The Inca Emerald, by Samuel Scoville, jr. Illustrated by Charles Livingston Bull. (NY: The Century Co., 1922)

[front cover, with spine]

From the heart of the jungle sounded the deep, coughing roar of a jaguar

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[title page]

THE

INCA EMERALD



BY
SAMUEL SCOVILLE, Jr.
Author of "Boy Scouts in the Wilderness," "The
Blue Pearl," etc.



ILLUSTRATED BY
CHARLES LIVINGSTON BULL



NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1922

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[copyright page]

Copyright, 1922,
by
THE CENTURY CO.

Copyright, 1922,
by
SAMUEL SCOVILLE, Jr.




PRINTED IN U. S. A.

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[dedication]

To

ALICE TRUMBULL SCOVILLE

My Kindest Critic

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[table of contents]

          CONTENTS

CHAPTER ..... PAGE
I  THE BEGINNING ..... 3
II  A NEW WORLD ..... 29
III  THE VAMPIRES ..... 52
IV  DEATH RIVER ..... 74
V  SHIPWRECK ..... 99
VI  THE BLACK TIGER ..... 126
VII  THE YELLOW SNAKE ..... 153
VIII  THE MAN-EATERS ..... 177
IX  THE PIT ..... 203
X  SKY BRIDGE ..... 227
XI  THE LOST CITY ..... 250
XII  EL DORADO ..... 275

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[blank]

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[illustrations]

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THE INCA EMERALD

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THE INCA EMERALD

CHAPTER I

THE BEGINNING

It was a bushmaster which started the Quest of the Emerald--and only a possible bushmaster at that. One May evening in Cornwall, Big Jim Donegan, the lumber-king; sat in the misty moon-light with his slippered feet on the rail of the veranda of the great house in which he lived alone. He was puffing away at a corn-cob pipe as placidly as if he did not have more millions than Cornwall has hills--which is saying something, for Cornwall has twenty-seven of the latter. Along the gravel walk, which wound its way for nearly half a mile to the entrance of the estate, came the sound of

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a dragging footstep. A moment later, from out of the shadows stepped a man over six feet in height, a little stooped, and who wore a shiny frock- coat surmounted by a somewhat battered silk hat. The stranger had a long, clean-shaven, lantern-jawed face. His nose jutted out like a huge beak, a magnificent, domineering nose, which, however, did not seem in accord with his abstracted blue eyes and his precise voice.

"What do you want?" snapped Big Jim, bringing his feet to the floor with alarming suddenness.

The stranger blinked at him mildly for a moment with a gaze that seemed to be cataloguing the speaker.

"This is Mr. James Donegan," he finally stated.

"How do you know?" demanded the lumber-king.

"You have all the characteristics of a magnate," returned the other, calmly, "energy, confidence, bad temper, worse manners, and--"

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"Whoa!" shouted Big Jim, whose bark was worse than his bite and who always respected people who stood up to him. "Never mind any more statistics. Who are you!"

"My name is Ditson," responded the other, sitting down without invitation in the most comfortable chair in sight. "Professor Amandus Ditson. I am connected with the Smithsonian National Museum."

"Well," returned Mr. Donegan, stiffening, "I don't intend to subscribe any money to the Smithsonian Museum or any other museum, so there 's no use of your asking me."

"I had no intention of asking you for anything," returned Professor Ditson, severely. "I had understood that you were a collector of gems, and I came to place at your disposal certain information in regard to the finest emeralds probably now in existence. I too am a collector," he went on abstractedly.

"Humph!" grunted Big Jim. "What do

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you collect?" he inquired, regarding his visitor shrewdly.

"Bushmasters," responded Professor Ditson, simply.

"Come again," returned Big Jim, much puzzled, "I don't quite get you. What are bushmasters?"

"The bushmaster," announced Professor Ditson, with more animation than he had yet shown, "is the largest, the rarest and the deadliest of South American serpents. It attains a length of over twelve feet and has fangs an inch and a half long. You will hardly believe me," he went on, tapping Mr. Donegan's knee with a long, bony forefinger, "but there is not a single living specimen in captivity at present, even in our largest cities."

The lumber-king regarded the scientist with undisguised astonishment.

"Professor Amadeus Ditson," he announced solemnly, "so far as I 'm concerned, there can continue to be a lack of bushmasters not only in our great cities, but everywhere else.

"The bushmaster is the largest, rarest, and deadliest of South American serpents"

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Snakes of any kind are absolutely nothing in my young life."

"Tut! tut!" responded the professor, reprovingly. "I think that I could convince you that you are wrong in your unfortunate aversion to reptiles."

"No you could n't," returned Big Jim, positively, "not if you were to lecture all the rest of the year."

"Well," responded Professor Ditson soothingly, "suppose we discuss your hobby, which I understand is precious stones."

"Now you 're talking," returned the other, enthusiastically, "I suppose I 've about the finest collection of gems in this country, and in some lines perhaps the best on earth. Take pearls, for instance," he boasted. "Why, Professor Ditson, some boys right here in Cornwall helped me get the finest examples of pink and blue pearls that there are in any collection. When it comes to emeralds, there are half a dozen collectors who beat me out. What 's all this dope you have about them, anyway?"

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"Last year," replied the other, "I was in Peru at a time when they were repairing one of the oldest cathedrals in that country. A native workman, knowing that I was interested in rarities of all kinds, brought me an old manuscript, which turned out to be a map and a description of the celebrated Lake of Eldorado."

"That 's the name of one of those dream places," interrupted Mr. Donegan, impatiently. "I 've no time to listen to dreams."

Professor Ditson was much incensed.

"Sir," he returned austerely, "I deal in facts, not in dreams. I have traveled one thousand miles to see you, but if you can not speak more civilly, I shall be compelled to terminate this interview and go to some one with better manners and more sense."

"Just was I was going to suggest," murmured Big Jim, taken aback, but much pleased by the professor's independence. "So long, however, as you 've beat me to it, go on. I 'll hear you out anyway."

Professor Ditson stared at him sternly.

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"For nearly four hundred years," he began at last, "there have been legends of a sacred lake somewhere in Bolivia or Peru. Once a year, before the Spanish conquest, the chief of the Incas, the dominant race of Peru, covered with gold-dust, would be ferried out to the center of this lake. There he would throw into the lake the best emerald that had been bound in their mines during the year and then leap in himself. At the same time the other members of the tribe would stand on the shores with their backs to the lake and throw into the water over their shoulders emeralds and gold ornaments."

"Why on earth did they do that?" exclaimed the old collector.

"As an offering to the Spirit of the Lake," returned the professor. "The Spaniards, when they heard the story, named the lake, Eldorado--The Lake of the Golden Man. As the centuries went by, the location was lost-- until I found it again."

There was a long pause, which was broken at last by the lumber-king.

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"Have you any proof that this story of yours is true?" he inquired sarcastically.

For answer, the scientist fished a dingy bag from his pocket and shook out on the table a circlet of soft, pale gold in which gleamed three green stones.

"I found this ten feet from the shore," he said simply.

The lumber-king gasped as he studied the stones with an expert eye.

"Professor Ditson," he admitted at last, "you 're all right and I 'm all wrong. That 's South American gold. I know it by the color. African gold is the deepest, and South American the palest. Those stones are emeralds," he went on; "flawed ones, to be sure, but of the right color. The common emerald from the Ural Mountains is grass-green," lectured Mr. Donegan, fairly started on his hobby. "A few emeralds are gray-green. Those come from the old mines of the Pharoahs along the coast of the Red Sea. They are found on mummies and in the ruins of Pompeii and along the beach in front of Alexandria, where treasure-ships have been wrecked."

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Professor Ditson yawned rudely.

"Once in a blue moon," went on the old collector, earnestly, "a real spring-green emerald with a velvety luster, like these stones, turns up. We call 'em 'treasure emeralds,'" he continued, while Professor Ditson shifted uneasily in his chair. Most of them are in Spanish collections, and they are supposed to be part of the loot that Cortez and Pizarro brought back to Spain when they conquered Mexico and Peru. How large did these old Peruvian emeralds run?" he inquired suddenly.

He had to repeat this question before Professor Ditson, who had been dozing lightly, roused himself.

"Ah yes, quite so, very interesting, I 'm sure," responded that scientist, confusedly. "As to the size of South American emeralds," he went on, rubbing his eyes, "the Spanish record shows that Pizarro sent back to Spain several which were as large as pigeon eggs, and there is a native tradition that the last Inca threw into Eldorado an oval emerald as large as a hen's egg."

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Donegan's face flushed with excitement.

"Professor Ditson," he said at last, "I 've got to have one of those emeralds. Come in," he went on, getting up suddenly, "and I 'll show you my collection."

Professor Ditson sat still.

"No, Mr. Donegan," he said, "it would be just a waste of time. To me, gems are just a lot of colored crystals."

The old lumber-king snorted.

"I suppose you prefer snakes," he said cuttingly.

Professor Ditson's face brightened at the word.

"There," he said enthusiastically, "is something worth while. I only wish that I had you in my snake-room. I could show you live, uncaged specimens which would interest you deeply."

"They sure would," returned Mr. Donegan, shivering slightly. "Well," he went on, "every man to his own taste. What 's your idea about this emerald secret? Can we do business together?"

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The professor's face assumed an air of what he fondly believed to be great astuteness.

"I would suggest," he said, "that you fit out an expedition to the Amazon basin under my direction, to remain there until I collect one or more perfect specimens of the bushmaster. Then I will guide the party to Eldorado and assist them, as far as I can, to recover the sunken treasure."

He came to a full stop.

"Well," queried the lumber-king, "what else?"

The professor looked at him in surprise. "I have nothing else to suggest," he said.

"Suppose we get emeralds which may be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars--what percentage will you claim?" persisted Mr. Donegan.

"I thought that I had made it plain," returned the professor, impatiently, "that I have no interest whatever in emeralds. If you will pay the expenses of the expedition and allow me to keep as my own property any specimens of bushmasters obtained, it will be entirely sat-

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isfactory to me. Of course," finished the scientist, generously, "if we catch several bushmasters, I should have no objections to your having one."

"Heaven forbid!" returned the lumber-king. "Professor," he went o with great emphasis, "I am perfectly willing that you shall have absolutely for your own use and benefit any and all bushmasters, crocodiles, snakes, toads, tarantulas, and any other similar bric-á-brac which you may find in South America. Moreover," he continued, "I 'll fit out an expedition right here from Cornwall that will do the business for both of us. There 's a good-for-nothin' old chap in this town named Jud Adams who has been all over the North huntin' an' trappin' an' prospectin'. In his younger days he was a pearl-diver. Then there 're two young fellows here that went off last year with him for me and brought back the finest blue pearl in the world. I ain't got no manner of doubt but what all three of 'em will jump at the chance to go after emeralds and bushmasters."

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"Bushmasters and emeralds, please," corrected the professor.

"Just as you say," responded the lumber-king. "Now you come right in and I 'll put you up for the night and we 'll send over at once for the crowd that I have in mind and get this expedition started right away."

"The sooner the better," responded the professor, heartily. "Any day, some collector may bring back a bushmaster and beat me out with the Smithsonian."

"I feel the same way," agreed the lumber-king. "I want Jim Donegan to have the first crack at those Inca emeralds."

While all this talk about gold and emeralds and bushmasters was going on in Big Jim's big house, over in a little house on the tiptop of Yelpin Hill, Jud Adams, the old trapper, was just sitting down to supper with two of his best friends. One of these was Will Bright, a magnificently built boy of eighteen with copper-colored hair and dark blue eyes,

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and the other his chum, Joe Couteau, silent, lithe, and swart as his Indian ancestors. Jud himself was not much over five feet tall, with bushy gray hair and beard and steel-sharp eyes. These three, with Fred Perkins, the runner, had won their way to Goreloi, the Island of the Bear, and brought back Jim Donegan's most prized gem, as already chronicled in "The Blue Pearl." They had learned to care for one another as only those can who have fought together against monsters of the sea, savage beasts, and more savage men. Joe and Will, moreover, had shared other life-and-death adventures together, as told in "Boy Scouts in the Wilderness," and, starting without clothes, food, or fire, had lived a month in the heart of the woods, discovered the secret of Wizard Pond, and broken up Scar Dawson's gang of outlaws. Will never forgot that Joe had saved him from the carcajou, nor Joe that it was Will who gave him the first chance of safety when the bloodhounds were hot on their heels through the hidden passage from Wizard Pond. Each one of the four, as his share of

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the blue pearl, and the sea-otter pelt brought back from Akotan, had received fifteen thousand dollars. Fred had invested his money in his brother's business in Boston, left Cornwall, and bade fair to settle down into a successful business man. Will and Joe had both set aside from their share enough to take them through Yale. As for Jud, the day after he received his winnings in the game which the four had played against danger and death, he had a short interview with his old friend Mr. Donegan.

"All my life long," began Jud, "I 've been makin' money; but so far, I have n't got a cent saved up. I know how to tame 'most any other kind of wild animal, but money allers gets away from me. They do say, Jim," went on the old man, "that you 've got the knack of keepin' it. Probably you would n't be worth your salt out in the woods, but every man 's got somethin' that he can do better 'n most. So you just take my share of the blue-pearl money an' put it into somethin' safe an' sound that 'll bring me an income. You see, Jim,"

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he went on confidentially, "I ain't so young as I used to be."

"I should say you ain't!" exclaimed Big Jim, knowing how Jud hated to be called old. "You 're 'most a hundred now."

"I ain't! I ain't!" howled Jud, indignantly. "I ain't a day over fifty--or thereabouts."

"Well, well," said his friend, soothingly, "we won't quarrel over it. I 'll take care of your money and see that you get all that 's comin' to you for the two or three years which you 've got left."; and with mutual abuse and affection the two parted as good friends as ever.

To-night the old trapper and his guests had just finished supper when the telephone rang.

"Jud," came Mr. Donegan's voice over the wire, "what would you and Bill and Joe think of another expedition--after emeralds this time?"

"We 'd think well of it," returned Jud,

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promptly. "The kids are here at my house now."

"Good work!" exclaimed the lumber-king. "All three of you come right over. I 've got a scientist here who 's going to guide you to where the emeralds grow."

"You got a what?" queried Jud.

"A scientist!" shouted Big Jim, "a perfesser. One of those fellows who know all about everything except what 's useful."

"We 'll be right over," said Jud, hanging up the receiver and breaking the news to his friends.

"Listens good," said Will, while Joe grunted approvingly.

"It 's a pity old Jim ain't young and supple enough to go on these trips with us himself," remarked Jud, complacently.

"He ten years younger than you," suggested Joe, slyly, who always delighted in teasing the old trapper about his age.

"Where do you get such stuff?" returned Jud, indignantly. "Jim Donegan 's old enough to be my father--or my brother, any-

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way," he finished, staring sternly at his grinning guests.

"You 're quite right, Jud," said Will, soothingly. "Let's go, though, before that scientist chap gets away."

"He no get away," remarked Joe, sorrowfully, who had listened to the telephone conversation. "He go with us."

"I don't think much of that," said Jud, wagging his head solemnly. "The last perfesser I traveled with was while I was prospectin' down in Arizona. He sold a cure for snakebites an' small-pox, an' one night he lit out with all our cash an' we never did catch him."

Half an hour later found the whole party in Mr. Donegan's study, where they were introduced to Professor Ditson.

"What might you be a perfesser of?" inquired Jud, staring at him with unconcealed hostility.

The other stared back at him for a moment before he replied.

"I have specialized," he said at last, "in reptiles, mammals, and birds, be-

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sides some research work in botany."

"Did n't leave out much, did you?" sneered Jud.

"Also," went on the professor, more quietly, "I learned early in life something about politeness. You would find it an interesting study," he went on, turning away.

"Now, now," broke in Mr. Donegan, as Jud swallowed hard, "if you fellows are going treasure-hunting together, you must n't begin by scrappin'."

"I, sir," returned Professor Ditson, austerely, "have no intention of engaging in an altercation with any one. In the course of collecting- trips in the unsettled portions of all four continents, I have learned to live on good terms with vagabonds of all kinds, and I can do it again if necessary."

"Exactly!" broke in Mr. Donegan, hurriedly, before Jud could speak; "that certainly shows a friendly spirit, and I am sure Jud feels the same way."

"I do," returned the latter, puffingly, "just the same way. I got along once with a per-

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fesser who was no darn good, and I guess I can again."

"Then," said Mr. Donegan, briskly, "let 's get down to business. Professor Ditson, show us, please, the map and manuscript with which you located Lake Eldorado."

For reply, the gaunt scientist produced from a pocket a small copper cylinder, from which he drew a roll of yellowed parchment. Half of it was covered with crabbed writing in the imperishable sepia ink which the old scriveners used. The other half was apparently blank. The lumber-king screwed his face up wisely over the writing.

"H'm-m," he remarked at last. "It 's some foreign language. Let one of these young fellers who 're going to college try."

Will took one look at the paper.

"I pass," he said simply; while Joe shook his head without even looking.

"You 're a fine lot of scholars!" scoffed Jud, as he received the scroll. "Listen now to Perfesser Adams of the University of Out-of-Doors."

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Then, to the astonishment of everybody, in his high-pitched voice he began to translate the labored lines, reading haltingly, like a school-boy:

"I, Alvarado, companion of Pizarro, about to die at dawn, to my dear wife Oriana. I do repent me of my many sins. I am he who slew the Inca Atahualpa and many of his people, and who played away the Sun before sunrise. Now it comes that I too must die, nor of the wealth that I have won have I aught save the Secret of Eldorado. On a night of the full moon, I myself saw the Golden Man throw into the lake the great Emerald of the Incas and a wealth of gold and gems. This treasure-lake lies not far from Orcos in which was thrown the Chain. I have drawn a map in the way thou didst show me long years ago. Take it to the king. There be treasure enough there for all Spain; and through his justice, thou and our children shall have a share. Forgive me, Oriana, and forget me not.

"ALVARADO"

There was a silence when he had finished.

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It was as if the shadow of the tragedy of that wasted life and vain repentance had drifted down the centuries and hung over the little company who had listened to the reading of the undelivered letter. The stillness was broken by Mr. Donegan.

"Where did you learn to read Spanish, you old rascal?" he inquired of Jud.

"Down among the Greasers in Mexico," chuckled the latter, delightedly.

"What does he mean by 'playing away the Sun' and the 'Chain'?" asked Will, of the scientist.

"When the treasures of the Incas were divided," explained Professor Ditson, precisely, "Alvarado had for his share a golden image of the sun over ten feet in diameter. This he gambled away in a single night. The Chain," continued Professor Ditson, "surrounded the chief Inca's residence. It was made of gold, and was two hundred and thirty-three yards long. It was being carried by two hundred Indians to Cuzco to form part of the chief's ransom--a room filled with gold as high as

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he could reach. When the gold came to his shoulder, he was killed. At the news of his death, the men who were bringing the Chain threw it into Lake Orcos."

"But--but," broke in the lumber-king, "where is the map? If you 've got it with you, let 's have a look at it."

Without speaking, Professor Ditson reached over and took the match from the table. Lighting, it, he held the flame for an instant close to the parchment. On the smooth surface before their eyes, suddenly appeared a series of vivid green lines, which at last took the form of a rude map.

"What he learned from Oriana," explained Professor Ditson, "was how to make and use invisible ink."

"Fellows," broke in Mr. Donegan, earnestly, "I believe that Professor Ditson has found Eldorado, and I 'm willing to go the limit to get one of the emeralds of the Incas. I 'll finance the expedition if you 'll all go. What do you say?"

"Aye," voted Will.

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"Aye," grunted Joe.

"I assent," said Professor Ditson, with his usual preciseness.

Jud alone said nothing.

"How about it, Jud?" inquired Big Jim.

"Well," returned Jud, doubtfully, "who 's goin' to lead this expedition?"

"Why, the professor here," returned the lumber-king, surprised. "He 's the only one who knows the way."

"That 's it," objected Jud. "It 's likely to be a rough trip, an' treasure-huntin' is always dangerous. Has the perfesser enough pep to keep up with us younger men?"

Professor Ditson smiled bleakly.

"I 've been six times across South America, and once lived among the South American Indians for two years without seeing a white man," he remarked acidly. "Perhaps I can manage to keep up with an old man and two boys who have never been in the country before. You should understand," he went on, regarding the old trapper sternly, "that specialization in scientific investigation does not

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necessarily connote lack of physical ability."

Jud gasped. "I don't know what he means," he returned angrily, "but he 's wrong--specially that part about me bein' old."

"I feel it is my duty to warn you," interrupted Professor Ditson, "that this trip may involve a special danger outside of those usual to the tropics. When I was last in Peru," he went on, "I had in my employ a man named Slaughter. He was an expert woodsman, but sinister in character and appearance and with great influence over the worst element among the Indians. One night I found him reading this manuscript, which he had taken from my tent while I was asleep. I persuaded him to give it up and leave my employ."

"How did you persuade him?" queried Jud, curiously.

"Automatically," responded Professor Ditson. "At least, I used a Colt's automatic," he explained. "His language, as he left, was deplorable," continued the scientist, "and he declared, among other things, that I would have him to reckon with if I ever went again

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to Eldorado. I have no doubt that through his Indian allies he will be advised of the expedition when it reaches Peru and make trouble for us."

"What did he look like?" inquired Mr. Donegan.

"He was a giant," replied Professor Ditson, "and must have been over seven feet in height. His eyebrows made a straight line across his forehead, and he had a scar from his right eye to the corner of his jaw."

"Scar Dawson!" shouted Will.

"You don't mean the one who nearly burned you and Joe alive in the cabin?" said the lumber-king, incredulously.

"It must be," said Will. "No other man would have that scar and height. I 'll say 'some danger' is right," he concluded, while Joe nodded his head somberly.

"That settles it!" said Jud. "It 's evident this expedition needs a good man to keep these kids out of trouble. I 'm on."

CHAPTER II

A NEW WORLD

A week later found the whole party aboard of one of the great South American liners bound for Belem. The voyage across was uneventful except for the constant bickerings between Jud and Professor Ditson, in which Will and Joe acted sometimes as peace-makers and sometimes as pace-makers. Then, one morning, Will woke up to find that the ocean had changed overnight from a warm sap-green to a muddy clay-color. Although they were not within sight of land, the vast river had swept enough earth from the southern continent into the ocean to change the color of the water for a hundred miles out at sea. Just at sunrise the next day the steamer glided up the Amazon on its way to the old city of Belem, seventy miles inland.

"The air smells like a hot, mouldy cellar!"

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grumbled Jud; and soon the Cornwall pilgrims began to glimpse things strange and new to all three of them. Groups of slim assai-palms showed their feathery foliage; slender lianas hung like green snakes from the trees; and everywhere were pineapple plants, bread-fruit trees, mangos, blossoming oranges and lemons, rows of enormous silk-cotton trees, and superb banana plants, with glossy, velvety green leaves twelve feet in length curving over the roof of nearly every house. Beyond the city the boys had a sight of the jungle, which almost without a break covers the greater part of the Amazon basin, the largest river-basin on earth. They landed just before sunset, and, under Professor Ditson's direction, a retinue of porters carried their luggage to the professor's house, far down the beach, the starting-point for many of his South American expeditions.

As the sun set, the sudden dark of the tropics dropped down upon them, with none of the twilight of higher latitudes. Jud grumbled at the novelty.

"This ain't no way to do," he complained

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to Professor Ditson. "The sun no more than goes down, when bang! it 's as black as your hat."

"We 'll have that seen to at once," responded the professor, sarcastically. "In the meantime, be as patient as you can."

With the coming of the dark, a deafening din began. Frogs and toads croaked, drummed, brayed, and roared. Locusts whirred, and a vast variety of crickets and grasshoppers added their shrill note to the uproar, so strange to visitors and so unnoticed by nativs in the tropics.

"Hey, Professor!" shouted Jud, above the tumult, "what in time is all this noise, anyway?"

"What noise?" inquired Professor Ditson, abstractedly.

The old trapper waved with both hands in a circle around his head and turned to the boys for sympathy. "Sounds like the Cornwall Drum and Fife Corps at its worst!" he shrieked.

"What do you mean, Jud?" said Will, winking at Joe.

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"Poor Jud!" chimed in the latter, shaking his head sadly, "this trip too much for him. He hearing noises inside his head."

For a moment, Jud looked so horrified that, in spite of their efforts to keep up the joke, the boys broke down and laughed uproariously.

"You 'll get so used to this," said Professor Ditson, at last understanding what they were talking about, "that after a few nights you won't notice it at all."

At the professor's bungalow they met two other members of the expedition. One of these was Hen Pine, a negro over six feet tall, but with shoulders of such width that he seemed much shorter. He had an enormous head that seemed to be set directly between his shoulders, so short and thick was his neck. Hen had been with Professor Ditson for many years, and, in spite of his size and strength, was of a happy, good-natured disposition, constantly showing his white teeth in irresistible smiles. Pinto, Professor Ditson's other retainer, was short and dark, an Indian of the Mundurucu tribe, that warlike people which

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early made an alliance of peace with the Portuguese pioneers of Brazil which they had always scrupulously kept. Pinto had an oval aquiline face, and his bare breast and arms had the cross-marks of dark-blue tattooing which showed him to have won high rank as a warrior on the lonely River of the Tapirs, where his tribe held their own against the fierce Mayas, those outlawed cannibals who are the terror of the South American forest.

That evening, after dinner, Professor Ditson took Jud and the boys out for a walk along the beach which stretched away in front of them in a long white curve under the light of the full moon. The night was full of strange sounds, and in the sky overhead burned new stars and unknown constellations, undimmed even by the moonlight, which showed like snow against the shadows of the jungle. Professor Ditson pointed out to the boys Agena and Bungula, a noble pair of first-magnitude stars never seen in the North, which flamed in the violet-black sky. As they looked, Will remembered the night up near Wizard Pond

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before the bear came, when Joe had told him Indian stories of the stars. To-night, almost overhead, shone the most famous of all tropical constellations, the Southern Cross.

Professor Ditson told them that it had been visible on the horizon of Jerusalem about the date of the Crucifixion. From that day, the precession of the equinoxes had carried it slowly southward, and it became unknown to Europeans until Amerigo Vespucci on his first voyage saw and exultantly wrote that he had seen the "Four Stars," of which the tradition had lingered. The professor told them that it was the sky-clock of the tropics and that sailors, shepherds, and other night-wanderers could tell the time within fifteen minutes of watch-time by the position of the two upper stars of this constellation.

"It looks more like a kite than a cross," interjected Jud. "What 's that dark patch in the Milky Way?" he inquired, pointing to a strange black, blank space showing in the milky glimmer of the galaxy.

"That must be the Coal-sack," broke in

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Will, before Professor Ditson could reply.

"I remember reading about it at school," he went on.

"When Magellan sailed around Cape Horn, his sailors saw it and were afraid that they would sail so far south that the sky would n't have any stars. What cheered them up," went on Will, "was the sight of old Orion, which stays in the sky in both hemispheres," and he pointed out the starry belt to Jud and Joe, with the sky-king Sirius shining above it instead of below as in the northern hemisphere.

As Jud and the boys stared up at the familiar line of the three stars, with rose-red Betelgeuse on one side and fire-white Rigel on the other, they too felt something of the same comfort that the old-time navigators had known at the sight of this constellation, steadfast even when the Great Bear and the Pole Star itself had faded from the sky. As they continued to gaze upward they caught sight of another star, which shone with a wild, blue gleam which rivaled the green glare of the dog-star, Sirius. Professor Ditson told them

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that it was Canopus, Mohammed's star, which he thought led him to victory, even as Napoleon believed that the planet Venus, seen by daylight, was his guiding star. Then the professor traced for them that glittering river of stars, Eridanus, and showed them, guarding the southern horizon, gleaming Achernar, the End of the River, a star as bright as is Arcturus or Vega in the northern sky. Then he showed them Formalhaut, of the Southern Fish, which in the North they had seen in the fall just skipping the horizon, one of the faintest of the first-magnitude stars. Down in the southern hemisphere it had come into its own and gleamed as brightly near this northern horizon as did Achernar by the southern. It was Will who discovered the Magellanic Clouds, like fragments of the Milky Way which had broken up and floated down toward the South Pole. These had been also seen and reported by Magellan on that first voyage ever taken around the world four hundred years ago.

Farther up the beach, Jud and the boys came to a full stop. Before them towered

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so high that the stars seemed tangled in its leaves a royal palm, one of the most magnificent trees on earth. Its straight, tapered shaft shot up over a hundred and twenty-five feet and was crowned with a mass of glossy leaves, like deep-green plumes. As it touched the violet sky with the full moon rising back of its proud head, it had an air of unearthly majesty.

Beneath their feet the beach was covered with "angel-wings," pure white shells eight inches long, shaped like the wings of angels in old pictures. With them were beautifully tinted tellinas, crimson olivias with their wonderful zigzag, tentlike color patterns, large dosinias round as dollars, and many other varieties, gold, crimson, and purple.

Some distance down the beach the professor kept a large canoe, in which the whole party paddled out into the bay. As they flashed over the smooth surface, the clamor of the night-life dwindled. Suddenly, from the bushes on a little point, sounded a bird-song which held them all spellbound, a stream of joyous melody, full of rapid, ringing notes,

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yet with a purity of tone which made the song indescribably beautiful. It seemed to include the ethereal quality of the hermit-thrush, the lilt and richness of the thrasher, and the magic of the veery's song, and yet to be more beautiful than any or all of them together. On and on the magic melody flowed and rippled, throbbed and ebbed in the moon-light. Suddenly it stopped. Then from the same thicket burst out a medley of different songs. Some of them were slow and mellow. Others had silvery, bell-like trills. There were flutelike calls, gay hurried twitterings, and leisurely delicious strains--all of them songs of birds which the Cornwall visitors had never even heard. Then Will, the ornithologist of his party, began to hear songs which were familiar to him. There was the musical chuckle of the purple martin, the plaintive call of the upland plover, the curious "kow-kow" of the yellow-billed cuckoo, and the slow, labored music of the scarlet tanager. Suddenly all of them ceased and once again the original song burst out.

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"That thicket must be chuck-full of birds," whispered Jud.

Professor Ditson shook his head.

"It 's only one bird," he said, "but the greatest singer of all the world--the white banded mocking bird."

Even as he spoke, the songster itself fluttered up into the air, a brown bird with a white throat, and tail and wings broadly banded with the same color. Up and up it soared, and its notes chimed like a golden bell as its incomparable song drifted down through the moonlight to those listening below. Then on glistening wings the spent singer wavered down like some huge moth and disappeared in the dark of the thicket. In the silence that followed, Will drew a deep breath.

"I 'd have traveled around the world to hear that song," he half whispered.

Professor Ditson nodded his head understandingly.

"Many and many an ornithologist," he said[,] "has come to South America to listen to that bird and gone away without hearing what we

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have heard to-night. Between his own two songs," went on the professor, "I counted the notes of seventeen other birds of both North and South America that he mimicked."

They paddled gently toward the shore, hoping to hear the bird again, but it sang no more that night. As they neared the beach, the moonlit air was heavy with the scent of jessamine, fragrant only after darkness, and the overpowering perfume of night-blooming cereuses, whose satin-white blossoms were three feet in circumference. Suddenly, just before them, the moon- flowers bloomed. Great snowy blossoms five inches across began to open slowly. There was a puff of wind, and hundreds of them burst into bloom at once, glorious white salvers of beauty and fragrance.

"Everything here," said Will, "seems beautiful and peaceful and safe."

Professor Ditson smiled sardonically. "South America is beautiful," he said precisely, "but it is never safe. Death and danger lurk everywhere and in the most unexpected forms. It is only in South America," he went on, "that you can be eaten alive by fish

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the size of small trout, or be killed by ants or little brown bats."

Jud listened with much scorn. "Professor," he broke out at last, "I don't take much stock in that kind of talk. Your nerves are in a bad way. My advice to you is--"

What Mr. Judson Adams's advice was, will never be known, for at that moment a dreadful thing happened. Into the beauty of the moonlight, from the glassy water of the bay soared a shape of horror, a black, monstrous creature like a gigantic bat. It had two wings which measured a good twenty feet from tip to tip, and was flat, like an enormous skate. Behind it streamed a spiked, flexible tail, while long feelers, like slim horns, projected several feet beyond a vast hooked mouth. Like some vampire shape from the Pit, it skimmed through the air across the bow of the canoe not ten feet from where Jud was sitting. The old trapper was no coward, but this sudden horror was too much even for his seasoned nerves. With a yell, he fell backward off his thwart, and as his legs kicked con-

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vulsively in the air, the monster came down with a crash that could have been heard a mile, raising a wave which nearly swamped the canoe. A moment later, the monstrous shape broke water again farther seaward, blotting out for an instant with its black bulk the rising moon.

"What kind of a sea-devil is that, anyhow?" queried Jud, shakily, as he righted himself, with the second crash of the falling body still in his ears.

"That," responded Professor Ditson, precisely, "is a well-nourished specimen of the manta-ray, a fish allied to the skate family--but you started to speak about nerves."

Jud, however, said nothing and kept on saying the same all the way back to the house. Arriving there in safety, he went down to the spring for some water with Pinto, but a moment later came bolting back.

"What 's the matter now, Jud?" inquired Will, solicitously. "Di you find another water-devil in the spring?"

"That 's just what I did!" bellowed Jud.

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"When I started to dip out a pail of water, up pops about six feet of snake. Now you know, boys," he went on, panting, "I hate snakes, an' I jumped clear across the spring at the sight of this one; but what do you suppose that Injun did?" he continued excitedly. "Pats the snake's head an' tells me it 's tame an' there to keep the spring free from frogs. Now what do you think of that?"

"He was quite right," observed Professor Ditson, soothingly. "It is a perfectly harmless, well-behaved serpent, known as the musarama. This one is a fine specimen which it will be worth your while to examine more carefully."

"I 've examined it just as carefully as I 'm goin' to," shouted Jud, stamping into the house as Pinto came grunting up the path carrying a brimming bucket of water.

As they sat down for supper, a long streak of black and white flashed across the ceiling just over Jud, who sat staring at it with a spoonful of soup half-way to his mouth.

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"Professor Ditson," he inquired softly, "is that thing on the ceiling another one of your tame snakes?"

"No, sir," responded the professor, impatiently; "that is only a harmless house-lizard."

"I just wanted to know," remarked Jud, rising and taking his plate to a bench outside of the door, where he finished his supper, in spite of all attempts on the part of the boys to bring him back.

In front of Will stood a pitcher of rich yellow cream. "You have a good cow, Professor Ditson," he remarked politely as he poured some into a cup of the delicious coffee which is served with every meal in Brazil.

"Yes," agreed the scientist, "I have a grove of them." Then he explained to the bewildered Will that the cream was the sap of the cow tree.

Will was not so fortunate with his next investigation. Taking a second helping of a good-tasting stew which Pinto had brought in from the kitchen, he asked the Indian what it was made of.

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"Tinnala," replied the Mundurucu.

"What is it in North American?" persisted Will.

The Indian shook his head. "I not know any other name," he said. "Wait, I show you," he went on, disappearing into the kitchen to return a moment later with a long, hairy arm ending in a clenched fist. Will started up and clasped his stomach frantically, remembering all that he had read about cannibalism among the South American Indians. Even when Professor Ditson explained that the stew was made from a variety of monkey which was considered a great delicacy, he was not entirely reassured and finished his meal on oranges.

Jud was much amused. "You always were a fussy eater, Bill," he remarked from the porch. "I remember you would n't eat mountain-lion up in the North when we were after the pearl. You ought to pattern after Joe. He don't find fault with the food."

"All I want about food," grunted Joe, "is enough."

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That night the whole party slept side by side in hammocks swung in a screened veranda in the second story.

During the night, Jud, who was always a light sleeper, was awakened by a curious, rustling, crackling sound which seemed to come from the storeroom, which opened into the sleeping-porch. After listening awhile he reached over and aroused Professor Ditson, who was sleeping soundly next to him.

"Some one 's stealin' your grub," he whispered.

The professor stepped lightly out of his hammock, followed by Jud and the boys, who had been waked up by the whispering. Opening the door noiselessly, the scientist peered in. After a long look, Professor Ditson turned around to fidn Jud gripping his revolver and ready for the worst.

"You can put up your gun," the scientist growled. "Bullets don't mean anything to thieves like these,["] and he flashed a light on a strange sight. On a long table stood native baskets full of cassava, that curious grainlike

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substance obtained from the root of the poisonous manihot and which takes the place of wheat in South America. The floor was covered with moving columns of ants, large and small, which had streamed up the legs of the table and into the baskets. Some of them were over an inch long, while others were smaller than the grains they were carrying. The noise which had aroused Jud had been made by their cutting off the dry leaves with which the baskets were lined, to use in lining their underground nest. Professor Ditson told them that nothing could stop an ant-army. Once on the march, they would not turn back for fire or water and would furiously attack anything that tried to check them. "A remarkably efficient insect," concluded the professor, "for it bites with one end and stings with the other."

"This is what I call a nice quiet night!" murmured Jud, as he went back to his hammock. "Sea-devils, snakes, lizards--and now it 's ants. I wonder what next?"

"Next," however, was daylight, blazing with the startling suddenness of the tropics,

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where there is no dawn-light. With the light, the tumult of the night ceased, and in place of the insect din came a medley of bird-notes. When Jud opened his eyes Professor Ditson's hammock was empty, for the scientist usually got up long before daylight, and through the open door strutted a long-legged, wide-winged bird, nearly three feet tall, with a shimmering blue breast and throat. Without hesitating, she walked over to Jud's hammock and, spread [sic] her wings with a deep murmuring note, made a low bow.

"Good morning to you," responded Jud, much pleased with his visitor.

The bird bowed and murmured again and allowed him to pat her beautiful head as she bent forward. Then she went to the next hammock and the next and the next, until she had awakened all of the sleepers, whereupon, with deep bows and courtesies and murmurings, she sidled out of the room.

"Now, that," said Jud, as he rolled out of the hammock and began to long for his shoes, "is an alarm-clock worth having!"

Pinto, the Mundurucu, who appeared at

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this moment with a pail of spring water, told them that the bird was a tame female trumpeter which he had picked up as a queer, frightened little creature, all legs and neck, but which had become one of the best-loved of all of his many pets. Each morning the tame, beautiful bird would wander through the house, waking up every sleeper at sunrise. When Pinto took trips through the forest the bird always went with him, traveling on his back in a large-meshed fiber bag; and when he made camp it would parade around for a while, bowing and talking, and then fly up into the nearest tree, where it would spend the night. Tente, as it was named, was always gentle except when it met a dog. No matter how large or fierce the latter might be, Tente would fly at it, making a loud, rumbling noise, which always made the dog turn tail and run for its life.

As Pinto started to fill the pitchers, Will, the bird expert of the party, began to ask him about some of the songs which were sounding all around the house. One bird which squalled and mewed interested him.

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"That bird chestnut cuckoo," said Pinto. "It have the soul of a cat."

And as Will listened he could well believe it. A little farther off, another bird called constantly, "Crispen, Crispen, Crispen."

"One time," narrated the Indian, "a girl and her little brother Crispen go walking in the woods. He very little boy and he wander away and get lost, and all day and all night and all next day she go through the woods calling, 'Crispen! Crispen! Crispen!' until at last she changed into a little bird. And still she flies through the woods and calls 'Crispen!'"

At this point, Jud finally found his missing shoes and stared to put one on, but stopped at a shout from the Mundurucu.

"Shake it out!" warned Pinto. "No one ever puts on shoes in this country without shaking out."

Jud did as he was told. With the first shoe he drew a blank. Out of the second one, however, rattled down on the floor a centipede fully six inches long, which Pinto skillfully crushed with the heavy water-pitcher.

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Jud gasped and sank back into his hammock.

"Boys," he said solemnly, "I doubt if I last out this trip!"

CHAPTER III

THE VAMPIRES

After breakfast, Professor Amandus Ditson called the party together for a conference in a wide, cool veranda on the ground floor.

"I should like to outline to you my plan of our expedition," he announced precisely.

Jud gave an angry grunt. The old adventurer, who had been a hero among prospectors and trappers in the Far North, was accustomed to be consulted in any expedition of which he was a member.

"It seems to me, Professor Ditson," he remarked aggressively, "that you 're pretty uppity about this trip. Other people here have had experience in treasure-huntin'."

"Meaning yourself, I presume," returned Professor Ditson, acidly.

"Yes, sir!" shouted Jud, thoroughly aroused,

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"that 's exactly who I do mean. I know as much about--ouch!" The last exclamation came when Jud brought down his open hand for emphasis on the side of his chair and incidently on a lurid brown insect nearly three inches in length, with enormous nippers and a rounded body ending in what looked like a long sting. Jud jerked his hand away and gazed in horror at his threatening seat-mate.

"I believe I 'm stung," he murmured faintly, gazing anxiously at his hand. "What is it?"

"It would hardly seem to me," observed Professor Ditson, scathingly, "that a man who is afraid of a harmless arachnid like a whip-scorpion, and who nearly falls out of a canoe at the sight of a manta-ray disporting itself, would be the one to lead an expedition through the unexplored wilds of South America. We are going into a country," he went on more earnestly, "where a hasty step, the careless touching of a tree, or the tasting of a leaf or fruit may mean instant death, to say nothing of the dangers from some of the larger carnivora and wandering cannibals. I have had

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some experience with this region," he went on, "and if there is no objection, I will outline my plan."

There was none. Even Jud, who had removed himself to another chair with great rapidity, had not a word to say.

"I propose that we take a steamer by the end of this week to Manaos, a thousand miles up the Amazon," continued the professor. "In the meantime, we can do some hunting and collecting in this neighborhood. After we reach Manaos we can go by boat down the Rio Negros until we strike the old Slave Trail which leads across the Amazon basin and up into the highlands of Peru."

"Who made that trail?" inquired Will, much interested.

"It was cut by the Spanish conquerors of Peru nearly four hundred years ago," returned the scientist. "They used to send expeditions down into the Amazon region after slaves to work their mines. Since then," he went on, "it has been kept open by the Indians themselves, and, as far as I know, has not been traversed by a white man for centuries. I

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learned the secret of it many years ago, while I was living with one of the wilder tribes," he finished.

The professor's plan was adopted unanimously, Jud not voting.

Then followed nearly a week of wonderful hunting and collecting. Even Jud, who regarded everything with a severe and jaundiced eye, could not conceal his interest in the multitude of wonderful new sights, sounds, and scents which they experienced every day. As for Will, he lived in the delightful excitement which only a bird-student knows who finds himself surrounded by a host of unknown and beautiful birds. Some of them, unlike good children, were heard but not seen. Once, as they pushed their way in single file along a little path which wound through the jungle, there suddenly sounded, from the dark depths beyond, a shriek of agony and despair. In a moment it was taken up by another voice and another and another, until there were at least twenty screamers performing in chorus.

"It 's only the ypicaha rail," remarked the professor, indifferently.

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Hen Pine, who was in the rear with Will, shook his head doubtfully.

"Dis ol' jungle," he whispered, "is full o' squallers. De professor he call 'em birds, but dey sound more like ha'nts to me."

Beyond the rail colony they heard at intervals a hollow, mysterious cry.

"That," explained Pinto, "is the Witch of the Woods. No one ever sees her unless she is answered. Then she comes and drives mad the one who called her."

"Nice cheery place, this!" broke in Jud.

"The alleged witch," remarked Professor Ditson severely, "happens to be the little waterhen."

Later they heard a strange, clanging noise, which sounded as if some one had struck a tree with an iron bar, and at intervals from the deepest part of the forest there came a single, wild, fierce cry. Even Professor Ditson could not identify these sounds.

"Dem most suttinly is ha'nts," volunteered Hen. "I kno 'em. You would n't catch dis chile goin' far alone in dese woods."

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One of the smaller birds which interested Will was the many-colored knight, which looked much like one of the northern kinglets. His little body, smalelr than that of a house-wren, showed seven colors--black, white, green, blue, orange, yellow, and scarlet, and he had a blue crown and a sky- blue eye. Moreover, his nest, fastened to a single rush, was a marvel of skill and beauty, being made entirely of soft bits of dry, yellow sedge, cemented together with gum so smoothly that it looked as if it had been cast in a mold. Then there was the Bienteveo tyrant, a bird about nine inches long, which caught fish, flies, and game, and fed on fruit and carrion indiscriminately. It was entirely devoted to its mate, and whenever a pair of tyrants were separated, they would constantly call back and forth to each other reassuringly, even when they were hunting. When they finally met again, they would perch close to each other and scream joyously at being reunited. Another bird of the same family, the scarlet tyrant, all black and scarlet, was so brilliant that

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even the rainbow-hued tanagers seemed pale and hte jeweled humming-bird sad-colored in the presence of "coal-o'-fire," as the Indians have named the bird.

Jud was more impressed with the wonders of the vegetable kingdom. Whenever he strayed off the beaten path or tried to cut his way through a thicket, he tangled himself in the curved spines of the pull-and-haul-back vine, a thorny shrub which lives up to its name, or was stabbed by the devil-plant, a sprawling cactus which tries quite successfully to fill up all the vacant spaces in the jungle where it grows. Each stem of this well- named shrub had three or four angles, and each angle was lined with thorns an inch or more in length, so sharp and strong that they pierced Jud's heavy hunting-boots like steel needles. If it had not been for Hen, who was a master with the machete, Jud never would have broken loose from his entanglements. Beyond the cactus, the old trapper came to a patch of poor- man's plaster, a shrub with attractive yellow flowers, but whose leaves, which broke off at a touch, were covered on the under side with

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barbed hairs, which caught and clung to any one touching them. The farther Jud went, the more he became plastered with these sticky leaves, until he began to look like some huge chrysalis. The end came when he tripped on a network of invisible wires, the stems of species of smilax and morning-glory, and rolled over and over in a thicket of the plasters. When at last he gained his feet, he looked like nothing human, but seemed only a walking mass of green leaves and clinging stems.

"Yah, yah, yah!" roared Hen. "Mars' Jud he look des like Br'er Rabbit did when he spilled Br'er Bear's bucket o' honey over hisself an' rolled in leafs tryin' to clean hisself. Mars' Jud sure look like de grand- daddy ob all de ha'nts in dese yere woods."

"Shut up, you fool darky," said Jud, decidedly miffed. "Come and help unwrap me. I feel like a cigar."

Hen laughed so that it was with difficulty that he freed Jud, prancing with impatience, from his many layers of leaves. Later on, Hen showed himself to be an even more pres-

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ent help in trouble. The two were following a path a short distance away from the rest of the party, with Jud in the lead. Suddenly the trapper heard the slash of the negro's machete just behind him, and turned around to see him cutting the head from a coiled rattlesnake over which Jud had stepped. If Jud had stopped or touched the snake with either foot, he would most certainly have been bitten, and it spoke well for Hen's presence of mind that he kept perfectly quiet until the danger was over. This South American rattlesnake had a smaller head and rougher scales than any of the thirteen North American varieties, and was nearly six feet in length. Professor Ditson was filled with regret that it had not been caught alive.

"Never kill a harmless snake," he said severely to Hen, "without consulting me. I would have been glad to have added this specimen to the collection of the Zoölogical Gardens."

"Harmless!" yelled Jud, much incensed. "A rattlesnake harmless! How do you get that way?"

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"He did n't do you any harm, did he?" retorted the professor, acidly. "It is certainly ungrateful of you to slander a snake just after he has saved your life."

"How did he save my life?" asked Jud.

"By not biting you," returned Professor Ditson, promptly.

A little later poor Jud had a hair-raising experience with another snake. He had shot a carancha, that curious South American hawk which wails and whines when it is happy, and, although a fruit-eater with weak claws and only a slightly hooked beak, attacks horses and kills lambs. Jud had tucked his specimen into a back pocket of his shooting-jacket and was following a little path which led through an open space in the jungle. He had turned over his shot-gun to Joe, and was trying his best to keep clear of any more tangling vines, when suddenly right beside him a great dark snake reared its head until its black glittering eyes looked level into Jud's, and its flickering tongue was not a foot from his face. With a yell, Jud broke the world's record for the back-standing broad-

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jump and tore down the trail shouting, "Bushmaster! bushmaster!" at the top of his voice. As he ran he suddenly felt a sharp pain in his back.

"He 's got me!" he called back to Hen Pine, who came hurrying after him. "Ouch! There he goes again!" and he plunged head-long into a patch of pull-and-haul-back vine, which anchored him until Hen came up.

"Dat ain't no bushmaster, Mars' Jud," the latter called soothingly. "Dat was only a trail-haunting blacksnake. He like to lie next to a path an' stick up his ol' head to see who's comin', kin' o' friendly like."

"Friendly nothin'!" groaned Jud. "He 's just bit me again."

As soon as Hen laid hold of Jud's jacket he found out what was the matter. The hawk had only been stunned by Jud's shot, and, coming to life again, had promptly sunk his claws into the latter's back, and Jud had mistaken the bird's talons for the fangs of the bushmaster. Professor Ditson, who had hurried up, was much disappointed.

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"If you ever meet a bushmaster, you 'll learn the difference between it and a harmless blacksnake," he observed. "Probably, however," he went on thoughtfully, "it will be too late to do you much good."

"Why do all the snakes in South America pick on me?" complained Jud. "There don't seem to be nothin' here but snakes an' thorns."

It was Pinto who gave the old trapper his first favorable impression of the jungle. They had reached a deserted bungalow in the heart of the woods, which Professor Ditson had once made his headquarters a number of years before. There they planned to have lunch and spend the night. At the meal Jud showed his usual good appetite in spite of his misfortunes, but he complained afterward to Hen, who had attached himself specially to the old man, about the absence of dessert.

"I got a kind of sweet tooth," he said. "You ain't got a piece of pie handy, have you?"

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"No sah, no sah," replied Hen, regretfully. "You 's about three thousand miles south to de pie-belt."

"Wait," broke in Pinto, who had been listening. "Wait a minute; I get you something sweet," and he led the way to an enormous tree with reddish, ragged bark. Some distance up its trunk was a deep hollow, out of which showed a spout of dark wax nearly two feet long. In and out of this buzzed a cloud of bees.

"I get you!" shouted Jud, much delighted, "a bee-tree! Look out, boy," he went on, as the Indian, clinging to the ridges of the bark with his fingers and toes, began to climb. "Those bees 'll sting you to death."

"South American bees hab no sting," explained Hen, as Pinto reached the wax spout, and, breaking it off, thrust his hand fearlessly through the cloud of bees into the store of honey beyond. A moment later, and he was back again, laden with masses of dripping honeycomb, the cells of which, instead of being six-sided, as with our northern bees, resembled each one a little bottle. The honey

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was clear and sweet, yet had a curious tart flavor. While Jud was sampling a bit of honeycomb, Pinto borrowed Hen's machete and cut a deep gash through the rough red bark of the tree. Immediately there flowed out from the cut the same thick, milky juice which they had seen at their first breakfast in South America. The Indian cut a separate gash for each one of the party, and they all finished their meal with draughts of the sweet, creamy juice.

"It sure is a land flowing with milk an' honey," remarked Jud, at last, after he had eaten and drunk all that he could hold.

"This vegetable milk is particularly rich in gluten," observed Professor Ditson, learnedly.

"I guess it 'd gluten up a fellow's stomach all right if he drank too much of it," remarked Jud, smacking his lips over the sweet, sticky taste which the juice of the cow-tree left in his mouth.

After lunch, most of the party retired to their hammocks in the cool dark of the house for the siesta which South American travelers

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find an indispensable part of a tropical day. Only the scientist and Will stayed awake to catch butterflies through the scented silence of the forest where the air, filled with the steam and perfume of a green blaze of growth, had the wet hotness of a conservatory. When even the insects and the untiring tree-toads were silenced by the sun, Professor Ditson, wearing a gray linen suit with a low collar and a black tie, was as enthusiastic as ever over the collecting of rare specimens, and was greatly pleased at Will's interest in his out-of-door hobbies.

Together they stepped into the jungle, where scarlet passion-flowers shone like stars through the green. Almost immediately they began to see butterflies. The first one was a magnificent grass-green specimen, closely followed by others whose iridescent, mother-of-pearl wings gleamed in the sunlight like bits of rainbow. On a patch of damp sand a group made a cloud of sulphur-yellow, sapphire-blue, and gilded green-and-orange. The professor told Will that in other years he had found over seven hundred different kinds

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within an hour's walk from this forest bungalow, being more than double the number of varieties found in all Europe.

Deep in the jungle, they at last came to a little open stretch where the Professor had often collected before and which to-day seemed full of butterflies. Never had Will imagined such a riot of color and beauty as there dazzled his eyes. Some of the butterflies were red and yellow, the colors of Spain. Others were green, purple, and blue, bordered and spangled with spots of silver and gold. Then there were the strange transparent "glass-wings." One of these, the Hetaira esmeralda, Will was convinced must be the most beautiful of all flying creatures. Its wings were like clear glass, with a spot of mingled violet and rose in the center of each one. At a distance, only this shimmering spot could be seen rising and falling through the air, like the wind-borne petals of some beautiful flower. Indeed, as the procession of color drifted by, it seemed to the boy as if all the loveliest flowers on earth had taken to themselves wings, or that the rainbow-bridge of

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the sky had been shattered into fragments which were drifting slowly down to earth.

The largest of them all were the swallowtails, belonging to the same family as the tiger, and blue and black swallowtail, which Will had so often caught in Cornwall. One of that family gleamed in the sunlight like a blue meteor as it flapped its great wings, seven inches from tip to tip and of a dazzling blue, high above the tree-tops. Another member of the same family, and nearly as large, was satiny white in color. Professor Ditson told Will that both of these varieties were almost unknown in any collection, as they never came within twenty feet of the ground, so that the only specimens secured were those of disabled or imperfect butterflies which had dropped to the lower levels.

"Why could n't I climb to the top of one of those trees with a net and catch some?" inquired Will, looking wistfully up at the gleaming shapes flitting through the air so far above him.

"Fire-ants and wasps," returned the professor, concisely. "They are found in virtu-

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ally every tree. No one can stand the pain of an ant's bite, and one sting of a Maribundi wasp has been known to kill a strong man."

That night, tired out by their long day of hunting, the whole party went to bed early. Will's sleeping-room was an upper screened alcove, just large enough to hold a single hammock. Somehow, even after his long hard day, he did not feel sleepy. Great trees shadowed his corner, so thick that even the stars could not shine through their leaves, and it seemed to Will as if he could stretch out his hands and lift up dripping masses of blackness, smothering, terrifying in its denseness. From a far-away tree- top the witch-owl muttered over and over again that mysterious word of evil, "Murucututu, murucututu," in a forgotten Indian tongue. He had laughed when Pinto told him a few nights before that the owl was trying to lay a spell on those who listened, but to-night in the dark he did not laugh.

Then close at hand in a neighborhood tree-top sounded a beautiful contralto frog-note slowly repeated. "Gul, gul, gul, gul, guggle,

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gul, guggle," it throbbed. The slow, sweet call gave the boy a sense of companionship, and he fell asleep with the music of it still sounding in his ears.

Toward midnight he woke with a vague sense of uneasiness. It was as if some hidden subconsciousness of danger had sounded an alarm note within his nerve centers and awakened him. Something seemed to be moving and whispering outside of the screened alcove. Then a body struck the screen of mosquito-netting, and he heard the rotten fiber rip. Another second, and his little room was filled with moving, flitting, invisible shapes. Great wings fanned the air just above his face. There was the faint reek of hot, furry bodies passing back and forth and all around him. For a moment Will lay thinking that he was in a nightmare, for he had that strange sense of horror which paralyzes one's muscles during a bad dream so that movement is impossible. At last, by a sudden effort, he stretched out his hand and struck a match from a box which stood on a stand beside his hammock. At the quick

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spurt of flame through the dark, from all parts of the little room came tiny, shrill screeches, and the air around him was black with whirling, darting shapes. Suddenly into the little circle of light from the match swept the horrible figure of a giant bat, whose leathern wings had a spread of nearly two and a half feet, and whose horrible face hovered and hung close to his own. Never had the boy believed that any created thing could be so grotesquely hideous. The face that peered into his own was flanked on either side by an enormous leathery ear. From the tip of the hairy muzzle grew a spearlike spike, and the grinning mouth was filled with rows of irregular, tiny, gleaming sharp teeth, gritting and clicking against each other. Deep-set little green eyes, which glistened and gleamed like glass, glared into Will's face. Before he could move, a great cloud of flying bats, large and small, settled down upon him. Some of them were small gray vampire-bats with white markings, others were the great fruit-eating bats, and there were still others dark-red, tawny-brown, and fox-yel-

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low. Whirling and wheeling around the little point of flame, they dashed it out, and crawled all over the boy until he felt stifled and smothered with the heat of their clinging bodies.

Suddenly he felt a stinging pain in his bare shoulder and in one of his exposed feet. As he threw out his hands desperately, tiny clicking teeth cut the flesh of wrists and arms. The scent of blood seemed to madden the whole company of these deaths-in-the-dark, and, although the actual bites were made by the little vampire-bats, yet at the sight of them feasting, the other night-fliers descended upon the boy like a black cloud and clustered around the little wounds, as Will had seen moths gather around syrup spread on trees of a warm June night.

The sting of their bites lasted for only a second, and the flapping of their wings made a cool current of air which seemed to drug his senses. Dreamily he felt them against him, knew they were draining his life, yet lacked the will-power to drive them away.

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Suddenly there flashed into his mind all that he had heard and read of the deadly methods of these dark enemies of mankind. With a shriek, he threw out his arms through the furry cloud that hung over him and sprang out of his hammock.

At his scream, Professor Ditson rushed in with a flash-light, followed by Pinto, Hen, and Joe, while Jud slept serenely through the whole tumult. They found Will dripping with blood from a dozen little punctures made by the sharp teeth of the bats, and almost exhausted from fright and the loss of blood. Then came pandemonium. Seizing sticks, brooms machetes, anything that came to hand, while Will sank back into his hammock, the others attacked the bats. Lighted by the flash of Professor Ditson's electric light, they drove the squeaking, shrieking cloud of dark figures back and forth through the little room until the last one had escaped through the torn netting or was lying dead on the floor.

Twenty-seven bats altogether were piled in a heap when the fight was over.

CHAPTER IV

DEATH RIVER

At last their first week in this new world of beauty and mystery came to an end. At Belem they boarded a well-appointed steamer and embarked for the thousand-mile voyage to Manaos, which is only six degrees from the equator and one of the hottest cities of the world. There followed another week of a life that was strange and new to the travelers from Cornwall. There were silent, steaming days when the earth seemed to swoon beneath the glare of the lurid sun, and only at night would a breath of air cross the water, which gleamed like a silver burning-glass. For their very lives' sake, white men and Indians alike had learned to keep as quiet and cool as possible during those fiery hours. Only Hen, coming from a race that since the birth of time had lived close to the equator,

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moved about with a cheerfulness which no amount of heat or humidity could lessen. At night, when the fatal sun had reluctantly disappeared in a mass of pink and violet clouds, the life-bringing breeze would blow in fresh and salt from the far-away sea, and all living creatures would revive. The boys soon learned that, in the mid-heat of a tropical summer, the night was the appointed time for play and work, and they slept during the day as much as possible in shaded, airy hammocks.

One evening, after an unusually trying day, the night wind sprang up even before the sun had set. Here and there, across the surface of the river, flashed snow-white swallows with dark wings. As the fire-gold of the sun touched the horizon, the silver circle of the full moon showed in the east, and for a moment the two great lights faced each other. Then the sun slipped behind the rim of the world, and the moon rose higher and higher, while the Indian crew struck up a wailing chant full of endless verses, with a strange minor cadence like the folk-songs of the

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Southern negro. Hen Pine translated the words of some of them, and crooned the wailing melody:

"The moon is rising,
      Mother, Mother,
The seven stars are weeping,
      Mother, Mother,
To find themselves forsaken,
      Mother, Mother."

Down the echoing channels, through the endless gloomy forests, the cadence of the song rose and fell.

Suddenly, in the still moonlight from the river-bank came a single low note of ethereal beauty and unutterable sorrow. Slowly it rose and swelled, keeping its heartbreaking quality and exquisite beauty. At the sound the men stopped singing, and it seemed as if an angel were sobbing in the stillness. On and on the song went, running through eight lonely, lovely notes which rose and swelled until there seemed to be nothing in the world except that beautiful voice, finally ending in a sob which brought the tears to Will's eyes.

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Then out into the moonlight flitted the singer, a quiet-colored little brown-and-gray bird, the celebrated solitaire, the sweetest, saddest singer of the Brazilian forest.

After all this music, supper was served. It began with a thick, violet-colored drink in long glasses filled with cracked ice. The boys learned from Professor Ditson that this was made from the fruit of the assai-palm. It was strangely compounded of sweet and sour and had besides a fragrance and a tingle which made it indescribably refreshing. This was followed by an iced preparation made from the root of the manioc, whose juice is poisonous, but whose pulp is wholesome and delicious. Before being served it had been boiled with the fruit of the miriti-palm, which added a tart sweetness to its taste which the Northerners found most delightful. The next course was a golden-yellow compound of a rich, nutty flavor, the fruit of the mucuju-palm, which has a yellow, fibrous pulp so full of fat that vultures, dogs, and cats eat it greedily. For dessert, there was a great basket of

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sweet lemons, mangos, oranges, custard-apples, and other fruits.

After supper they all grouped themselves in the bow and there, in comfortable steamer-chairs, watched the steamer plow its way through a river of ink and silver. That day, Jud, while in his hammock, had seen, to his horror, what seemed to be a slender vine, dangling from one of the trees, change into a pale-green snake some eight feet long, whose strange head was prolonged into a slender, pointed beak. Even as the old man stared, it flashed across the deck not two feet away from him and disappeared in another tree. So perfectly did its color blend with the leaves that the instant it reached them it seemed to vanish from sight.

"It was the palm-snake," said Professor Ditson, after Jud told them of his experience. "It lives on lizards, and, although venomous, has never been known to bite a human being. If you had only been brave enough," he went on severely, "to catch it with your naked hand, we might even now have an invalu-

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able record of the effects of its venom."

"What is the most venomous snake in the world?" broke in Will, as Jud tried to think of words strong enough to express what he thought of the scientist's suggestion.

"The hamadryad or king cobra," returned the professor. "I once secured one over fourteen feet long."

"How did you catch it?" queried Will.

"Well," said the professor, "I came across it by a fortunate accident. I was collecting butterflies in India at a time of the year when it is especially pugnacious, and this particular snake dashed out of a thicket at me. It came so unexpectedly that I had to run for my life. It seems ridiculous that I should have done so," he went on apologetically, "but the bite of the hamadryad is absolutely fatal. This one gained on me so rapidly that I was at last compelled to plunge into a near-by pond, since this variety of snake never willingly enters water."

"What happened then?" inquired Will, as the scientist came to a full stop.

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"When I reached the opposite shore, a quarter of a mile away, and was about to land," returned the professor, "out of the rushes this same snake reared up some six feet. With the rare intelligence which make the hamadryad such a favorite among collectors, it had circled the lake and was waiting for me."

"Snappy work!" said Jud, shivering. "I can't think of any pleasanter finish to a good swim than to find a nice fourteen-foot snake waitin' for me. What did you do then?"

"I floated around in deep water until my assistant came and secured the snake with a forked stick. It is now in the New York Zoölogical Gardens at the Bronx," concluded the professor.

Jud drew a deep breath. "That reminds me," he said at last, "of a time I once had with a pizen snake when I was a young man. I was hoein' corn up on a side hill in Cornwall when I was about sixteen year old," he continued. "All on a sudden I heard a rattlin' an' down the hill in one of the furrows came rollin' a monstrous hoop-snake.

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You know," he explained, "a hoop-snake has an ivory stinger in its tail an' rolls along the ground like a hoop, an' when it strikes it straightens out an' shoots through the air just like a spear."

"I know nothing of the kind," broke in Professor Ditson.

"Well," said Jud, unmoved by the interruption, "when I saw this snake a-rollin' an' a-rattlin' down the hill dowards me, I dived under the fence an' put for home, leavin' my hoe stickin' up straight in the furrow. As I slid under the fence," he went on, "I heard a thud, an' looked back just in time to see the old hoop-snake shoot through the air an' stick its stinger deep into the hoe-handle. It sure was a pizen snake, all right," he went on, wagging his head solemnly. "When I came back, an hour or so later, the snake was gone, but that hoe-handle had swelled up pretty nigh as big as my leg."

There was a roar of laughter from Will and Joe, while Jud gazed mournfully out over the water. Professor Ditson was vastly indignant.

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"I feel compelled to state," he said emphatically, "that there is no such thing as a hoop-snake and that no snake-venom would have any effect on a hoe-handle."

"Have it your way," said Jud. "It ain't very polite of you to doubt my snake story after I swallowed yours without a word."

At Manaos they left the steamer, and Professor Ditson bought for the party a montaria, a big native boat without a rudder, made of plank and propelled by narrow, pointed paddles. Although Hen and Pinto and the Professor were used to this kind of craft, it did not appeal at all favorably to the Northerners, who were accustomed to the light bark-canoes and broad-bladed paddles of the Northern Indians. Joe was especially scornful.

"This boat worse than a dug out," he objected. "It heavy and clumsy and paddles no good either."

"You 'll find it goes all right on these rivers," Professor Ditson reassured him. "We only have a few hundred miles more, anyway before we strike the Trail."

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Under the skilful handling of Hen and Pinto, the montaria, although it seemed unwieldly, [sic] turned out to be a much better craft than it looked; and when the Northerners became used to the narrow paddles, the expedition made great headway, the boys finding the wide boat far more comfortable for a long trip than the smaller, swifter canoe.

After a day, a night, and another day of paddling, they circled a wide bend, and there, showing like ink in the moonlight, was the mouth of another river.

"White men call it Rio Negros, Black River," the Indian explained to the boys; "but my people call it the River of Death."

As the professor, who was steering with a paddle, swung the prow of the boat into the dark water, the Indian protested earnestly.

"It very bad luck, Master to enter Death River by night," he said.

"Murucututu, murucututu," muttered the witch-owl, from an overhanging branch.

Hen joined in Pinto's protest.

"That owl be layin' a spell on us, Boss," he said. "Better wait till mornin'."

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The professor was inflexible.

"I have no patience with any such superstitions," he said. ["]We can cover fully twenty-five miles before morning."

The Mundurucu shook his head and said nothing more, but Hen continued his protests, even while paddling.

"Never knew any good luck to come when that ol' owl 's around," he remarked mournfully. "It was him that sicked them vampires on to Will here, an' we 're all in for a black time on this black ribber."

"Henry," remarked Professor Ditson, acridly, "kindly close your mouth tightly and breathe through your nose for the next two hours. Your conversation is inconsequential."

"Yassah, yassah," responded Hen, meekly, and the montaria sped along through inky shadows and the silver reaches of the new river in silence.

About midnight the forest became so dense that it was impossible to follow the channel safely, and the professor ordered the boat to be anchored for the night. Usually it was

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possible to make a landing and camp on shore, but to-night in the thick blackness of the shadowed bank, it was impossible to see anything. Accordingly, the party, swathed in mosquito-netting, slept as best they could in the montaria itself.

It was at the gray hour before dawn, when men sleep soundest, that Jud was awakened by hearing a heavy thud against the side of the boat close to his head. It was repeated, and in the half-light the old man sat up. Once again came the heavy thud, and then, seemingly suspended in the air above the side of the boat close to his head, hung a head of horror. Slowly it thrust itself higher and higher, until, towering over the side of the boat, showed the fixed gleaming eyes and the darting forked tongue of a monstrous serpent. Paralyzed for a moment by his horror for all snake-kind, the old man could not move, and held his breath until the blood drummed in his ears. Only when the hideous head curved downward toward Joe did Jud recover control of himself. His prisoned voice came out then with a yell like a steam-siren, and he

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fumbled under his left armpit for the automatic revolver which he wore in the wilderness, night and day, strapped there in a water-proof case.

"Sucuruju! Sucuruju! Sucuruju!" shouted Pinto, aroused by Jud's yell. "The Spirit of the River is upon us!" And he grasped his machete just as Jud loosened his revolver.

Quick as they were, the huge anaconda, whose family includes the largest water-snakes of the world, was even quicker. With a quick dart of its head, it fixed its long curved teeth in the shoulder of the sleeping boy, and in an instant, some twenty feet of glistening coils glided over the side of the boat. The scales of the monster shone like burnished steel, and it was of enormous girth in the middle, tapering off at either end. Jud dared not shoot at the creature's head for fear of wounding Joe, but sent bullets as fast as he could pull the trigger into the great girth, which tipped the heavy boat over until the water nearly touched the gunwhale. Pinto slashed with all his might with his machete at the back of the great snake, but it

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was like attempting to cut through steel-studded leather. In spite of the attack, the coils of the great serpent moved toward the boy, who, without a sound, struggled to release his shoulder from the terrible grip of the curved teeth. The anaconda, the sucuruju of the natives, rarely ever attacks a man; but when it does, it is with difficulty driven away. This one, in spite of steel and bullets, persisted in its attempt to engulf the body of the struggling boy in its coils, solid masses of muscle powerful enough to break every bone in Joe's body.

It was Hen Pine who finally saved the boy's life. awakened by the sound of the shots and the shouts of Jud and Pinto, he reached Joe just as one of the fatal coils was half around him. With his bare hands he caught hold of both of the fierce jaws and with one tremendous wrench of his vast arms literally tore them apart. Released from their death grip, Joe rolled to one side, out of danger. The great snake hissed fiercely, and its deadly, lidless eyes glared into those of the men. Slowly, with straining, knotted muscles, Hen wrenched the grim jaws farther and farther

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apart. Then bracing his vast forearms, he bowed his back in one tremendous effort that, in spite of the steel-wire muscles of the great serpent, bent its deadly jaws backward and tore them down the sides, ripping the tough shimmering skin like so much paper. Slowly, with a wrench and a shudder, the great water-boa acknowledged defeat, and its vast body pierced, slashed, and torn, reluctantly slid over the side of the boat.

As Hen released his grip of the torn jaws, the form of the giant serpent showed mirrored for an instant against the moonlit water and then disappeared in the inky depths below. Joe's thick flannel shirt had saved his arm from any serious injury, but Professor Ditson washed out the gashes made by the sharp curved teeth with permanganate of potash, for the teeth of the boas and pythons, although not venomous, may bring on blood-poisoning, like the teeth of any wild animal. Jud was far more shaken by the adventure than Joe, who was as impassive as ever.

"Snakes, snakes, snakes!" he complained. "They live in the springs and pop up beside

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the paths and drop on you out of trees. Now they 're beginnin' to creep out of the water to kill us off in our sleep. What a country!"

"It 's the abundance of reptile life which makes South America so interesting and attractive," returned Professor Ditson, severely.

It was Pinto who prevented the inevitable and heated discussion between the elders of the party.

"Down where I come from," he said, "lives a big water-snake many times larger than this one, called the Guardian of the River. He at least seventy-five feet long. We feed him goats every week. My grandfather and his grandfather's grandfather knew him. Once," went on Pinto, "I found him coiled up beside the river in such a big heap that I could n't see over the top of the coils."

"I don't know which is worse," murmured Jud to Will, "seein' the snakes which are or hearin' about the snakes which ain't. Between the two, I'm gettin' all wore out."

Then Pinto went back again to his predictions about the river they were on.

"This river," he said, "is not called the

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River of Death for nothing. The old men of my tribe say that always dangers come here by threes. One is passed, but two more are yet to come. Never, Master, should we have entered this river by night."

"Yes," chimed in Hen, "when I heered that ol' witch-owl I says to myself, 'Hen Pine, there 'll be somethin' bad a-doin' soon.'"

"You talk like a couple of superstitious old women," returned Professor Ditson, irritably.

"You wait," replied the Indian, stubbornly; "two more evils yet to come."

Pinto's prophecy was partly fulfilled with startling suddenness. The party had finished breakfast, and the montaria was anchored in a smooth, muddy lagoon which led from the river back some distance into the forest. While Will and Hen fished from the bow of the boat the rest of the party curled themselves up under the shade of the overhanging trees to make up their lost sleep. At first, the fish bit well and the two caught a number which looked much like the black bass of northern waters. A minute later, a school of fresh-water flying-fish broke water near

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them and flashed through the air for a full twenty yards, like a flight of gleaming birds.

As the sun burned up the morning mist, it changed from a sullen red to a dazzling gold and at last to a molten white, and the two fishermen nodded over their poles as little waves of heat ran across the still water and seemed to weigh down their eyelids like swathings of soft wool. The prow of the boat swung lazily back and forth in the slow current which set in from the main river. Suddenly the dark water around the boat was muddied and discolored, as if something had stirred up the bottom ten feet below. Then up through the clouded water drifted a vast, spectral, grayish-white shape. Nearer and nearer to the surface it came, while Hen and Will dozed over their poles. Will sat directly in the bow, and his body, sagging with sleep, leaned slightly over the gunwhale.

Suddenly the surface of the water was broken by a tremendous splash, and out from its depth shot half the body of a fish nearly ten feet in length. Its color was the gray-white of the ooze at the bottom of the

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stream in which it had lain hidden until attracted to the surface by the shadow of the montaria drifting above him. Will awakened at the hoarse shout from Hen just in time to see yawning in front of him a mouth more enormous than he believed any created thing possessed outside of the whale family. It was a full five feet between the yawning jaws, which were circled by a set of small sharp teeth. Even as he sprang back, the monster lunged forward right across the edge of the boat and the jaws napped shut.

Will rolled to one side in an effort to escape the menacing depths, and although he managed to save his head and body from the maw of the great fish, yet the jaws closed firmly on both his extended arms, engulfing them clear to the shoulder. The little teeth, tiny in comparison with the size of the jaws in which they were set, hardly more than penetrated the sleeves of his flannel shirt and pricked the skin below, but as the monster lurched backward toward the water its great weight drew the boy irresistibly toward the edge of the boat, although he dug his feet into the thwarts

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and twined them around the seat on which he had been sitting. Once in the river, the fatal jaws would open again, and he felt that he would be swallowed as easily as a pike would take in a minnow.

Even as he was dragged forward to what seemed certain death, Will did not fail to recognize a familiar outline in the vast fish-face against which he was held. The small, dep-set eyes, the skin like oiled leather, long filaments extending from the side of the jaw, and the enormous round head were nothing more than that of the catfish or bullhead which he used to catch at night behind the mill-dam in Cornwall, enlarged a thousand times.

Although the monster, in spite of its unwieldy size, had sprung forth, gripped its intended prey, and started back for the water in a flash, yet Hen Pine was even quicker. In spite of his size, there was no one in the party quicker in an emergency than the giant negro. Even as he sprang to his feet he disengaged the huge steel machete which always dangled from his belt. Hen's blade, which he used as a bush-hook and a weapon, was

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half again as heavy as the ordinary machete, and he always kept it ground to a razor edge. He reached the bow just as the great, gray, glistening body slipped back over the gunwhale, dragging Will irresistibly with it. Swinging the broad heavy blade over his head, with every ounce of effort in his brawny body, Hen, [sic] brought the keen edge down slantwise across the gray back of the river-monster, which tapered absurdly small in comparison with the vast spread of the gaping jaws. It was such a blow as Richard the Lion-hearted might have struck; and just as his historic battle- sword would shear through triple steel plate and flesh and bone, so that day the machete of Hen Pine, unsung in song or story, cut through the smooth gray skin, the solid flesh beneath, and whizzed straight on through the cartilaginous joints of the great fish's spine, nor ever stopped until it had sunk deep into the wood of the high gunwhale of the boat itself. With a gasping sigh, the monster's head rolled off the edge of the boat and slowly sank through the dark water, leaving the long, severed trunk floating on the surface.

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Reaching out, the negro caught the latter by one of the back fins and secured it with a quick twist of a near-by rope.

"That 's the biggest piraiba I ever see," he announced. "They 're fine to eat, an' turn about is fair play. Ol' piraiba try to eat you; now you eat him." And while Will sat back on the seat, sick and faint from his narrow escape, Hen proceeded to haul the black trunk aboard and carve steaks of the white, firm-set flesh from it.

"Every year along the Madeira River this fish tip over canoes and swallow Indians. They 's more afraid of it," Hen said, "than they is of alligators or anacondas."

When Hen woke up the rest of the party and told them of the near- tragedy Pinto croaked like a raven.

"Sucuruju one, piraiba two; but three is yet to come," he finished despondingly. The next two days, however, seemed to indicate that the River had exhausted its malice against the travelers. The party paddled through a panorama of sights and sounds new to the Northerners, and at night camped safely on

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high, dry places on the banks. On the morning of the third day the whole party started down the river before daylight and watched the dawn of a tropical day, a miracle even more beautiful than the sunrises of the North. One moment there was perfect blackness; then a faint light showed in the east; and suddenly, without the slow changes of Northern skies, the whole east turned a lovely azure blue, against which showed a film and fretwork of white clouds, like wisps of snowy lace.

Just as the sun came up they passed a tall and towering conical rock which shot up three hundred feet among the trees and terminated in what looked like a hollowed summit. Pinto told them that this was Treasure Rock, and that nearly half a thousand years ago the Spaniards, in the days when they were the cruel conquerors of the New World, had explored this river. From the ancestors of Pinto's nation and from many another lesser Indian tribe they had carried off a great treasure of gold and emeralds and diamonds.

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Not satisfied with these, they had tried to enslave the Indians and make them hunt for more. Finally, in desperation the tribes united, stormed their persecutors' camp, killed some, and forced the rest to flee down the river in canoes. When the Spaniards reached the rock, they landed, and, driving iron spikes at intervals up its steep side, managed to clamber up to the very crest and haul their treasure and stores of water and provisions after them by ropes made of lianas. There, safe from the arrows of their pursuers in the hollow top, they stood siege until the winter rains began. Then, despairing of taking the fortress, the Indians returned to their villages; whereupon the Spaniards clambered down, the last man breaking off the iron spikes as he came, and escaped to the Spanish settlements. Behind them, in the inaccessible bowl on the tip-top of the rock, they left their treasure-chest, expecting to return with the reinforcements and rescue it. The years went by and the Spaniards came not again to Black River, but generation after generation of In-

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dians handed down the legend of Treasure Rock, with the iron-bound chest on its top, awaiting him who can scale its height.

Jud, a treasure-hunter by nature, was much impressed by Pinto's story.

"What do you think of takin' a week off and lookin' into this treasure business?" he suggested. "I 'll undertake to get a rope over the top of this rock by a kite, or somethin' of that sort, an' then I know a young chap by the name of Adams who would climb up there an' bring down a trunk full of gold an' gems. What do you say?"

"Pooh!" is what Professor Amandus Ditson said, and the expedition proceeded in spite of Jud's protests.

CHAPTER V

SHIPWRECK

About the middle of the morning there sounded through the still air a distant boom, which grew louder until finally it became a crashing roar. Beyond a bend in the river stretched before them a long gorge. There the stream had narrowed, and, rushing across a ledge shaped like a horseshoe, foamed and roared and beat its way among the great boulders. The paddler brought their craft into smooth water under an overhanging bank while they held a council of war. Professor Ditson had never been on the Rio Negros before, nor had Pinto followed it farther than Treasure Rock. For a long time the whole party carefully studied the distant rapids.

"What do you think?" whispered Will to Joe.

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The Indian boy, who had paddled long journeys on the rivers and seas of the far Northwest, shook his head doubtfully.

"Can do in a bark canoe," he said at last; "but in this thing--I don't know."

Pinto and Hen both feared the worst in regard to anything which had to do with Black River. It was Professor Ditson who finally made the decision.

"It would take us weeks," he said, "to cut a trail through the forests and portage this boat around. One must take some chances in life. There seems to be a channel through the very center of the horseshoe. Let 's go!"

For the first time during the whole trip old Jud looked at his rival admiringly.

"The old bird has some pep left, after all," he whispered to Will. "I want to tell you, boy," he went on, "that I 've never seen worse rapids, an' if we bring this canal-boat through, it 'll be more good luck than good management."

Under Professor Ditson's instructions, Pinto took the bow paddle, while Hen paddled stern, with Will and Joe on one side an

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Jud and the professor on the other. Then all the belongings of the party were shifted so as to ballast the unwieldy craft as well as possible, and in another moment they shot out into the swift current. Faster and faster the trees and banks flashed by, like the screen of a motion picture. Not even a fleck of foam broke the glassy surface of the swirling current. With smooth, increasing speed, the river raced toward the rapids which roared and foamed ahead, while swaying wreaths of white mist, shot through with rainbow colors, floated above the welter of raging waters and the roar of the river rose to shout. Beyond a black horseshoe of rock stretched from one bank to the other in a half-circle, and in front of it sharp ridges and snags showed like fangs slavered with the foam of the river's madness.

In another second the boat shot into the very grip of these jaws of death. Standing with his lithe, copper-colored body etched against the foam of the rapids, the Mundurucu held the lives of every one of the party in his slim, powerful hands. Accustomed from boyhood

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to the handling of the river-boats of his tribe through the most dangerous of waters, he stood that day like the leader of an orchestra, directing every movement of those behind him, with his paddle for a baton. Only a crew of the most skilled paddlers had a chance in that wild water; and such a crew was obedient to the Indian. In the stern, the vast strength of the giant negro swung the montaria into the course which the bow paddler indicated by his motions, while the other four, watching his every movement, were quick to paddle or to back on their respective sides. At times, as an unexpected rock jutted up before him in the foam, the Indian would plunge his paddle slantwise against the current and would hold the boat there for a second, until the paddlers could swing it, as on a fulcrum, out of danger. Once the craft was swept with tremendous force directly at an immense boulder, against which the water surged and broke.

To Jud and the boys it seemed as if Pinto had suddenly lost his control of the montaria, for, instead of trying to swing out of the grip of the currents that rushed upon the rock, he

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p. steered directly at its face. The Mundurucu, however, knew his business. Even as Jud tensed his muscles for the crash, the rebound and undertow of the waters, hurled back from the face of the rock, caught the boat and whirled it safely to one side of the boulder. In and out among the reefs and fangs of rock the Mundurucu threaded the boat so deftly, and so well did his crew behind him respond, that in all that tumult of dashing waves the heavy craft shipped no water outside of the flying spray.

In another minute they were clear of the outlying reefs and ledges and speeding toward the single opening in the black jaw of rock that lay ahead of them. Here it was that, through no fault of their steersman, the great mishap of the day overtook them. Just beyond the gap in the rock was a little fall, not five feet high, hidden by the spray. As Pinto passed through the narrow opening he swung the bow of the boat diagonally so as to catch the smoother current toward the right-hand bank of the river, which at this pointed jutted far out into the rapids. As he

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swerved,the long montaria shot through the air over the fall. The Indian tried to straighten his course, but it was too late. In an instant the boat had struck at an angle the rushing water beyond, with a force that nearly drove it below the surface. Before it could right itself, the rush of the current from behind struck it broadside, and in another second the montaria, half-filled with the water which it had shipped, capsized, and its crew were struggling in the current.

It was Hen Pine who reached the river first. When he saw that the boat was certain to upset he realized that his only chance for life was to reach smooth water. Even while the montaria was still in mid-air he sprang far out toward the bank, where a stretch of unbroken current set in toward a tiny cape, beyond which it doubled back into a chaos of tossing, foaming water where not even the strongest swimmer would have a chance for life. Hen swam with every atom of his tremendous strength, in order to reach that point before he was swept into the rapids beyond. His bare black arms and vast shoulders, knot-

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ted and ridged with muscle, thrashing through the water with the thrust of a propeller-blade as he swam the river-crawl which he had learned from Indian swimmers. For an instant it seemed as if he would lose, for when nearly abreast of the little cape several feet of racing current still lay between him and safety. Sinking his head far under the water, he put every ounce of strength into three strokes, the last of which shot him just near enough to the bank to grip a tough liana which dangled like a rope from an overhanging tree-top. Pinto, who was next, although no mean swimmer, would never have made the full distance, yet managed to grasp one of Hen's brawny legs, which stretched far out into the current.

"You hold on," he muttered to the great negro; "we make a monkey- bridge and save them all."

Hen only nodded his head and took a double turn of the lianas around each arm. Professor Ditson was the next one to win safety, for the two boys were staying by Jud, who was a most indifferent swimmer. As the

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professor's long, thin legs dangled out into the current like a pair of tongs, with a desperate stroke Will caught one of his ankles, and was gripped in turn by Joe, and Jud locked both of his arms around the latter's knees, while the swift river tossed his gray hair and bear along its surface. As the full force of the current caught this human chain it stretched and sagged ominously. Then each link tightened up and prepared to hold as long as flesh and blood could stand the strain.

"Go ahead, Jud,!" gasped Will over his shoulder; "pull yourself along until you get to shore; then Joe will follow, and then I. Only hurry- -the professor won't be able to hold on much longer, nor Hen to stand the strain."

"Don't hurry on my account," sounded the precise voice of Professor Ditson above the roar of the waters. "I can hold on as long as any one." And as he spoke Will felt his gaunt body stiffen until it seemed all steel and whipcord.

"Same here!" bellowed Hen, his magnificent body stretched out through the water as

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if on a rack. "Take your time and come along careful."

In another minute the old trapper had pulled his way hand over hand along the living bridge until he too had a grip on one of the dangling lianas. He was followed by link after link of the human chain until they were all safe at the edge of the bank. Hen was the first to scramble up and give the others a helping hand, and a moment later all six of the treasure- seekers stood safe on the high ridge of the little promontory and sadly watched the boat which had borne them so well smash into a mass of floating, battered planks among the rocks and disappear down the current. Along with it went their guns, their ammunition, and their supplies.

Jud alone retained the automatic revolver which he always wore, with a couple of clips holding sixteen cartridges, besides the eight in the cylinder. Hen also could not be termed weaponless, for he still wore his machete; while Will had a belt-ax, Joe a light hatchet, and Professor Ditson a sheath-knife. Besides these, the Indian had his bamboo tinder-box

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and flint and steel, which he always wore in his belt. These and the jack-knives and a few miscellaneous articles which they happened to have in their pockets or fastened to their belts comprised the whole equipment of the party.

Before them stretched a hundred miles of uncharted jungle, infested by dangerous beasts and wandering cannibal tribes, through which they must pass to reach the old Slave Trail. Half that distance behind them was the Amazon. If once they could find their way back to that great river and camp on its banks, sooner or later a boat would go by which would take them back to Manaos. This, however, might mean weeks of delay and perhaps the abandonment of the whole trip. As they stood upon a white sand-bank far enough back from the river so that the roar of the rapids no longer deafened them, it was Pinto who spoke first.

"Master," he said to Professor Ditson, "it is no time for council. Let us have fire and food first. A man thinks more wisely with his head when his stomach is warm and full."

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"I 'll say the man is right," said Jud, shivering a little in his wet clothes as he coolness of the approaching night began to be felt through the forest; "but where is that same fire and food goin' to come from?"

Pinto's answer was to scrape shavings from the midrib of a dry palm- leaf. When he had a little pile on the white sand in front of him, he opened the same kind of tinder-box that our ancestors used to carry less than a century and a half ago. Taking out from this an old file and a bit of black flint, with a quick glancing blow he sent half a dozen sparks against a dry strip of feltlike substance found only in the nests of certain kinds of ants. In a minute a deep glow showed from the end of this tinder, and, placing it under the pile of shavings, Pinto blew until the whole heap was in a light blaze. Hastily piling dry wood on top of this, he left to the others the task of keeping the fire going and, followed by Will, hurried through the jungle toward the towering fronds of a peach-palm, which showed above the other trees. Twisting together two or three lianas, the Indian made from

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them a light, strong belt. This he slipped around himself and the tree, and, gripping it in both hands, began to walk up the rough trunk, leaning against this girdle and pushing it up with each step, until, sixty feet from the ground, he came to where the fruit of the tree was clustered at its top. It grew in a group of six, each one looking like a gigantic, rosy peach a foot in diameter. In a moment they all came whizzing to the ground, and the two staggered back to the fire with the party's supper on their backs. Stripping off the thick husk, Pinto exposed a soft kernel which, when roasted on the coals, tasted like a delicious mixture of cheese and chestnuts.

When at last all the members of the party were full-fed and dry, the wisdom of Pinto's counsel was evident. Every one was an optimist; and, after all, the best advice in life comes from optimists. Even Pinto and Hen felt that, now that they had lived through the third misfortune, they need expect no further ill luck from the river.

"Forward or back--which!" was the way Professor Ditson put the question.

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"Forward!" voted Will.

"Forward!" grunted Joe.

Jud seemed less positive.

"I sure would hate to go back," he said, "after old Jim Donegan had grub-staked us, an' tell the old man that, while we 're good pearlers, we 're a total loss when it comes to emeralds. Yet," he went on judicially, "there 's a hundred miles of unexplored forests between us and the perfesser's trail, if there is any such thing. We 've lost our guns; we 've no provisions; we 're likely to run across bands of roving cannibals; lastly, it may take us months to cut our way through this jungle. Therefore I vote--forward!"

"That 's the stuff, Jud!" exclaimed Will, much relieved.

"Oh, I don't believe in takin' any chances," returned the old man, who had never done anything else all his life. "My idea is to always look at the dangers--an' then go ahead."

"What about me?" objected Hen. "I ain't a-goin' to cut no hundred miles of trail through this here jungle for nobody."

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The answer came, sudden and unexpected, from the forests.

"John cut wood! John cut wood! John cut wood!" called some one, clearly. It was only a spotted goatsucker a bird belonging to the same family as our northern whip-poor-will, but Hen was much amused.

"You hear what the bird say, you John Pinto. Get busy and cut wood," he laughed, slapping his friend mightily on the back.

"All right," said the Indian, smiling, "John will cut wood. Master," he said to Professor Ditson, "if all will help, I can make a montaria in less than a week, better than the one we lost. Then we not have to cut our way through jungle."

"Pinto," said Professor Ditson, solemnly, for once dropping into slang, "the sense of this meeting is--that you go to it."

That night they followed the bank until they found a place where it curved upward into a high, dry bluff. There, on soft white sand above the mosquito-belt, they slept the sleep of exhaustion. It was after midnight when Will, who was sleeping between Pro-

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fessor Ditson and Jud, suddenly awoke with a start. Something had sniffed at his face.

Without moving, he opened his eyes and looked directly into a pair that flamed green through the darkness. In the half-light of the setting moon he saw, standing almost over him, a heavily built animal as big as a small lion. Yet the short, upcurved tail and the rosettes of black against the gold of his skin showed the visitor to be none other than that terror of the jungle, the great jaguar, which in pioneer days used to come as far north as Arkansas and is infinitely more to be feared than the panthers which our forefathers dreaded so. This one had none of the lithe grace of the cougars which Will had met during the quest of the Blue Pearl, but gave him the same impression of stern tremendous strength and girth that a lion possesses.

All of these details came to Will the next day. At that moment, as he saw the great round head of this king of the South American forest within a foot of his own, he was probably the worst scared boy on the South American continent. Will knew that a jag-

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uar was able to drag a full-grown ox over a mile, and that this one could seize him by the throat, flirt his body over one shoulder, and disappear in the jungle almost before he could cry out. The great beast seemed, however, to be only mildly interested in him. Probably he had fed earlier in the evening.

Even as Will stared aghast into the gleaming eyes of the great cat, he saw, out of the corner of his eye, Jud's right hand stealing toward his left shoulder. The old trapper, as usual, was wide awake when any danger threatened. Before, however, he had time to reach his automatic, Professor Ditson, equally watchful from his side, suddenly clapped his hands together sharply, close to the jaguar's pricked-up ears. The effect was instantaneous. With a growl of alarm, the great beast sprang backward and disappeared like a shadow into the forest.

The professor sat up.

"That 's the way to handle jaguars," he remarked. "He 'll not come back. If you had shot him," he continued severely to Jud, who held his cocked revolver in one hand, "he

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would have killed the boy and both of us before he died himself." And the professor lay down aga