Chapter XVI: Blackbeard

“Well,” said Knowlton, after a period of silent paddling, “we have met the enemy and we are his’n. No harm done so far, though, and if old man Calisaya, or whatever his name is, wants to act nasty we can send him and a few others along the road to glory with our gats. We’ll travel the same road, of course, but we’ll take company with us.”

“Si, senhor,” Pedro agreed. “And besides your pistols we still have our machetes. Yet I believe Lourenço’s words to the chief Monitaya will make all well. But I cannot help wondering--” He glanced at McKay.

“I’m wondering, too, Pedro,” said the captain. “It’s hardly possible that these people know why we’re here, and hardly likely that they have any interest in the Raposa. Lord knows I’ve nothing else up my sleeve. It’s a riddle to me.”

It remained a riddle to the rest, for no explanation could be gleaned from the Mayorunas. At the first halt, which did not come until nearly sundown, the Americans discovered that one of the men in the fore canoe was Yuara, who had been lying in the bottom of the craft and sleeping all the afternoon. From him Lourenço attempted to get information as to the reason for Suba’s enmity--but in vain. The tall fellow spoke not a word in reply, and his face remained unreadable.

Camp was made, and by Yuara’s direction the packs of the adventurers were restored to them. The rifles, however, remained under guard of savages appointed by the subchief’s son. When the night meal was out of the way nothing remained but to seek hammocks and sleep, for further attempts at conversation by Lourenço met with the same silent rebuff from every cannibal addressed. None showed active hostility by either look or manner, but it was plain that between wild and civilized men stood a wall--a wall not too high for the jungle dwellers to leap over in deadly action if occasion should be given. Wherefore the whites held themselves aloof, said little, and slept early.

“I am glad Yuara is with us,” Lourenço said. “As he promised, he does not forget what was done for him. He will keep this band in control, and unless I am much mistaken he will tell Monitaya all he knows of us, which surely will not do us any harm. At any rate, we can sleep in safety to-night. And since it does no good to puzzle about what is gone by or to worry about what has not yet to come to pass, let us sleep now.”

“Ho-hum!” yawned Tim. “Renzo, ye spill more solid sense to the square inch than any feller I seen in a long time. We’re here because we’re here; to-day’s dead and to-morrer ain’t born yet, and li’l’ Timmy Ryan hits the hay right now. Night, gents.”

So, surrounded by man eaters, the trailers of the Raposa slept far more securely than on any night down the river when their companions had been supposedly civilized Peruvians. Whether a watch was kept by their guards during the night they neither knew nor cared, since they had no intention of attempting escape.

They awoke to find the men of Suba diminished in number by half. Yuara, deigning to speak for the first time since leaving the maloca, explained that the absent men had gone hunting for their breakfasts. Before long the hunters came straggling back, bearing monkeys and birds, which were divided among their companions. None of this meat was offered to the prisoners, who ate unconcernedly from their pack rations. Tim, after watching the Indians sink their sharp-filed teeth into broiled monkey haunches and tear the meat from the bones, snorted and turned his back to them.

“Look like a gang o’ bloody-faced devils gobblin’ babies,” he muttered. “I’ll believe now they’re cannibals, all right.”

So uncomfortably apt was his simile that the others grimaced and turned their eyes elsewhere until the savage meal was finished. Then their attention became riveted on a queer proceeding at the canoe wherein Yuara had journeyed yesterday.

To the gunwales amidships two of the men fastened a couple of small crotched posts. In the forks was laid a pole, crosswise of the boat, and from this, by slender fiber cords, four slabs of wood were hung. Strolling down to the canoe, the travelers found that athwart its bottom had been laid a crosspiece supporting two shorter crotched posts, between which stretched another transverse pole; and from this pole in turn the lower ends of the four slabs had been suspended. Now the savages joined the tips of each pair of slabs by carved end sections, and the contrivance seemed to be complete--a sort of grate, its bars sloping at an angle of forty-five degrees.

As the Americans eyed the arrangement in perplexity, one of the crew picked up from the bow of the canoe a pair of mallets the heads of which were wrapped in hide. With these he struck the slabs in rapid succession. Out rolled four notes of astonishing volume--the first four notes of the musical scale. Again and again he ran them over, then stopped. The deep tones thrummed away along the creek and died.

“By George! a big xylophone!” Knowlton exclaimed, admiringly.

“It sure talks right out loud,” said Tim. “Lot o’ class to these guys, at that. Bet this is their brass band, and we’ll go rip-snortin’ into the next town like we was on parade. Oughter have some flags to hang up in the boats, and mebbe a drum corps to help out. Wisht I had a tin whistle or somethin’ and I’d join the orchester. I can toot a whistle fine.”

“My favorite instrument is the old-fashioned dinner horn,” laughed Knowlton. “But I think you’re wrong--this is some kind of signaling apparatus.”

“You have it right, senhor,” Lourenço affirmed. “I have heard this sort of thing used, though I never before saw the instrument itself. Those notes will carry at least five miles, and the cannibals send messages by striking the bars in different order. This run which we have just heard is always used first, and no message is sent until a reply is received.”

“Bush telegraph,” nodded McKay. “First call your operator and then shoot the message in code. Pretty ingenious for a bunch of absolute savages.”

Lourenço turned to Yuara and asked a question. Yuara curtly replied.

“He says, Capitao, that this is to tell Monitaya we come. But we now are too far off for Monitaya’s men to hear. The bars are made ready before starting so that they can be used as soon as we are within hearing. He says also that we start now.”

The Mayorunas already were entering their canoes. With cool deliberation the whites gathered up their equipment and settled themselves for the journey at whose end lay either life or death. The boat of Yuara started, and once more the flotilla was on its way.

For an hour or more it swung on among the forested hills before the telegraph instrument was put to use. Then it paused, and the sonorous voice of the xylophone spoke to the jungle. A period of waiting brought no reply.

The canoe moved on for a mile. Again the mallets beat the wood in the ascending scale of the call. And then, faint, mellow, far off, sounded the answer.

While every man sat silent the bars boomed out their fateful news. Slow, brief, deep as a bell tolling a dirge, a reply rolled back. And with the solemnity of a funeral cortége the canoes once more moved on, unhurried, inexorable, the measured swing of the paddles beating like a pulse of doom.

At length the crew of Yuara held their paddles. Yuara himself turned toward the second canoe and talked a minute. A signal to his men, and his boat proceeded. All the others remained where they were.

“He goes to Monitaya to speak of us,” said Lourenço. “He will return. We have only to wait.”

“Yeah,” grunted Tim, disgustedly. “We’ll wait till night if he takes as long to go through his rigmarole as he done yesterday. If I got to fight I want to hop to it, not set round in the shade o’ the shelterin’ palm while them guys are heatin’ up the stewpot. This waitin’ stuff gits my goat.”

“You might sing us a song, senhor, to pass the time,” Pedro suggested, with a tight-lipped smile.

“Say, I’ll do that, jest to show these guys I don’t give a rip. And while their ears are dazzled by me melody I’m goin’ to git me holster unbottoned and me masheet kinder limbered up. Git set. Here it comes:

“Ol’ Hindyburg thought he was swell,
Pa-a-arley-voo!
He made the kids in Belgium yell,
Pa-a-arley-voo!
But the Yanks come over with shot and shell
And Hindyburg he run like hell,
Rinkydinky-parley-voo!”
Under cover of his outbreak, which made the savages clutch their weapons and glare at him in mingled suspicion and amazement, there proceeded a furtive loosening of pistols and machetes.

“A noble sentiment, and more or less appropriate,” grinned Knowlton. “But don’t give them another spasm for a few minutes, or they may rise up and kill us all in self-defense. They’re on the ragged edge now.”

“Aw, them guys dunno how to appreciate good singin’. But I should worry; I got me gat fixed now like I want it.”

Time dragged past. The Americans and Brazilians smoked and exchanged casual comments on subjects far removed from their present environment. The Mayorunas watched them with unceasing vigilance, as if expecting a sudden break for life and liberty. Their chief had intimated that Monitaya would kill these men; and now was their last chance to try to dodge death. But neither the black-bearded McKay nor any of his mates manifested the slightest concern. And at last the canoe of Yuara came back.

It came, however, without Yuara himself. The son of Rana had remained at the malocas ahead, whence he sent the command to advance. Closely hemmed in by the men of Suba, the white men’s boat surged onward at a brisk pace. Around a bend in the creek it went, and at once the domain of Monitaya leaped into view.

Two big tribal houses, each considerably larger than the one of Suba, rose pompously in a wide cleared space beside the stream. Before them, ranged in a semicircle, stood hundreds of Mayorunas--men, women, children--all silently watching the canoes of the newcomers. In the center of the arc, like the hub of a human half wheel, a small knot of men waited in aloof dignity, four of them adorned with the ornate feather dresses of subchiefs, backed by a dozen tall, muscular savages, each armed with a huge war club. Before all stood a powerful, magnificently proportioned savage belted with a wide girdle of squirrel tails, decked with necklaces of jaguar teeth and ebony nuts, crowned by plumes which in loftiness and splendor surpassed all other headgear present--the great chief Monitaya.

At the shore, beside a row of empty canoes, Yuara was waiting. He mentioned for his men to bring their dugouts to the regular landing place, and when they obeyed he gave commands. Then he turned and walked toward Monitaya.

“I go,” stated Lourenço, rising. “You stay here until called. Yuara has told his men to leave all weapons in the canoes.”