01 Amazon Adventure

by Willard Price

  Chapter 23

  Giant Anaconda

  You can’t strike a match on an anaconda. It was Hal who made this remarkable scientific discovery.

  He had voyaged two hundred miles further down the Amazon. His collection had been increased by one upside-down sloth, one well-plated armadillo, and one small, graceful Amazon deer.

  They were moored in a little bay where they had spent the night. It was not a clean-cut bay with sand beaches, but marshy, the sort of place, Aqua said, where anacondas might abound.

  In the morning Hal went aboard the Ark to see how the animals were faring.

  He found the wood ibis gone. Only a few feathers remained. Its cage had been smashed. The bird could not have done that. Only something heavy and powerful could have accomplished it.

  He looked about at his other animals to see if any of them had a guilty look in its eye. The giant iguana had its eyes closed and lay basking in the morning sun. It was quite capable of such a deed, but its leash was too short. The basilisk was a strict vegetarian. It was out at the end of its line for a morning run on the water. The great stork had only one eye open and it didn’t look guilty. The jabiru stork enjoys mice, frogs and fish, but is not enough of a cannibal to consume other birds and would certainly draw the line at eating its own cousin, the wood ibis.

  The way the cage was smashed suggested that the boa constrictor had done it, but this was impossible since the boa was in the other boat, sound asleep, still digesting her pig.

  Hal gave it up. The vampire bat was chirping her call for breakfast.

  Hal set about preparing Vamp’s meal. He got out a bottle of defibrinated blood — that is, blood from which the fibrin had been removed by whipping. The fibrin is what makes the blood clot. Vamp would not accept clotted blood. But it was too much of a job to obtain a fresh animal for her daily. The blood of a single capyvara would feed her for three days — if it could be kept fresh. The blood in the bottle was three days old, but still liquid thin.

  But it was cold. Hal poured a cupful of it into a pan which he placed in the fireplace in the corner of the toldo. He arranged some shavings and sticks under the pan. Now to start a fire.

  He had the habit of striking his matches on a post of the toldo. But this time the first match failed to light. He tried it again and again, then threw it away. He tried more matches, but they did no better.

  In the half-dark of the toldo he thought the post looked peculiar, but his eyes were still blinded by the outside sunlight and he could not see very well.

  He tried another post. His match lit at once.

  When the fire was blazing he looked up at the post that had failed him. Then he backed off from it, his nerves doing a dance. A huge snake was coiled around the post. He had been trying to light matches on its scales.

  He thought at first that it was his boa, escaped from the montaria — but then he saw that it had none of the boa’s colour and grace, and it was three times as big.

  He realized with a jolt that he was looking at the anaconda, the world’s largest snake. The royal python of India was sometimes longer, but more slender and lighter in weight.

  He could not estimate the length of this serpent because of the way it was coiled around the post, but he could see that it was more than a foot thick. At one place there was a special bulge — perhaps that was Hal’s wood ibis!

  The body was an evil-looking dark green and the head was black. The eyes were fixed upon Hal who could not move, he was so fascinated. He thought of the stories told by Indians of how the anaconda is supposed to be able to hypnotize man or beast with those terrible eyes. Hal did not believe such tales. But he felt numb and it was only with an effort that he walked out of the toldo. He glanced back uneasily but the snake had not moved.

  Hal tried to shout to his friends on shore. His voice would not come. It was not until he got ashore that he could command himself.

  ‘An anaconda!’ he said breathlessly. ‘There’s an anaconda in the toldo.’

  The men were greatly excited by the news. ‘Let’s catch it,’ Roger said.

  ‘All right, but how? You don’t just go up and throw your arms around an anaconda.’

  Hal sat down on a log and tried to think. If they noosed the snake in the toldo it would thrash about, tear the toldo to bits, kill the other animals, and quite possibly sink the Ark.

  Aqua had helped him before. Hal turned to Aqua now. But the Indian had no suggestion.

  ‘We never take it,’ he said. ‘The Indians all fear it.’

  ‘But you make a pet of the boa constrictor.’

  Aqua smiled. The boa is our friend; the anaconda is our worst enemy. The ‘deer swallower’ is full of devils.’

  Hal noticed that Aqua had used one of the Indian names for the anaconda — the deer swallower. It gave him an idea.

  ‘Perhaps we can use the deer to attract the snake to the shore. Once we get it ashore we might be able to make it fast with lines.’

  The idea was passed on to the men. Not one of them was willing, not even Aqua, to go aboard the vessel of which the anaconda was now master and try to use the deer as snake bait. Each man was afraid that he might prove to be more attractive than the deer.

  The plan bounced back upon Hal.

  ‘All right, I’ll go,’ he said, and gingerly walked out on the gangplank which had been laid from the Ark to the bank — for there was no danger now of the baby boas swimming ashore since they had become too large to roam freely and had been confined to a cage.

  Before leading forth the little deer to its fate he would make sure that his prize was still there. He glanced inside the toldo. The fire was sputtering weakly and a few rays of sunshine came in through the holes in the thatch roof.

  But the post was no longer draped with serpent. The anaconda was gone. It would be hard to say whether Hal was disappointed or relieved. There was a large hole low down in the reed wall. The snake must have gone that way, then slid over the gunwale into the water.

  As Hal stood, wondering what to do next, something like an earthquake seemed to shake the heavy boat. Hal staggered out of the toldo expecting to see that some large waves were running in from the Amazon. There were no waves. He looked ashore and could see no sign of earthquake. Anyhow, this was not a land of earthquakes.

  While he stood there puzzling over the mystery, suddenly the two tons of boat beneath him heaved up bodily and rolled against the bank. Hal lost his footing and went sprawling on the slanting deck. He crawled ashore into a circle of excited men. The boat was on an even keel once more but the water boiled around it.

  ‘It is the anaconda!’ Aqua exclaimed. There must be a nest of them here.’

  Banco was ordering up the men. ‘We will leave here at once. The anacondas are very bad snakes. They are evil spirits.’ He played on the superstitions of the Indians. All sorts of devils were supposed to make their home within this malevolent serpent.

  Hal stopped Banco with ‘We will not leave here without trying to get an anaconda. But first we’d better get a cage ready for him. It really ought to be a bathtub.’ And he told Roger the story of a New York artist who borrowed a fifteen-foot anaconda for the purpose of painting a picture of it. Seeking advice from the great snake man, Raymond L. Ditmars of the New York Zoo, he constructed in his Greenwich Village apartment a pen about twelve feet long containing a wooden bathtub five feet long, thirty inches high, and a yard wide. This worked very well — until a leak from the tub soaked through to the apartment below and the tenants there complained to the landlord. That worthy objected to having a serpent as a tenant and both the snake and the artist had to move.

  So a bathtub was constructed for the hoped-for prize. But a bathtub could not be made out of sticks, and there were no boards to be had.

  Aqua solved the problem.

  ‘We will make a woodskin,’ he said.

  ‘Good,’ said Hal. Take over the men and do it.’

  Hal had seen many woodskins on the river. A ‘woodskin’ is a
boat made out of the skin of a tree, that is, the bark. A boat would do nicely as a bathtub. And a woodskin could be made far more quickly than a dugout.

  The men located a large purpleheart tree. They cut a line through the bark around the base and, erecting a scaffolding of poles, cut another line twenty feet up. Then they made a vertical cut, and

  began to pry the bark off with wedges. When it was free, they had a sheet of bark twenty feet long and about ten feet wide.

  The ends were laced shut with lianas and ‘cocked up’ with tough vines and ‘bush ropes’, and the crack was made watertight with latex from the rubber tree.

  Now it would keep water out like any good boat; or keep water in like any good bathtub.

  It was necessary to construct a bathroom — that is, a cage to contain the bathtub and its occupant.

  The men worked rapidly but it was the next day before the curious tub-in-a-cage was finished and set in the last available space on the deck of the Ark and Hal could begin to think of getting a tenant for it. Hal was determined that this time no anaconda should find him unprepared. He planned his campaign carefully. He strung a line from the mast of the Ark to a tree some forty feet within the beach. He tethered the deer to this line near the water’s edge.

  Then he prepared three nooses, one for the anaconda’s head and the other two for its tail. The cage was placed in readiness.

  Now all that was needed was the anaconda.

  The men hid in the bushes and watched. It was the old game of waiting once more. The day wore on. The deer nibbled at the grasses that fringed the beach. It was a beautiful animal, small compared with its Canadian cousin, with a glossy tan coat, large brown eyes and fine antlers. Hal hoped he would not have to sacrifice it.

  After three hours of watchful waiting, Hal’s desire for action got the better of him. Were there really any anacondas in the bay? Was there actually an anaconda nest as Aqua had supposed? And what did an anaconda nest look like? That was something that he as a scientific observer ought to know.

  He slipped out of the bushes, across the beach, and into the water. The bottom dropped off steeply. With a few powerful strokes he was under the surface, looking for trouble. It was hard to see because of the cloudiness of the water. He first made sure that there were none of the man-eating piranhas about. Then he looked for anything that might be described as an anaconda nest.

  It was something like going through the jungle, because long reeds grew up from the bottom. They were slimy and disagreeable to the touch. Sunken logs lay about in crisscross fashion and under them there might be a refuge for small animals but certainly not for a family of the largest snakes in the world.

  He came to the top to breathe and went down again. Now he studied the steep bank that fell off from the beach. Suddenly he found himself at the mouth of a submarine cave running back into the bank.

  If he wanted any proof that this was the nest he got it at once. Two small snakes not more than five feet long came out of the cave and swam off through the reeds. Then the large terrible-looking head of an adult anaconda protruded from the cave. It moved towards Hal.

  Hal lost his appetite for investigation and rose to

  the surface. He could already imagine those great jaws closing on one of his legs. Then he would be drawn down inside that black cave and devoured at leisure. He went through agonies of fear during the instant that it took him to scramble up to the beach.

  ‘What did you see?’ whispered Roger.

  ‘Anacondas at home,’ said Hal. ‘You’re sitting right on top of their house. There’s a big cave running back beneath you.’

  ‘But how could they live in a cave under water? Don’t they have to breathe air?’

  ‘Perhaps the roof of the cave is above the water line,’ guessed Hal.

  Another long wait. Roger dropped off to sleep.

  Hal grew tired of watching the ripples that lapped near the feet of the deer, so at first he did not notice something had broken the surface of the bay. Then he saw it, and it was moving. It was something like the periscope of a submarine. He realized that it was the nose of an anaconda. This snake has adapted itself to life in the water by developing a nose, not in the usual place, but high up on its head so that it may breathe while keeping the head submerged.

  Now and then a ripple gave a glimpse of the eyes. They were placed well out so that they could look not only up and forward, but down, a feat of which land snakes were not capable. They were placed so far apart that it was plain that the head that carried them must be very large.

  And the great head was coming straight towards the deer. Behind the head the water was disturbed far back, showing that under the surface there must be a huge propeller at work — a propeller perhaps twenty or thirty feet long, who could say? The longer the better, thought Hal.

  Hastily he slipped through the bushes to the tree and laid hold of the line. He was glad to see that an Indian who had been posted on the Ark at the other end of the line was awake.

  The moving head arrived at the beach. It slid out of the water with the chin resting on the sand. The deer saw it and would have taken to its heels if the line had not held it. The terrified animal struggled violently, its hooves tearing up the sand and flinging pebbles into the snake’s jaws.

  Hal began to pull on the line and the Indian at the other end paid out accordingly. The deer was drawn slowly towards the tree. The snake followed. Every time the anaconda seemed about to strike, Hal drew the deer out of its reach. Hal himself was concealed behind the tree. The other men were hidden in the bushes.

  When the deer reached the tree the anaconda was six feet behind and coming fast.

  ‘All right, boys, go to it!’ shouted Hal.

  He leaped out with the head noose. The men closed in on both sides with the tail ropes.

  When the snake saw Hal it did not retreat but raised its head menacingly. The slightest mistake now would be serious. The snake was about to strike. Before it could do so it must be noosed by the head and the tail.

  Hal shot forward straight for the villainous head and the jaws that were already parting to make a meal of him. He slapped the noose over the bulging head and drew it tight on the slender neck.

  The other end of the noose rope ran into and through the cage in the usual fashion. The end of it had been made fast to a tree. With the tail held firm, so that it would not lash about, it should be possible to draw the snake inch by inch into the cage.

  But it was not to be so easy. The men with the toil ropes became excited and confused. They managed to get only one of the nooses in place. As the snake plunged forward towards Hal, whipping its tail, this rope was jerked out of the Indian’s hands.

  Banco and two Indians were knocked flat by the thrashing tail. Aqua boldly leaped in with the other noose. The tail suddenly whirled forward and encircled him. He fought wildly to free himself. The loop of serpent holding him moved up the snake’s body so that the tail was again free. It continued to flail about.

  Roger, trying to catch the flying tail rope, was given a swinging swipe on the side of the head that knocked him unconscious.

  Not held by the tail as it should have been, the snake was advancing upon Hal. Backing up, he tripped and fell. In the second or two that he lay there he lived a lifetime. All the tales he had heard of anacondas devouring cattle, of a horse found in an anaconda’s stomach, of men who had lost their lives to this fearless serpent, flashed through his mind. His time had come.

  But while his brain was taking the long way around, his body was working like chain lightning. He jerked himself out of the way of the striking head and leaped to his feet.

  He saw with horror that Aqua was already lifeless, blood spouting from his mouth and ears, his body tossing limply about. Hal’s hand went for his revolver but it had been thrown out of its holster when he fell.

  The snake was turning its jaws towards Aqua. Hal leaped for the snake’s head and buried his thumbs in its eyes. He held on grimly as the anaconda’s b
ody writhed and whipped. The coil relaxed and Aqua was thrown out into the bush.

  Hal went to the body of his friend and felt the heart. It was still.

  He returned to .the battle with the greatest of snakes. He was determined that Aqua should not have died in vain.

  The head rope, passing through the cage and tied to a tree, was holding firm although it allowed far too much play. The tail rope had been caught now and lashed to another tree.

  In vain the snake tried to capture more of its tormentors with its teeth or its tail. Hal got two Indians to help him haul in on the head rope. Every time the thrashing snake came nearer to the cage, it was held there until the next gyration brought it still nearer. Finally its head was in the door of the crate.

  Its body was now almost straight, held taut by the tail rope. Hal ordered that this rope be slackened gradually as the head was drawn into the cage. The men worked with more confidence and courage as they saw that their enemy was being beaten. One of them even ventured to tie a rope to the snake’s middle, and was knocked down twice in the process. By this rope the heavy body of the snake was drawn forward.

  Finally the snake was in up to the full length of the cage. But there were still ten feet of snake outside!

  The tail rope was now passed in through the cage and by means of it the tail was drawn in. The door was closed. The capture was complete.

  Hal took no pleasure in it. It had cost too much. He took off his torn shirt, soaked it in the bay, and wiped the blood from Aqua’s face. He had grown to be very fond of the able, intelligent and good-hearted young Indian. He felt that he and Roger had lost their most loyal friend.

  Somehow the future seemed dark and dangerous, now that Aqua was gone.

  The men carried the cage and its captive on board and half-filled the tub with water.

  At dusk they buried Aqua under the tree where he had given his life.

  Chapter 24

  Nine Headless Men

  On down the river. It was no fun now. Hal could think only of reaching Manaos, getting his collection on board a steamer, and sailing home.