This was not all I did during those days alone in the jungle. Twice I made the long trip by land to the poison-tree—by land, because it was wiser to keep hidden in the thick cover than to take chances of being caught in the canoe by barbaros. Nothing new had happened at the assacu, and at no time did I see or hear any savages going there. Those whom I did see were all on the lagoon or the bay or in the bush near the hill.
At night I made a couple of journeys, once by land and once by water, to the paths on each side of the bay. And I learned that both were watched after dark as well as during the day—at least while the moon shone. On the second journey I nearly got myself caught, for two guards were on the path at the time, and I nearly walked into them. As it happened, some sort of animal fight started in the bush near them just then, and while they looked and listened to the noise of it I slipped away unseen.
With these and other scouting trips, which gave me little new information but used up much time, I kept quite busy when I was not visiting my friend Matador. I also put in some hours at the work of weaving a small atura basket with a lid. This I took with me on the seventh day, when I went to see Matador. And when I came back to camp with the basket the mussurana was inside it.
Matador now was quite brisk and wide-awake, and I knew that unless he was confined he would soon seek another kill. If he found a good one he would be stupid for another week or more, and that was not what I wanted. At the same time I did not want him so hungry that he would slip away from me at the first chance. So, leaving the lid fastened down, I went hunting for a small jararaca.
I was lucky enough to find one less than a foot long. Using a forked stick and a cord, I took it alive, after which I carried it to camp and presented it to Matador as a light luncheon. He swallowed it promptly and then settled down in his new home, well content.
And now I was ready to test my idea.
It was as crazy and foolhardy an idea, no doubt, as a man ever had. Yet a bold, crazy plan sometimes succeeds where a more sane and cautious scheme would fail. And I now was so tired of hiding and sneaking and waiting for Pedro to return, and so curious about the Jararaca and his camp, that anything seemed better than more days and nights of skulking uselessly in the bush.
In my one view of the white-skinned cannibal chief I had seen that he was swollen with conceit; so vain that he twisted the name “son of a snake” into an indication that he was known to the world. I had learned that he had a murderous hatred for the cross and all it stood for. If he had any god at all it must be some foul serpent-god.
And whether or not he had such a god, I felt that he was crazed on the subject of snakes. His pride in his name, his snaky look and movements, his diabolical habit of sending white men to die in torment by snake-bites at the assacu, his boast that “who lives by the cross dies by the snake"—all these things indicated that his brain had a snaky twist.
So now, armed with a snake of my own and a jug of rum, I was going to pay a call on the Jararaca in his den.
* * * *
XVI
VERY EARLY in the morning, while the waning moon still shone and the eastern sky gave no sign of dawn, I pushed the canoe out from its hiding-place and began paddling eastward. In the boat lay a small pack, consisting of my hammock and food arranged around the jug. With this, but not fastened to it, was the atura in which Matador dozed. My gun, my machadinha, and the gold cross I left behind. The only weapons likely to be useful to me in this venture were my machete and my wits.
Before daybreak I was safely out of sight beyond the other end of the lagoon. I had decided on what sort of story I was to tell, and my movements and appearance must bear out that tale. I had already attended to my looks. I was naked to the waist, my breeches were torn and mud-stained, my face was overgrown with a villainous black beard, and my hair was matted and caked in places with dry clay. Besides this, I wore on my head some long parrot feathers found days previously in the bush, where some hawk or other prowler had made a kill. I doubt if the men of the Jararaca themselves looked much more wild and hard than I. And now, having reached the place from which I was to appear, I dozed in the canoe until the sun was well up.
Then I stroked slowly to the mouth of the lagoa and looked down it, hoping to see some barbaros. Before long I spied a canoe cruising along near shore, a tall savage in its bow, spearing fish. At once I swung boldly out into the middle of the lake and paddled westward.
Out swerved the canoe of the Jararaca's men. Straight for me it drove. In its bow the tall Indian still stood, balancing himself to the strokes, his spear held forward, I kept coolly on, without either pause or haste, until their bow came within twenty feet. Then I held my paddle and raised my empty right hand.
They slowed, backed water, and stared. I said no word while their eyes went over me, resting longest on those feathers in my hair. The boats slowly drifted toward each other. At length, speaking in Tupi, I asked—
"Who are you?"
The spearman answered—
"Men of the Snake."
"What snake? The Jararaca?"
Surprise showed in their eyes. The spearman replied:
"The Son of the Snake. Jararaca."
I nodded as if well pleased.
"Take me to him. I have traveled far to find him."
Again they stared. An evil grin came into their faces. Here was a fool asking for death! With a grunt the spearman moved his head toward the enseada. The paddles stroked again, and side by side we moved into the bay and on to the hill.
There I slung my pack on my shoulders, looped the line of the atura around my forehead, and looked inquiringly at the spearman as if I did not know which way to go. He pointed to the path and up the hill. So up the hill I went, the canoe-men following close on my heels.
On the flat hilltop more savages crowded around me, their faces ugly. But the spearman growled, and no hand was lifted against me. Onward we swung to that spot before the house where Senhor Mack had stood some days before. There the spearman motioned for me to halt. As I did so he turned into the house.
The other savages watched me with snaky eyes, saying nothing. I stood in a bold, careless manner, looking around at them. After a minute or two I unslung the atura and set it very gently on the ground before me. My care in handling it drew their attention to it. One fellow, curious, put out a foot and shoved it a little. I snarled and glared at him. He glowered back, but did not touch it again. The rest became all the more interested in it.
Thus we stood when through the doorway came the Jararaca.
My first straight stare into his face told me something. Before, when I had peered at him from behind a tree some distance away, I had thought him white. Now I saw that though his skin was white his blood was far from pure. His high cheekbones and slant eyes were those of the Peruvian Indian. His nose and mouth were those of a Negro. The blood of three races was in him. And of all mixtures of blood in our country, that of Spaniard, Indian and Negro is worst.
Black, glittering, evil, his eyes went over me as had those of his men. Like them, he looked longest at the feathers in my clayed hair. And, like them, he gazed narrow-lidded at the atura before me. While he still watched that basket I spoke, slow and deep.
"From the great chief Yacu, ruler of white Indians, and from the people of the Blue Snake, I bring greeting and a message to the famous Son of the Snake, Jararaca."
He lifted his head proudly.
"Sí? Speak on."
"The great name of the Jararaca has been borne across the rivers and the forest by the little snakes of the jungle and has come to the ears of Yacu. The little snakes have said that the mighty Son of the Snake has a white skin like that of Yacu himself; that the men of the Jararaca speak across the distances with tongues of talking wood, as do the white Indians of the west; that they also feast on their enemies, as do the men of the Blue Snake; and that the Jararaca hates, even as Yacu hates, the cross which the priests bring into this land."
At the name of the cross his face tw
isted savagely.
"If the little snakes have spoken truth,” I went on, “then Yacu and the Jararaca are brothers at heart, and they may work together at that which may bring even greater power and glory to the Son of the Snake."
There I stopped. Silence hung around us while he thought about this amazing talk of mine, watching me without a flicker of the lids.
"I will hear the message of Yacu,” he softly hissed.
"I, the messenger of Yacu, have come far and am worn by travel,” I said as if displeased. “Is it fitting that the words of a chief be spoken to all the world, or that his messenger be kept standing among ordinary men?"
"Does Yacu send gifts?” he asked in return.
"Yacu, ruler of a thousand fighting men,” I answered, glancing around to show him that I saw he had fewer than a hundred followers, “sends no gifts to a chief who has not yet shown himself friendly. When the Son of the Snake has spoken words of amity the gifts will come."
"Why does so powerful a chief send as his messenger only one man—and that man a white?"
There was a sneer in his tone.
"Because his own men know not this country. I, who have traveled the jungle far and wide, could find the Jararaca more quickly than a hundred of the Blue Snake men. I come alone because a lone man travels fastest. And I am sent because I speak more than one tongue, while no man of Yacu speaks any language other than this."
With that I made noises that meant nothing to him or to me either. They were only noises that sounded like words.
"I have said that Yacu sends no gifts,” I continued. “By that I mean such gifts as he would send to a chief if he knew that chief to be one with him. Yet he sends, as a token of friendship, something which is on my back. And he sends, not as a gift but as a sign that my words are true, the Blue Snake of his people."
Squatting, I loosened the lid of the basket and whistled softly on the note which Matador liked best. Then, slipping my hands under him, I rose with the gleaming blue snake curled over my arms.
A sudden grunt came from the cannibals. Even the Jararaca looked startled. Standing calmly, but hoping fervently that the mussurana would not start wriggling away from me, I held my arms still and let him do as he willed.
Matador behaved nobly. Looping himself easily over one arm, he crawled up along it, around my neck, and partly out on the other arm. There he paused, his head raised, his unwinking stare going from one to another of the faces around him.
Speaking in Tupi, so that all could understand me, I said—
"The Blue Snake of Yacu, leader of a thousand warriors, who devours his enemies as the snake swallows his prey, and who stretches the hand of brotherhood across the jungle to the Jararaca."
No man spoke. But they glanced sidewise at one another, and the Jararaca scowled but looked thoughtful too. Every man of them knew the mussurana was more powerful than the jararaca, and that against it all the jararaca's venom was useless. Whether my words and the sight of the blue snake made some of them think further and feel that, unless the Jararaca accepted the friendship of Yacu, the thousand warriors of the Blue Snake people would attack and devour them, I do not know. But the Jararaca himself, no doubt, thought of that instantly. He said nothing, but his eyes never lifted from Matador.
Soon Matador tired of looking around him. Creeping on along my arm, he draped himself in curves again and looked down at his basket. I took his hint at once and lowered him into the atura, where he curled up lazily. Then I looked the Son of the Snake in the eye.
"The message of Yacu has not been spoken,” I reminded him.
With a slow wave of the hand he pointed to the doorway. Turning, he glided into the house. With the snake-basket hanging from one hand, and the pack still on my back, I followed.
* * * *
XVII
IN MANY ways the inside of the long house was much like the malocas, or tribal houses, of wild people I had seen in other parts of the jungle. But there were differences. In the malocas the hammocks generally are strung up with no idea of order, hanging wherever they may; while here they were arranged in two regular rows along the sides, divided by a wide aisle running from end to end of the house. Also, there was not one woman or child in the place. It was like a caserna—barracks.
The Jararaca, whose white man's brain no doubt had caused this orderly arrangement and the posting of guards on the paths by day and night, did not stop here. On down the aisle he went to another doorway at the end, and through this into a much smaller room. This, I could see, was his own private room—the quarters of the commandante.
Here were a rough but solid table, a chair, a gaudily decorated hammock, and other furnishings of sort. On one wall, beyond the hammock, were a number of rifles, each resting on two wooden pins. Machetes stood bunched in a corner. On the table lay a heavy revolver. It was just the right size to fit into the empty holster of Senhor Mack, and I had no doubt that it was his.
All these weapons probably had belonged to men captured by the savages.
The Jararaca, motioning toward the chair, went to the hammock and sat down. But when he sat, the revolver had disappeared from the table, and was in his hand. I did not see him seize it as he passed, but he had it. And as I glanced out into the big room I saw that it was now filled with barbaros, and that one very ugly brute who was holding a club stood just outside our door. No man entered the quarters of the chief, but all were ready to jump at me at a word.
I slipped the pack off my shoulders, laid it on the table, and leaned the basket against it. Folding my arms across my chest and paying no attention to the chair, I stood facing the Son of the Snake.
"The message of Yacu and his thousand men,” I said, “is this:
"'The cross and the men of the cross have long been a threat to the power of the men of the jungle. There is no place where those skirted men of the cross will not go. They carry their false words to the men and women of the bush, and little by little the bush people grow tame, afraid, slaves of the cross and the gun of the white men.
"'The skirted men themselves carry no guns, but they are all the more dangerous for that. Preaching peace, they go safely where men with guns would die. Yet behind them always lurk the men with guns, and when the priests have conquered the people with smooth words, then come the guns to see that they stay conquered. So the power of the cross grows and the strength of the free people of the jungle wanes.
"'It is time that the jungle men band together and sweep the cross and all its followers from this land. It is time that the lying priests be destroyed and their settlements laid waste. What Yacu and the people of the Blue Snakes could do alone they have done, and in all their land no cross of priest can be found. Now he asks that his brother chiefs do their part, add their strength to his, and clean their own lands of this danger. So shall all this jungle be freed and the power of the chiefs increase.
"'Yacu has no wish to make himself chief or to swell his own power. His own lands are wide enough and his own people strong enough, and he wants no more. He grows old, and in time he will be buried in his clay jar under his house, like his fathers before him. Yet, though old, he is strong and long of arm, and he will reach far and strike hard against his enemies. Any chief who opposes him in this cleaning of the land is not the friend of Yacu. He who is not the friend of Yacu is the enemy of Yacu. Yacu waits to know whether his brother chief, the Jararaca, is his friend.’”
I pause, staring steadily back into his unwavering eyes. Then I went on:
"Such is the message of Yacu. Now I speak to the Jararaca a thought which is not in the mind of Yacu, but which has come into my own mind since seeing the Jararaca, his men, and his camp. The soldierly arrangement here shows me that the Jararaca has the mind of a great leader. And Yacu, leader of a thousand warriors, grows old. He has no sons. The Jararaca could rule a thousand men as well as half a hundred."
Then I stopped. For minutes he sat motionless, wordless, his expression unchanged. But in his eyes grew a hot gleam that
showed his mind was leaping along the trail I had opened to him.To become the ally of Yacu—to get control of Yacu's thousand men—to use this strength to crush other chiefs and add their warriors to his own—to make himself the terror of the whole land—it was a thought to fire a greater man than he.When at last he spoke he said only one word, but that word was a long, soft, pleased hiss.
"Ssssi."
Calmly I turned to the table.With my back to the door I unwrapped my pack, removed the slabs of fish, and, shielding the jug with my body from the eyes of the barbaros outside, held it so that the Jararaca could see it.
"A slight token of friendship from Yacu,” I said. “Is it well that the men of the Jararaca look upon it?"
Another kind of gleam shone in his face as he eyed the jug. Rising swiftly, he stepped to the door, shut it, and dropped a bar across it. Then he faced me, the revolver still in his hand.
"Let the messenger of Yacu taste first the gift of his master,” he said with a snaky nod.
Knowing it was the last drink I was likely to get from that jug, and knowing also that he suspected poison, I took a hearty swallow. I tried to keep from coughing, but could not. So I said with a grin—
"The gift of Yacu, like Yacu himself, is strong."
With that I stepped around the table, where I again stood with arms folded. He slipped up to the board, tilted the jug with his left hand, poured liquor into a gourd cup, watched me keenly a minute, then lifted the cup and sipped at the fiery rum. For the first time something like a smile flitted across his face. With swift, thirsty gulps he drained the cup. And when he set it down he did not cough.
Without turning his back to me—though the table was between us and I had no gun—he returned to his hammock. Again he motioned toward the chair. This time I sat down. His eyes went to the jug, then back to me.
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