01 Amazon Adventure

by Willard Price

  Roger called weakly from his hammock, ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Lie low,’ Hal warned. ‘Indians.’

  He advanced in the direction from which the arrow had come. ‘We are friends!’ he shouted in the lingua geral, the general language of the Indians.

  The answer he got was another arrow, barely missing his shoulder.

  He thought of the nine headless men and of Roger lying helpless in his hammock. The best way to defend Roger would be to carry the fight away from him, up into the woods. He ran forward. His gun was ready. If they would not accept friendship they would have to take bullets.

  As he broke into the jungle another arrow sang by. He thought it strange that the arrows always came singly.

  Then he saw the reason — there was just one Indian. Upon seeing that he was pursued by a man with a gun, he turned and fled. Hal followed him for about half a mile. The Indian was too fleet for him and finally disappeared in the direction of the burned village.

  He was doubtless a scout. He would come back with all the warriors of the village. Hal ran back to camp. There was no time to be lost. He and Roger and their unwelcome guest must board the Ark at once and be off.

  He stripped down the hammocks and carried them and Roger’s heavy, half-conscious form through the underbrush to the shores of the bay. He had not had time to think of Croc. Now he felt a cold dread of what he might discover when he came out on the beach.

  He burst from the thick screen of leaves into the sunshine, and halted. It was true then. A man really could be capable of sailing off and leaving two boys at the mercy of the jungle, and of hostile Indians. The Ark did not lie moored near the beach.

  Far out in the river the Ark sped downstream under full sail aided by a powerful current. Croc had nothing to do but steer. He stood on the steering platform at the stern with his hand on the tiller. He waved his other hand and his harsh voice came distantly across the water.

  ‘So long, buddy. See you in hell!’

  Chapter 26

  The Floating Island

  Hal raised his gun. He lowered it again — the range was too great. Besides he remembered that he had only one cartridge left. That one had Croc’s name on it. Somehow he would catch up with that devil and bore a hole clear through his evil carcass.

  As he calmed down he realized that his chances of ever seeing Croc again were slim.

  He laid Roger on the sand and began to take stock of the situation. He had no boat. He had no tools to make one. He had his hunting knife and, given a week, he might whittle out a raft. He was given not a week, but only minutes, an hour or so at the most. The scout might not have had to go all the way back to his village to contact his band. The Indians had been hunting Croc and might be very near by.

  He and Roger might hide in the jungle. But they had none of the things they would need. He had stowed everything on the Ark in preparation for sailing. Even the pans he had used to get breakfast were on board.

  He took an inventory. Between them they had two shirts, two pairs of trousers, two pairs of alpargata sandals, two hammocks, one knife, one gun with one bullet — and that one bullet reserved.

  Nor was the jungle a good hiding place from Indians. The enraged Indians scouring the forest in search of Croc would find them sooner or later.

  And the greatest objection to hiding out in the woods was that it would not bring him any closer to Croc. As he watched the black speck of the Ark disappearing down river it seemed futile to hope to bring Croc to a reckoning, or to recover his collection.

  That was the worst of it — losing the animals. That meant failure for his father’s business and victory for Shark Sands and his henchmen. It meant, too, that Hal would not get the chance to go to the South Seas — the reward that had been offered by his father for success in the Amazon enterprise. But he was not ready to give up yet.

  His roving eye lit upon a floating island passing the mouth of the bay. A wild thought came to him. He did not stop to analyse it — there was no time to weigh chances. He lifted Roger and made his way out to the end of the point.

  The river was browner, more turbid, and more rapid than usual. The main current boiled past close to the point. Something colossal must be going on in the headwaters on the flanks of the Andes. The swollen river was dotted with moving islands. They were of different kinds, although all due to the same cause — flood.

  One that passed very close was a kind that he did not care to trust — a bed of water hyacinths torn loose from some marsh. Only the leaves and flowers showed above the surface. Below, the bulbs

  must be tangled together in a tightly-knit mass. But the whole mat was not more than a foot thick and might not support two husky boys. Even if it did, one of those great floating trees with branches milling around like paddle wheels, and roots projecting like the tentacles of an octopus, might roll over the islet, destroying it and everyone who happened to be on it. Many boats, even large steamers, had been stove in by those crazily thrashing trees.

  Then there were islands made up of brush. In some rapids a bush had caught on a rock. Other bushes, sticks and logs had joined it, and the whole had been matted firmly in one solid mass and had finally broken loose to sail downstream as an island — an island without soil.

  But more amazing were the islands that had soil, plants, even trees — everything an island should have except the ability to stay in one place. A strong current had undercut a piece of land and carried it off entire. Some of these islands were two hundred feet across. He had heard that they were at times twenty feet thick.

  But Hal could not wait for the ideal island — he must take the first reasonable chance that came along. He explained his purpose to Roger who only half-understood what it was all about. Something that looked like a large pasture came floating down and when it grazed the point Hal stepped aboard with his burden. He was thankful that he did not immediately sink through into the river.

  In a moment the point was left behind and the two boys were embarked upon as strange a voyage as anyone had ever made.

  Perhaps it had been a crazy idea. But anything was better, Hal told himself, than sitting on shore waiting to be beheaded. Now they were leaving behind those eternally thumping, nerve-wearing drums. And he was on the trail of Croc.

  True, Croc could go faster with a sail than he could on a floating island. But suppose the wind dropped, or veered to blow upstream. Suppose Croc got caught on a sandbar or on a sunken log. Lots of things might happen to delay him. Hal considered that he had a fighting chance.

  He surveyed his floating kingdom. He laid Roger down in the grass and walked about, frequently testing the ground to be sure that it was strong enough to hold him. His island was a good half acre in size. Much of it was in grass but there were also many small trees, especially cecropias, rubber trees and bamboos. The fast-growing bamboo was tall but all the other trees were not more than a few feet high.

  Hal’s active mind went to work on this curious fact and he came out with what he believed to be the answer. His island was quite evidently only a year old. The flood of a year ago had deposited a half acre of silt somewhere and, when the water subsided, there was a new island. Seeds sprouted and trees attained a year’s growth. And now comes this year’s flood to undercut the island, lift it from its firm base, and carry it off bodily down river.

  The only trouble with his theory was the fact that on the downstream side of the island lay an enormous tree that must have taken a hundred years to grow. He walked over to examine it. It was a great silk-cotton, or kapok tree. Its trunk lay in the water and its huge branches rose some fifty feet into the air. At the base of the trunk was a tangle of big roots.

  No, his theory still held water. This tree was not a part of the island. The two had merely become jammed together while floating down river.

  But he could use the fallen giant to good advantage. He strung up the hammocks between the branches, then brought Roger and laid him in his hammock where he would not be in danger from sn
akes or army ants or any other wild life that might be on this little floating world.

  Which reminded him that he must feed his patient and himself. That was a sobering thought. Many an adventurer in the Amazon forests had died of hunger even though he had the entire jungle to draw upon. Hal had only the resources of a half acre. Robinson Crusoe had had much more to work with.

  Hal spent the rest of the day having bright ideas that didn’t work out. He looked among the bamboos for shoots, but there were none small enough to be edible. He tried the berries on a bush, only to make himself sick. He saw a little tree which he believed to be the famous cow tree which, when slashed, gives forth a very good substitute for cow’s milk. He slashed this one but it was too small — only a few white drops exuded.

  This was proving more of a job than he had expected. Once he had read The Fighting Forces Handbook, Survival, and had derived from it the idea that survival whether in the jungle, in the Arctic, in the desert or at sea, was really a simple matter. It did not appear so simple now.

  But there must be plenty of fish in the river. He had no line — but he would catch them as the Indians did. He spent two hours fashioning a wooden spear with a barbed point. Then he went to the edge and looked down into the swirling current.

  He soon realized that he had wasted his time. The current was so full of silt that he could not see one inch into its depths.

  A heavy squall came up and Hal was promptly drenched to the skin. He didn’t mind that. But after the rain came a strong wind, with nothing to stop its sweep across the great river, here eight or nine miles wide. Hal began to shake in his wet clothes and long for the shelter of the forest. It was hard to believe that he was within four degrees of the equator.

  He continued his vain quest for food until dark. As night closed in, he made his brother as comfortable as possible. Fortunately Roger had been protected from the rain by the canvas over his hammock.

  Hal would have liked the cheer and warmth of a camp fire. But there were two good reasons for not making a fire: (1) the Indians might see it; (2) the matches were on the Ark.

  So Hal, quite forlorn and miserable, and humiliated by his failure to find food, crawled into his hammock. He was discovering how grim the Amazon can be to those who meet it unprepared.

  There was something a little terrifying about barging through the darkness at the mercy of a strong current. What if his hurrying half acre should crash into a point, or a fixed island? He tried to tell himself that it was not very likely. His craft was carried by the current, and the current goes around things, not into them. A lone Indian who wanted to travel night and day, but must get some sleep, would tie his canoe to a floating island and wake up in the morning to find himself some thirty miles further downstream.

  It suddenly struck Hal that night travel gave him one great advantage over Croc. Croc would doubtless stop and camp every night. Knowing so little of the river, he would hardly sail it in the dark. Hal listened to the jungle roar. Sometimes it was far away and he knew that they were miles from the shore. Then it would grow louder and louder as they approached a cape or a large island, and die away as they left it behind. Once as they brushed the shore, the thundering voice of a jaguar not fifty feet away raised the hair on his scalp. He prayed fervently that the beast had not stepped out upon the floating island.

  The biggest scare of the night came when the island scraped over a sandbar and the tree, with its lower branches rubbing on the bottom, began to revolve like a millwheel. Hal had visions of being neatly drowned if the branches to which the hammocks were fastened rolled under. Before this could happen the tree was in deep water and righted itself.

  Hal gave up the idea of getting any sleep. He had no sooner done so than he slept, and did not wake until the sun looked in on him.

  He scanned the horizon for the Ark, but there was no sign of it.

  A faint call came from Roger. Hal climbed through the tree to his brother’s hammock. Roger, half asleep, was calling for a drink of water. Hal put his hand on the boy’s forehead. The patient seemed a little better.

  Roger opened his eyes. He looked about him dully for a moment — then his eyes popped as he saw the swift river and flying shoreline.

  ‘Hey, what’s going on? How did we get here? Where’s the Ark?’

  Tm glad you’re well enough to ask questions,’ Hal said, and told him all that had happened.

  Roger tried to rise but gave it up. Tm as weak as a cat. Say, how about some breakfast?’

  ‘You really are better,’ said Hal with satisfaction. ‘But as for breakfast — I’m afraid there will be a slight delay. I’ll see what I can do.’

  He went out into his half acre, determined to make it yield up food and water.

  One dare not drink water straight from the river except at the risk of typhoid and dysentery. It must be boiled. But how to boil water without any pan or tea-kettle, and without any fire?

  Then he saw his tea-kettle. A joint of bamboo would do the trick. He went to the clump of bamboos and selected one that would not be too hard to cut with his hunting knife. He cut just below one ring and about eight inches above it. At each ring was a partition closing off the hollow interior. So Hal now had a pot three inches in diameter and eight inches deep. If what he had read was true, this pot would not burn when filled with water and placed over a fire.

  But how about the fire? The first thing to do was to gather together something that would burn. Everything he touched was wet with last night’s rain and this morning’s dew.

  Then he thought of the tree in which they spent the night. He took off some of the seed pods, each about twice as large as a walnut. He broke open the shells and found plenty of dry, fluffy cotton, the kapok used for mattresses. This would do nicely as tinder.

  Then he cut through the wet bark of the tree. Sure enough the inside layers were dry. There was a plentiful supply of this material, and he piled all he could use upon the tinder.

  Now he needed only flint and steel and he could make a fire. The blade of his knife was steel — but he had no flint. A stone might do. He searched his half acre but found not a single stone. The truth is that stones are almost non-existent in the Amazon flood plain. So the flint-and-steel idea was no good.

  Well, he would use the fire-thong method.

  Primitive man had made fire that way — so could he. He found a piece of dry rattan that would do as a thong. He planted a stick slantwise in the ground, slit the end of it, put a little tinder into the slit, and then set to work drawing the thong rapidly back and forth in contact with the tinder.

  The friction should make the tinder break into flame. It didn’t.

  In the South Seas, where he hoped to go, the islanders used the ‘fire plough’. A groove was made in a piece of dry wood and a stick was moved back and forth in the groove so fast that the wood dust broke into flame. Hal rubbed vigorously for half an hour. Nothing broke, except his patience.

  He stood with his hands in his pockets, puzzling over the problem. His right hand toyed with something round and flat. He drew it out absent-mindedly and looked at it. It was a lens that he had removed from his camera when he had substituted a telephoto.

  ‘That will do it!’ he exulted, and held the lens so that the rays of the sun passed through it and came to a point upon the tinder. In two minutes he had a fire.

  Roger smelled the smoke. ‘Lucky you had matches,’ he said.

  ‘I didn’t have any matches.’

  ‘Gee whiz, don’t tell me you made a fire without matches! You’re getting pretty smart. What did you do, use a fire drill?’

  ‘No,’ admitted Hal. ‘A Bausch and Lomb Tessar f 4.5. Afraid I’m not such a hot woodsman.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Roger. Tm betting on you.’

  Hal boiled the water, cooled it, and he and Roger drank.

  But they were both hungry. Hal tried plaiting a fishline from grasses, but they broke. Then he discovered a rough piece of driftwood caught on the fringe of the isla
nd. Fibres like coarse hair clung to it. It must be the trunk of a piassava tree. This fibre was sold to North America and Europe to be made into brooms and brushes, ropes and cables. If it was good enough for that, surely it would do for a fishline.

  While Hal was at work on the line he heard a chattering sound and looked up. A monkey looked down at him from a branch of the tree. Hal seized the weapon that had proved so useless in spearing fish and threw it in approved Indian fashion. It speared the monkey, which fell into Hal’s hands. This was luck.

  He postponed completing the fishline and immediately skinned the monkey. He laid aside some bones that would make good fish-hooks. He kept also a number of sinews. They could be used as leaders to fasten the hooks to the line. Then he roasted the monkey over the fire and breakfast was served. The fact that the time was nearly noon made the breakfast only more delicious.

  Hal finished his line, attached a monkey-bone hook by a monkey sinew, fastened on monkey’s knuckle bones as weights, baited the hook with monkey meat, and began to fish.

  Presently he felt a strong tug on the line and he had immediate prospects of a fish dinner. He pulled up the fish and was astonished to find that it was only a few inches long. He was still more surprised when, upon grasping it to take it off the hook, it began to grow within his hand. It became too big for his hand, too big for both hands, and reached the size of a football.

  He showed the curiosity to Roger. Roger tossed it against a branch and it bounced back like any well-behaved ball. Hal pierced it with the point of his hunting knife and it collapsed like a toy balloon. ‘What’s the idea of blowing itself up?’ To frighten its enemies. Just the way a bird in a fight will fluff out its feathers, spread its wings, and raise its crest. Lots of animals act that way. It’s animal nature and human nature. Plenty of men pretend to be bigger and more formidable than they really are.’

  He tossed the fish back into the water, knowing it to be poisonous.

  His next catch put up a strong fight before he could get it out.