“They don’t like to be yelled at,” Tom said.
“You be still!” snapped Henry. “I guess I know how to handle these Indians. You’ve got to bellow and roar at them to get them started. They’re lazy and they’re rough and they’d never move if you don’t get them waked up.”
“They may be all that,” agreed Tom, “but they’re human, too!”
Henry walked away.
Nevertheless, Tom’s way proved the better one, for when Bill held up a flashing bit of ornamental glass, like the crystal pendant from a glass chandelier, they spoke. In time they were induced to catch a rope and carry it out and, in the canoe, fix it fast to a projecting tooth of rock located in the proper direction to help pull the boat out of her sand bed, into which she was burrowing her nose more deeply with every roll.
“We’ll use the rocks that tried to injure us, and make them help us!” Cliff cried, and with a good will they took up slack on the rope until it was taut and throbbing with its tension.
After a long day of effort and patience they saw their craft float free, and, for another bribe, several more Indians were procured, in canoes, to tow them to a convenient beach where their rope was taken well inland to a coco-palm, secured there, and the boat was unloaded the next day, the stuff piled on the hot sand under an improvised shelter of canvas stretched over four upright pieces of timber found by the chums in a search of the beach.
Under another shelter, to which they brought heavy mosquito netting and with it made a tight enclosure, they spent the night. It was no pleasant slumber that came to them, for the Central American mosquitos are not only vicious and persistent, but they are large and their bite, on any but the toughest skin, produces red welts and a sort of itching that is as maddening as it is persistent and painful.
The next day, while Bill and Henry bargained with the Indians for canoes and guides to take them up the Rio Patuca to a tribe further inland where the old Indian, Toosa, lived, and while Cliff and Mr. Gray aided Andy in work of examining the gear and shafting, Nicky joined Tom on the beach.
“Some of the Indians are going turtle hunting,” he said. “Let’s us go along. They’ll take us. I let one young Indian play with my watch, and he promised to take us if I let him wear the watch during the trip.”
They accordingly joined the Indians. The method of hunting was interesting: they went along the beach and, watching until they saw a turtle sunning itself, or, possibly, laying its eggs, they managed to get between it and the water.
Sometimes they were not adroit enough. A turtle will instinctively try for its native element, and once in it, no expert can capture it. On land, however, once headed off, it may be turned on its back, and thus secured. After several wasted tries they managed to get a big fellow, weighing several hundred pounds, headed off and surrounded.
It was both a job and a tussle to get the huge and clumsy shell reversed; and then the boys were amazed at the cleverness of the Indians’ method of getting the creature back to their village, or near to it. To drag such a weight would be very hard. To make it “do its own driving” as Tom said, was the easier way. The Indians fastened ropes to each of its flippers, and then turned it over.
With slackened ropes, the creature instantly drove for the water. But once it plunged into its favorite retreat, the ropes were manipulated in such a way that the animal was actually made to swim and, in addition, was pulled, along the shore line, with comparatively little effort. Once opposite the camp, the turtle was dragged onto the beach and despatched, to be cut into choice portions. For their efforts during the hunt, Tom and Nicky were given some large chunks of the meat which made a wonderful addition to eggs they had discovered, and their regular fare.
Days passed with little happening. Outside of the tedious work of dismantling the gear assembly, and taking out the propeller shaft and bearings to be certain that all was sound, and hammering at the propeller to get its bent flanges back to proper pitch, there was only eating, fighting mosquitos and other annoying insects, and trying to be patient.
In spite of, or, maybe, because of Henry’s shouts and orders, the Indians made no move to take the party upstream.
It was only when the combined arguments of Mr. Gray, Bill, Tom and his chums made Henry desist, that finally, after about ten days, the Indians signified that on the morrow two canoes would start.
“Bill, and Henry will go, of course,” said Mr. Gray. “Tom, I feel, has a right to be with them because of his intense interest in any news concerning his sister.”
“But Nicky is all bitten up with—or by—mosquitos,” said Cliff, “and he can’t risk getting away from the ointment jars—and I must help with the readjustment of the engine and stay with Andy and Dad.”
It was arranged in that way. The next morning two canoes came to the beach and Bill and Tom climbed into the larger, while Henry took his place in the smaller one. With many farewell waves, and promises to get back as quickly as the information could be discovered, they were rowed—or paddled—away.
In turning the sand-spit into the inlet’s swift current, the canoe containing Henry, still morose and soured, went fairly near the jagged rock formation on which the propeller had been damaged. Through the clear water, as a swirl of mud settled, he caught sight of something, and with a sharp word, ordered the four Indians paddling to swing in closer. He got very close to the rock, leaned over the side, then jumped into the water up to his waist.
“What’s the matter with him?” demanded Bill in amazement.
“Gosh!” whispered Tom, “I wish I’d broken the darn things. I did try to shy the bottles of his ‘tonic’ so they’d smash, but they missed.”
And Henry had discovered them. More, he recovered them!
“So that’s where they went!” he cried furiously red, holding the fat bottles aloft and shaking them toward the other boat. “Which one of that boatful did that—threw my stuff away?”
No one answered.
Suddenly he turned on Tom, about twenty feet away, in the larger canoe. “I’ll bet you—” he snarled, “you was the one. ’Cause why? ’Cause you was hollerin’ about it!”
Tom’s face turned red. Henry saw it and, in his sudden rage, he drew back his arm and flung one of the flasks—or almost did!
With Henry’s arm at the point of coming forward, Bill, a marksman of no mean ability, caught up the rifle with which he had armed himself, and almost at the instant that it appeared above the gunwale, there came the spit of its bullet and the shivering of glass as the bottle broke in Henry’s hand. So close was the shot, so perfect the aim, that only the neck of the bottle remained.
Henry dropped it, staring in rage and disappointment at the roiling spot where his good “tonic” was blending swiftly with the Caribbean water.
“Drop that other one!” snapped Bill.
Henry did so—but into the canoe; and, so furious and beyond reason was he that his hand groped for and brought out his own rifle.
“You drop that rifle,” snapped Bill. “You crazy coot! Don’t you know I mean business!”
“Yes,” growled Henry. “You’ve got the drop on me—just now!”
The way he replaced the rifle and climbed into the tilting canoe, as well as the tone in which his husky words were spoken, indicated that this was only one time, that there would be more.
“Let’s turn back,” suggested Tom, dubiously.
“No! Forget his crazy stunt!” urged Bill. “Any day that I can’t handle a loon like him, I’ll eat scorpions’ tails!”
“But he gets so angry!” said Tom. “And he’s got a bottle——”
“Getting angry is better for us—as long as we keep cool!” Bill grinned, his rifle lazily resting on the canoe’s edge. “A cool man can out-guess, out-plan, out-shoot a fellow in a temper, any day! As for that bottle—watch it splinter the first time it starts for his lips.”
Bill motioned to the Indians, who had hardly moved, and who had certainly not spoken or changed expression. “Go on!” he said. Tom thought that just a hint of admiration showed in the faces of the five paddling their own craft.
“And you saved his life on the boat, when that wave washed him down,” grunted Bill.
“And I’d do it again!” said Tom.
Little he guessed how prophetic his words would prove to be!
That trip up the Rio Patuca was one of the worst experiences Tom had ever been through, and Bill agreed with him when he said so.
Starting through a narrow inlet, taking advantage of the inflow of the tide, the canoes came into a lagoon; the water was shallow but clear; the banks were lined with the most dense and varied vegetation imaginable; Tom could recognize at a distance, only the cocoanut palms, and the mangroves, with their huge, spreading roots.
The canoes proceeded up the lagoon to a native village, marked by a cluster of coco-palms which seemed to be floating in the water. The whole village turned out to watch the landing of the white men and their young companion and Tom saw that they were as curious about him as he was about them. The young men were clean-limbed and had very fine faces; the girls were almost beautiful, though the older women showed how labor and daily toil aged and furrowed their faces and bent their bodies.
After a stay overnight the canoes set out again, and day after day the routine of paddling, fighting mosquitos, landing for lunch, going forward, finding a place to camp, putting up mosquito bars and trying to prevent them from being filled by the pests before it was too late, was all there was to report.
“They certainly named this country well,” Tom told Bill as they dived under their mosquito netting on the second day of the trip.
The mosquitos were much larger than the Northern species, and were of such a tough, rubbery body that in order to destroy them it was necessary to strike ones-self with great force—“More punishment than relief!” Tom observed, ruefully, as he fought the pests.
“They have to be killed,” replied Bill, “and we’ll have to get our net up earlier at night, because they get worse as we go on, Henry says.”
“Yes,” Tom admitted. “He told me that if anybody stayed out from the protection of his net for an hour at night, he’d be bitten to death!” Bill agreed that it was quite probable.
As they went on, finally reaching and turning into the muddy mouth of the river itself through a narrow channel, Tom and Bill came to the conclusion that their trip had more difficulties in store than the pestilence of the country’s terrible mosquitos. Henry Morgan kept away from them, morose and sullen; when he caught Henry’s eyes bent on him, or on Bill, Tom saw that they were brooding and angry. Henry had long since disposed of his final bottle of “tonic,” and he seemed to be holding and feeding his grudge against Bill and Tom for destroying the other bottle.
He was very hard on his Indians. He yelled at them, drove them, said foul things to them and about them. Tom and Bill, on the contrary, were decent in their attitudes; and, although the Indians were stolid and silent, seldom speaking, almost never smiling, they showed, in little services, that were human and responsive under their stolid exteriors. They often put up Tom’s mosquito bar for him, gave him and his closer companion the best they had, but always without the least flicker of expression.
Henry had to demand help, had to drive and threaten to get anything done; Tom had only to wish for an adjustment of his sleeping couch, of boughs, in a rude camp—and it was done! Perhaps it was because, during the long, humid, tensely hot days, he took the trouble to see that the heavy bough with which he fought mosquitos was used to drive them away from the paddlers as well; also, because he and Bill shared their food when the Indians had little. There seemed to be no open appreciation, but gratitude was evident in many ways, although Henry, seeing them wave their branches to flick the mosquitos from the Indians’ backs, derided them and sneered, saying an Indian had no feelings.
Camping on mud banks, uncomfortable and mean, paddling through muddy waters, past vast jungles and wide, low savannas of lush grass, past wide cane-brakes, they pursued slow but steady, if tedious progress. Tom began to wish the trip were done. Rain, fog and wet, dreary days were far more frequent than dry ones; and this, added to the mud beneath their camps, the small food supply and the mean temper of Morgan, made things more than unpleasant.
In time they reached a small village; the huts were of palmetto stakes, driven into the ground close together, in the shape of an oblong enclosure with rounded ends and a space for a door; roofs were of a thatch of woven reeds or brush. The few Indians were silent, stolid people, but not unkind or cruel in their attitude. At this village, Bill and Henry were informed, they would be left until men came down the river to take them on.
“Do they know we’re here—and in a hurry?” ventured Tom.
The canoeman looked blank and said little.
“They know,” Morgan responded in surly, husky tones. “Indians know when people come.”
“How do they know?” Tom persisted. “Do they send messengers?”
“They know!” snapped Henry and turned away.
Tom made no comment on the rude behavior, but busied himself making friends with a small boy, evidently a child belonging to some one of importance. The youngster, about eight, liked the white boy, some years older, and when his shyness was overcome, he spent hours watching Tom as the white youth demonstrated how a small, bright red magnet he carried would draw and cling to several nails he also had.
The boy, Porfirio, in response, showed Tom many trails across the swamp savannas surrounding the village, and helped him to search for beautiful tropical birds’ eggs, curious stones, and other specimens. Always he begged to be shown the magnet and its power; it fascinated him and, the day that Tom let him, fearfully and timidly, take it and play with it for a while, he looked toward Tom as one might have looked at a master, and from then on, followed him like a dog.
By that time Tom had picked up enough of the village dialect to learn that Porfirio’s father had been slain by one of the jaguars—or, as the natives termed the ferocious cats, tigers, caught on a lonely trail without a weapon, and horribly mangled. Tom felt sorry for the desolate child and did his best to amuse him.
After several wasted weeks, a great canoe arrived from upriver, in which, besides the paddlers, was an old man, bent and wizened and terribly dwarfed; yet he was stronger than any other man—or any two men—among the Indians, and seemed to be greatly respected. He was Toosa, the man they had come so far to see!
Henry at once began to question him, but Toosa paid no heed to him at all. He had come, primarily, to take the child, Porfirio, a great-grandson, to his own village further up the turbid stream.
“We came all the way up here—you recognize me, don’t you?” Henry cried, and when the old man nodded, went on, “we came all the way to find out where——”
Toosa made a gesture, stopping Henry. He had just landed and his young great-grandson ran to greet him. Toosa merely touched his shoulder with a finger and turned back toward the boats after a brief word with one of the natives. But Henry caught his thin, though muscular and wiry arm. Tom, watching, saw a display of a curious power that the old man possessed. He did not move his body or shake Henry off; he simply turned his head and fixed his steady, bright eyes on the impatient white man. Henry, about to speak, seemed to be struck by some invisible message of power, for he closed his lips, holding the grip he had for a moment; then his hand loosened and dropped, and he stood still. Toosa, turning back toward the boats, resumed his way, the small boy trotting at his side.
“We don’t want to let him get away, though, at that,” demurred Tom, but Bill merely gave him a warning glance, and slowly strolled along behind the dwarfed, bent old figure. Henry, after a moment, took up the march, and Tom kept close to Bill, curious and uncertain what was to happen.
“He’s a powerful chief, even if he isn’t the magician that the Indians think he is,” Bill observed quietly to Tom. “He won’t talk to us until he has settled himself in his own village.”
“But how will we get there?” Tom wondered.
He soon found out. As soon as he had settled himself in his great, roughly shaped canoe, made from the trunk of a huge tree, Toosa turned to the three whites on the bank, and beckoned.
“You take us?” asked Bill in slow English. “Good!”
“I take!”
“Did you expect us?” asked Tom, mystified at the Indian’s calm arrangements for them.
“How did you know?——”
“I know!” answered the old man briefly, and said no more. As they took their designated positions the chief took a paddle several times heavier and broader than the rest, made a signal, and the canoe began to glide away from the Indians, watching on the bank.
That huge paddle served well during the trip up the river, and the amazing strength with which the wiry old man used it was a marvel to Tom. There were rapids, and dangerous ones they proved to be. The swift water almost carried the canoe back, but with a strong sweep of that great driver, the Indian caused it to tremble; with a second heave, while the other Indians strove with their smaller paddles, he sent the boat forward, and then guided and drove it between the rocks, over the rough waters, past dangerous whirlpools. Once, only a swift swing of his paddle turned them aside before they were dashed to death in a whirling smother of foaming waters. Again, by exertions that seemed akin to those of a giant, he took the craft forward when one of the lighter paddles broke and the crew was in confusion and terror.
And when, close to nightfall, they landed, he stepped from the canoe as serene and unwearied as if he had been one of the three white passengers. Tom heard from Bill that the oldest Indians in that country claimed that Toosa lived there and was just as they saw him today, when the Indians themselves had been children.
Quartered in a hut, fed and well cared for, at least two of the white travelers obeyed Toosa’s brief order, which Bill understood to be a command that they must not set foot outside the hut. The reason for it seemed plain. It was a precaution against danger. During Toosa’s absence many of the villagers had become demons through drinking the fermented cane-juice which was brewed in a huge trough in the village and from which much had been taken.
The Indians were not only noisy and, in some cases, quarrelsome; they were beyond control.
In spite of their remonstrances Henry Morgan elbowed his way past Tom and Bill, his rifle under his arm.
“He’s going out to mix with them and join in their orgies!” cried Bill. “I hope——”
“He knows them. He’s been here often, he says,” Tom reminded him, “he isn’t in any danger.” Bill shook his head. He was not convinced.
“It’s not him I’m worrying about, or what they’ll do to him,” he said moodily, “it’s what he may tell them about us—remember, he’s nursing a grudge against us, Tom.”
“Yes,” agreed Tom. “That—and cane-juice—make a bad pair!”
In the midst of a tropical paradise under the vivid moon, and with the looming grandeur of brooding mountains over it, Tom and Bill saw such an orgy of lust and degradation as made them shudder.
Around the rude receptacle which held the fermented cane-juice, the Indians gathered. The younger men and the older youths played a weird, tuneless melody on reed pipes while the others indulged their taste for the strong liquid. Henry Morgan joined these and seemed to be a member of long standing, by the greetings he got.
Out into the moonlit square of the village, a space where the earth was trodden by countless feet until it was almost as hard as stone, came a bent, but striking figure. Although age had almost drawn his nose and chin together, although his body was in no way erect or striking, Tom saw nothing grotesque in that stalking form; rather, it spoke of power and of virility.
Toosa was a figure of force in his rage!
He approached the trough and for a while, as though ashamed, or frightened, the men were very still.
“Can he stop them, do you suppose?” Tom whispered, to Bill, as the two crouched by the door of the large hut that had been assigned to them.
“He has a lot of influence over them,” replied his companion.
They watched, silent and amazed as Toosa stalked straight over to the group of Indians. The reeds ceased to whine and whistle. The younger men and the boys appeared to fade into the encircling brush.
Toosa simply stood there, his distorted body drawn as erect as was possible, arms folded, his face stern in the moonlight.
Toosa spoke no word.
There was a long moment of absolute silence. Toosa looked at his tribesmen and they, shamed, looked down at the ground.
Only Henry Morgan, his ruddy face inflamed, his eyes more bleary than ever, stared boldly back at the dark-skinned nemesis. Toosa did not even glance toward the white man; his regard was fixed upon his own kind. Several of them shifted their positions nervously and one, sidling off with head averted, disappearing into the brush.
That seemed to be the signal. Still Toosa said nothing—he merely looked his anger and disgust. But the men began to move, restlessly and then hurriedly rising and starting in various directions, none going near Toosa except one careless individual. With a swift, unexpected sweep of his ape-like arm, Toosa touched that man—and he sprawled in a choking, gasping heap.
“Look! Look at Henry!” whispered Tom, gripping Bill’s shoulder hard in his excitement.
“Just what I was afraid of,” Bill whispered back. “I hope he doesn’t think about us—I can guess that he’s going to defy Toosa! If he can get the Indians back he may turn their attention on us—then——”
He did not say any more, but his hand tightened on the stock of his rifle and with the other he loosened one of his two pistols, worn in belt holsters, and glanced at Tom in the dim light. Tom was too intent on the scene in the square to observe Bill’s half intent to give him a weapon which, did need arise, Tom’s training during the trip would enable him to use effectively.
Henry, his muscles responding poorly to his befuddled will, staggered upright and, wavering a little, faced Toosa.
“Get out of here!” he roared. “What do you mean, you red dog, by interfering with a white man’s pleasure!”
“What did he say?” Tom asked as Toosa made a curt response.
“Something to the effect that the white man’s ‘pleasure’ was the Indians’ ruin!” Bill told him.
“It is, too,” agreed Tom. “I’m with Toosa, all the way.”
Henry was not with Toosa, but very much against him! He stood, shakily but with fury growing in his face, a white man of the lowest sort, in maudlin rage defying a red man of the higher type of intelligence. It passed through Tom’s mind that by comparison, the red man was the finer specimen, dwarf or not.
“I’ll teach—teach you—to—” gulped Henry, and he bent down for his rifle, lying on the ground.
Bill’s muscles tensed, and he was about to leap forward, his own weapon ready; but Tom held his arm, and whispered, “Wait!”
“But—” began Bill, but what transpired caused him to hesitate.
Toosa, standing without movement or change of expression, watched as Henry fumbled with his gun, and getting himself erect by an effort, tried to level the rifle at Toosa.
“Even in his condition, he might hit him!” urged Bill, trying to disengage his arm from Tom’s restraining clutch.
“He’s a magician,” Tom replied. “Don’t let’s interfere!”
Bill stared at his young companion in amazement; then his eyes turned to observe the expected result. Henry, the rifle leveled, stood on his uncertain feet, trying to “draw a bead” with the wavering sights.
Toosa, arms folded, did not move. His eyes were fixed on Henry.
In the brush, Indians were watching intently. Would their magician and healer, their guide and guardian, falter? Could the white man with the devil-stick that spat fire and death—could he——?
Suddenly Henry advanced a step, lowering his rifle.
“I’ll—I—give you—chance!” he sputtered. “I give—you chance! ‘C-’cause why? ‘C-’cause you got to tell me where is Mort Beecher an’—an’—the Golden Sun!”
Toosa did not move, nor did he open his lips. He simply stood, eyes coldly, glowingly fixed on the furious, maudlin white man.
“You tell, I not shoot—I call men and put you out of way till we finish,” Henry called in his husky voice. “Then we fix the two who come with me—eh, boys?” He swung, staggering a little, to try and get response from the brush. Not an Indian showed himself or moved.
“Why doesn’t Toosa run—Toosa! Toosa—run while he’s not watching!” shrilled Bill breaking from the hut.
Toosa made one gesture, a slight gesture. Bill saw it and stopped, while Tom advanced to Bill’s side, though both retired into the hut’s shadow as Henry, with a muttered word that was not good to hear, swung on his heel, caught his balance and glowered toward the hut. Then he pulled the trigger; there was a flash, but while Bill flung Tom back into the hut, neither was struck, nor did they hear where the bullet went.
Henry instantly swung back to face Toosa who had not moved.
“Come!” he shouted. “Tell me. Where is Mort Beecher! Where is that Golden Sun mine he told me about! You know! You can tell! Tell now, if you want—want see sun—sun rise in morning!”
Toosa, arms folded, waited, wordless.
“Oh, all right!” Henry growled, his voice shaking. He took another huge gulp from a calabash of liquid fire, choked, gasped and then re-sighted his rifle.
“Tell!” he called.
Tom held tightly to Bill’s arm.
There came the flash and roar of the rifle.
Toosa did not move!
Again and again, until its magazine was spent. Henry fired.
Toosa brushed some fiery sparks from the old coat he wore, and laughed, a horrible sound of triumph and rage.
“White man not hurt Toosa!” he cried.
Choking and sputtering in his fury Henry raised and reversed his rifle, clubbed it and rushed.
At the same instant Tom, like a streak of lightning, raced across the space; but he arrived too late; Toosa, with his long arms, caught the rifle and with a wrench tore it from Henry’s grip. He flung it aside but Henry, lost to all sense of decency or judgment, flung his weight against Toosa.
Toosa, braced as he was, gave back a step under the impact. Bill was almost beside Tom as the latter drew back, unable to interfere as Toosa’s foot caught on a projecting root at the side of the level space; down he went with a thud, and instantly Henry, on top, reached for his throat.
Toosa fought like a tiger, his own ape-like arms giving him the advantage of reach in the grapple for throatholds. But the fall had stunned Toosa a little and he did not grip with his customary strength.
Tom, with a quick insight, saw that Henry had an advantage.
Whether it was right or wrong to take part against a white man and to fight for an Indian would not at any time have bothered Tom. He knew that color did not matter; that it was the spirit and quality of a man that counted and not the skin he wore. So, unhesitatingly, he caught Henry’s legs and flung them, with all his strength, toward the side, thus unbalancing Henry, and causing him to roll, and to fling out an arm, instinctively, to catch himself.
In that instant Toosa recovered his power, scrambled up and stood watching Henry, sputtering and clamping his teeth in his rage. Toosa gave a sharp call. The Indians, no longer wondering if their leader was supreme, rushed forward and quickly secured Henry. He was bound and taken to another hut. Toosa turned to Tom, and with about the only smile Tom ever saw on his face, Toosa spoke:
“You save life!” he grunted. “You good. I help!”
“That’s all right,” Tom said. “You great magic man, I only help.”
“Yes,” Toosa answered.
“Now, we sleep,” he said. Not one of the Indians went near the rude trough again. They trooped away, all except two he appointed to guard Henry in his small hut. Toosa picked up the rifle and walked off.
“He surely is a great magician,” Bill commented, as he and Tom lay on their rudely made bedding of woven vines and soft branches. “Henry, bad as he was, couldn’t have missed him with all those shells!”
“Well,” said Tom, nestling into a comfortable spot, “I don’t want to take any credit away from Toosa’s magic—but I helped it along a bit.”
“How?” demanded Bill, lifting to one elbow and staring into the blackness of the hut.
“I thought he might get boisterous—that Henry!” ‘Tom answered. “So I took the chance, while you and he dozed in the hut after supper, and dug the bullets out of his magazine full of cartridges.”
“Tom,” said Bill, soberly, “I never thought of that. You’re a pardner. Shake!”
Tom did.
Late that night a tropical storm whirled down on the village from the mountains. Lightning that seemed more vivid than daylight flashed continuously; thunder that deafened shook and roared; trees thudded to the whipping lash of the lightning. Rain in literal sheets made a wall of water when Tom peered out from the door of their hut.
When the dull dawn came the rain had not subsided; thunder still growled and boomed. The river, rising swiftly, was a very torrent, its water racing toward the rapids below, whose roar could be heard like a growling undertone to the thrum of falling water.
A white rubber-trader, with his canoe full of paddlers, was glad to be able to nose in and ground his craft on the sandy beach and drag it to safety before the river rose any more dangerously.
Toosa knew him and took him at once to his own hut for a talk.
Henry was released from guard, but did not come near his companions; in fact, he stayed close to his hut, more safely guarded from violent action by the downpour than by any watchers.
About noon the rain slackened and the white trader, Buckley, a quiet and yet a pleasant man, bronzed and sturdy, came over and visited with the white pair. Tom found him eager to hear about the situation that had come about on the previous night.
“You needn’t have extracted those bullets, Toosa has told me,” he said with a smile. “Toosa is sure that he could have turned the bullets aside. He is very sure of his magic powers. But I like the old fellow and I am rather glad our young friend had so much foresight.”
He told them that, even without the rain, it would be unlikely that they could start down the river for some time. Yellow fever, that terror of the tropics, had broken out near the coast, and inland, and a “deadline” had been established near the costal villages by the Honduran government. That deadline was a real thing, not merely a place where officers stopped people and examined their health. When fever broke out, the trader explained, a line was drawn across the roads, and a patrol established on the rivers. If anyone passed through an infected area they would be turned back at the line, and if they tried to pass bullets would follow the act. The government meant its quarantine! And to get to the cruiser they must pass through the infected area!
“You came here to learn about a man,” the trader told them.
“Yes, we did,” answered Tom. “Do you know anything—”
He eagerly related the conditions of his sister’s disappearance. The white man listened gravely and then shook his head.
“Toosa will be here in a few minutes,” he stated. “He has asked me some curiously veiled questions. I wouldn’t be surprised if what I answered has something to do with the results he will get from his ‘magic’—but he is a fine old magician, and it helps his standing among the natives to let him keep them deceived—so I will let him reveal what his ‘magic calabash’ whispers to him.” He laughed as Toosa, grave and stately in spite of his deformed body, came in. Several other Indians were with him and quite a crowd assembled outside. These he dispersed, telling them something in their dialect which Bill guessed was to the effect that his magic was, this time, for the white ears alone.
Those who accompanied him hung heavy skins over the door, and took up positions outside, shooing away the straggling women who thirsted for every demonstration of their chief’s magical powers.
Toosa set on the trampled earth floor a calabash, and some other articles of his supposed craft; then he produced a skin bottle or flask and from it poured into the calabash a dark, rather evil smelling liquid, till the gourd container was level full.
Tom, watching closely, thought he detected a tiny wink pass between the solemn old fraud and his trade friend; however, Tom kept his own counsel and refrained from trying to catch Bill’s eye.
If they got the information he sought, it did not matter to him if Toosa liked to impart a touch of mystery to the telling!
“You good,” Toosa said to Tom. “I help. Tell what you not know!”
He built up a small fire of tiny twigs and let it burn until the sticks fell together, flared and then died down to a small flicker.
Onto that he threw some leaves and bits of dust or herbs finely powdered, and instantly a dense, whitish, and very pungent smoke rose.
“Now how do you suppose an Indian in Central America knows a trick that the African blacks use in their magic?” Tom said, out of the corner of his mouth, to Bill.
“They tell us in books that people came here from some old continent, ages ago—wasn’t it Atlantic——”
“Atlantis!” corrected Tom. “Cliff’s father told us about it—it was a great continent and it sank under the ocean.”
“Well, before it went down, history says, some wise people knew it was going to happen, and they came away and settled in safer places,” Bill stated.
“Do you suppose Toosa is one of their descendants?” Tom whispered. “He surely does seem to know a lot. And maybe some of the Atlantis people went to Africa, and that’s how the same customs spread.”
“Maybe,” agreed Bill. “Look, he’s swallowing the smoke. Don’t see how he stands it—just a sniff makes me sort of chokey.”
Toosa was drawing in great, sighing lungsful of the heavy and pungently acrid smoke. Then he settled back on his haunches, and to the amazement of even the trader, he spoke—in English![1]
“You—want—find—out—man called Mort Beech,” Toosa chanted in a halting, but deep, voice.
“Yes,” said Tom with a little shiver of inherited superstition, even though he knew there was more fuss than truth in the witchcraft part, even though the English was amazing. “Yes, sir!”
“Man is Colon—or Porto Bell’—look for in Porto Bell’——”
“Porto Bello, eh?” said Bill.
“Porto Bell’. Yes. Now——”
There was a commotion at the doorway. Henry Morgan had crept up to see what was so mysteriously transpiring in the hut, and as the two guards had no instructions concerning him and did not dare to interrupt their chief, Henry had listened, had caught the whole message.
While Bill leaped up and Tom caught his feet under him swiftly, Henry strode into the hut, kicking over the calabash, into which Toosa had been staring after he inhaled the smoke.
“Porto Bello!” he shouted. “Well, that’s where Henry Morgan will find him. As for you—” he swung on his white companions, “you can follow me if you dare—but if you do, I shoot!”
He snatched up Bill’s rifle, just before Tom anticipated his move.
“I take this,” he snapped, “’cause why? Toosa has mine. Now I go in canoe. I’ll tell your friends the yellow-jack got you. They can’t pass the deadlines to find out. We’ll take the cruiser and go on. When we find Mort Beecher I’ll let them come back and hunt you up if they want to. I’ll have what I want.”
“You swine!” cried Bill, halted by the rifle in the menacing hands. “That’s how you repay——”
“That’s how I repay that kid for what he did to my—stuff!” growled Henry. Toosa made an effort to stop him as he backed toward the door, but the smoke had really taken some of Toosa’s strength, or at least he was not swift enough in his move, for Henry sidestepped and sent a cruel kick at the dark face. Toosa fell back in time to avoid it, but Henry, thrusting the peering Indians to each side, backed out and turned as Bill tugged at a revolver.
Still striving to loosen the weapon, which his excitement made more of a task than it should have been, he raced to the door, Tom at his heels. They saw Henry Morgan running, rifle under his arm, for the sandy beach, where a rushing torrent worried at the sand and bore it away in great, swirling streaks.
“He’s after a canoe,” said Tom.
Bill raised a pistol. Toosa, with a quick grip, thrust back Bill’s arm, shaking his head violently and choking.
Running a light canoe out partly into the turbulent stream, Henry reached into the beached canoe of the trader, holding their menacing approach back by a threat with the rifle, and threw some of the trader’s goods into the small canoe.
“Give me the pistol if you’re afraid to fire!” cried Buckley, the trader; but again Toosa held his arm.
They watched the canoe skip away from the bank and whirl, end for end, in an eddy. Then Henry got his paddle to working and with a derisive shout, swung his blade and straightened away, flying down the stream.
“Why wouldn’t you let us stop him?” Tom cried, angry at Toosa. He saw their companions being urged to desert by a false story, saw themselves stranded in the Indian country.
“Toosa says, ‘Rapids get him,’” Buckley translated, for Toosa now spoke curtly in his own dialect, making swift gestures. “Toosa says if the rapids don’t drag him under, as is likely, the deadline will stop him. He’ll never get through. As for you fellows—if you can put up with privations and hard climbing, I can arrange with some of my Indians to escort you over the mountains—to the capital, and from there you can easily get down to the coast and your cruiser and your friends.”