ascendency over mere physical things, the yearning for something higher than an animal existence.

And he was white! He knew it! And those men, those beings from another world, had acknowledged that he was white. They knew. They must know everything. And he had not had with them the alien feeling that had always been his when he had come in contact with the Indians. He had felt at home with these white men. He liked them. They had liked him.

But now they were gone. When would he see them again?

They had been his friends. They had given him presents. He touched the gifts with reverent fingers. But the men had gone. Where? To some mysterious place utterly beyond his comprehension, where white men talked and laughed a great deal and slapped each other on the back.

It must be a friendly country, thought Bomba wistfully, as he looked about on the stream and jungle where so few things were friendly. He, too, would like to talk and laugh a great deal and slap people—white people—on the back.

He had never talked much. Cody Casson was reticent. He had never laughed much. Casson was somber.

He would like to bring about a change in the quiet little hut, to talk and laugh with Casson. But if he could not have done that before, how could he do it now? Casson was no longer wise. He had forgotten all that could be talked about. He was like a little child again, to be watched over and guarded from evil.

The thought of Casson put an end to his musings. Once more he was Bomba, the jungle-trained and bred, with all the wily cunning of the jungle in his eyes. No longer were those eyes dreaming, but bright and watchful as had been those of old Geluk, the puma, whose skin Bomba now wore as covering.

With the paddle which had done him such good service in warding off the attack of the alligator he rapidly propelled the rude raft toward the jutting point where he intended to make his landing.

He soon touched and leaped upon the shore. Before him stretched a ygapo, a huge swamp many miles in width. This must be crossed before he could reach the hut. The only alternative was a roundabout route. But the feeling that Casson might at any minute be in danger urged the boy to take the shorter cut.

Nevertheless, he hated the swamp. Vaguely he imagined it peopled with evil spirits. The tall crabwood trees standing in clusters threw deep shadows over the blackish-brown water, giving it an indescribably dreary and sinister appearance. Here and there, out of the slimy ooze sprang huge tree ferns. No shrieking of parrots or howling of monkeys in this cheerless spot. Nothing but dead leaves and treacherous mud, without the stir of a leaf or the twitter of a bird to break the brooding silence. It might have been a lost fragment flung off from a vanished world.

Bomba made his way rapidly through the ygapo, heavily oppressed by the premonition that danger lurked about the hut of Casson. In one hand he firmly grasped his faithful machete, while in the other he held the revolver, the cherished gift of the white man.

His eyes scanned the coverts for the first sign of danger. There was little peril from wild beasts, who preferred the dry woodland, but he knew that reptiles might start from the slime or drop down upon him from the trees.

He found no use, however, for either weapon while traversing the swamp. It was not until he was nearly across the ygapo that an acrid scent assailed his nostrils.

Fire!

He was not alarmed at first. It was probably only Casson’s campfire built outside the hut.

But in a moment he knew that the volume of smoke wafted to him by a vagrant breeze could come from no ordinary bonfire, and his steps quickened.

He reached the farther end of the ygapo. He drew himself up to the higher level, and with relief felt solid ground beneath his feet once more.

Bomba plunged onward, the increasing density of the smoke lending wings to his feet. No thought of Gillis and Dorn in the jungle lad’s mind now! Only room there for thought of Cody Casson! Would he reach the hut and the old man in time?

It took Bomba only a short time to reach the trees that fringed the clearing he and Casson had made.

A glance as he burst into the open told him that his worst fears were realized.

The hut was in flames!