CHAPTER IX
THE PIT
For several days the treasure-hunters made their camp near the shores ofthe great lake, waiting for the slow healing of Professor Ditson'swounds. Here and there, through open spaces in the forest, they couldsee the summits of mountain-ranges towering away in the distance, andrealized that the long journey through the jungle was nearly over.Beyond the lake the trail stretched away along the slopes of thefoot-hills, with plateaus and high pampas on one side and the steamingdepths of the jungle on the other.
One morning Professor Ditson felt so much better that Hen Pine, who hadbeen acting as his special nurse, decided to start on an expeditionafter fresh vegetables. Shouldering his ax and beckoning to Joe, forwhom the giant black had a great liking, the two struck off from thetrail beyond the lake into the heart of the jungle. Before long they sawin the distance the beautiful plume-like foliage of a cabbage-palmoutlined against the sky. A full seventy feet from the ground, theumbrella-like mass of leaves hung from the slim, steel-like column ofthe tapering trunk, buttressed by clumps of straight, tough roots, whichformed a solid support to the stem of the tree extending up ten feetfrom the ground. It took a solid hour of chopping before the palm fell.When at last it struck the earth, Hen cut out from the heart of thetree's crown a back-load of tender green leaves folded in buds, whichmade a delicious salad when eaten raw and tasted like asparagus whenboiled.
As they turned back, Joe saw something move in a near-by tree. Lookingmore closely, he noticed a crevice in the trunk, across which wasstretched a dense white web. Behind this crouched a huge spider. Coveredwith coarse gray and reddish hairs, its ten legs had an expanse of fullyseven inches. The lower part of the web was broken, and in it wereentangled two small birds about the size of a field-sparrow. One of themwas dead, but the other still moved feebly under the body of themonster. Picking up a long stick, Joe started to rescue the flutteringlittle captive.
"Look out!" shouted Hen, who was some distance away. "That's acrab-spider and mighty dangerous."
Paying no attention to the other's warning, Joe with one sweep of hisstick smashed the web and, just missing the spider, freed the dyingbird, so that it fell to the ground. As he whirled his stick back foranother blow, the terrible arachnid sprang like a tiger through the air,landing on the upper part of Joe's bare left arm, and, with its red eyesgleaming, was about to sink its curved envenomed mandibles deep in theboy's flesh. Only the instinctive quickness of Joe's muscles, tensed andtrained by many a danger, saved him. With a snap of his stick he dashedthe spider into the underbrush.
"Did he get you?" shouted Hen, anxiously.
"I think not," said Joe.
"You'd most certainly know it if he did," returned the great negro,examining the boy's arm closely. Although it was covered with loosereddish hairs from the monster, there was no sign of any wound.
"That was a close call, boy," said Hen, carefully blowing the hairs offJoe's skin. "You am goin' to be mighty discomfortable from dese erehairs; but if he'd done bit you, you might have died."
Hen was a true prophet. Some of the short, hard hairs became fixed inthe fine creases of Joe's skin and caused an almost maddening itchingwhich lasted for several days.
The next day, for the first time since his meeting with the puma,Professor Amandus Ditson tried walking again. His left arm was stillbadly swollen and inflamed and his stiffened and bruised muscles gavehim intense pain when he moved, but, in spite of Hen's protests, heinsisted upon limping a mile or so down the trail and back.
"If a man gives in to his body," he remarked impatiently, when Henremonstrated with him, "he will never get anything done."
The second day he walked still farther, and the third day, accompaniedby the faithful Hen, who followed him like a shadow, he covered severalmiles, exploring a path that ran through the jungle parallel with thetrail.
"Some one's been along here lately, Boss," said Hen, pointing outfreshly broken twigs and marks in the earth.
"Probably the same hunting-party that we met before," returned theprofessor, indifferently. "They won't--" He broke off his sentence atthe sound of a little sick, wailing cry, which seemed to come from thethick jungle close at hand.
"What's that?" said Hen, sharply, raising his heavy machete.
Without answering, the scientist turned off the trail and, raising thebushes, exposed the emaciated body of a little Indian girl about fouryears old. A tiny slit in the side of each nostril showed her to be amember of the Araras, a friendly tribe of forest Indians akin to theMundurucus, to whom Pinto belonged. As she looked up at ProfessorDitson, her sunken face broke into a smile.
"White man!" she whispered, in the Arara dialect which both ProfessorDitson and Pinto understood. Then, pointing to herself with fingers sowasted that they looked like birds' claws, she whispered her own name,"Ala," the Indian name for those gentle, beautiful little birds whichEuropeans have christened "wood-stars."
The stern face of the scientist softened to an expression that even Henhad never seen there before. In spite of his injured arm, it wasProfessor Ditson who lifted up the little girl and carried her back tothe camp. There the rest of the party found them when they returned withone of the plump curassows which Pinto generally managed to bring backfrom every hunt. From this, Hen Pine hurriedly made hot, nourishingbroth, with which the professor slowly fed the starved child until shedropped off to sleep, holding tightly to one of his long gaunt fingers.Several hours later the little girl woke up, seeming at first muchstronger, and at once began to talk in a little voice faint as the chirpof a distant cricket. From her half-whispered sentences the professorlearned that her father and mother had both been killed in a foray ofthe Muras. Not many months after their death, Ala herself had fallensick of one of the forest fevers so fatal to Indian children, and hadbeen abandoned by the tribe.
In spite of her starved condition, Ala was an attractive child. Insteadof the usual shallow, shiny black eyes of Indian children, hers were bigand brown and fringed with long lashes, and when she smiled it was as ifan inner light shone through her wan, pinched little face.
At once she became the pet of the whole party, and although she, inturn, liked them all, it was Professor Ditson who always held firstplace in her heart. If he were long away from her, she would callplaintively, "_Cariwa! Cariwa!_" the Arara word for white man. Sometimesshe would sing, in her tiny voice, folk-songs which she had learned fromher mother, all about the wonderful deeds and doings of armadillos,agoutis, and other South American animals.
Before long, however, in spite of careful nursing, she began to sinkrapidly. Then came days when she sang no more, but lay too weak even totaste the fruits which the boys were always bringing in to her from theforest. At last one night Professor Ditson, who always slept closebeside her, heard a little far-away voice whisper in his ear, "Whiteman, dear, dear white man!" and felt the touch of her hand against hischeek. A moment later, under the light of the setting moon, he saw thatAla had gone where there is no more sickness nor pain and where littlechildren are safe forever.
Later on, when the rest of the party roused themselves before sunrisefor another day, they found the scientist sitting grim and impassive inthe star-shine, still holding the tiny cold hand of the little Indiangirl in his. When old Jud found that clenched tightly in Ala's otherhand was the shell of a tree-snail, all white and pink and gold, whichhe had given her days before, the old man broke down and sobbed as helooked at the peaceful little figure.
Under the light of Achenar, Canopus, and the other eternal stars whichflared through the blackness of the tropical night, they buried her deepat the foot of a vast paradise tree which had towered above the foresthundreds of years before the first white man ever came to South Americaand whose mighty girth will be standing when the last Indian of thatcontinent has passed to his forgotten fathers. As Professor Ditsonrepeated over the little grave what part he could remember of theService for the Dead, from the heart of the jungle sounded the deep,coughing roar of a jaguar as it w
andered restless through the night.
The next day camp was broken and once more the party followed the trailthrough the forest. At first the gloom and grief of the little Indiangirl's death hung over them all. Then, little by little, the healing ofthe forest began to be felt. The vast waiting trees, the bird-songs, thestill beauty of the flowers all seemed to bring to them the joy and hopeand faith which is the portion of wanderers among the solitudes andsilences of earth.
The trail still ran, a dividing line between the steaming jungle on oneside and the plateaus and foot-hills on the other. Behind the lattertowered range after range of mighty mountains, among whose chill heightswere hidden forgotten Inca cities and the lost treasure-lake ofEldorado. On the mountain side of the trail the trees were set fartherapart and belonged to families from the temperate zone, while here andthere were small parks covered with short grass, with bare, treelessslopes beyond.
It was in such a country, after several days to travel, that Pinto,Jud, and the two boys started on a hunt, while the others made camp.They had been out less than an hour when the sharp eyes of the oldtrapper spied two strange animals feeding in an open space hedged in bythickets. They had long, banded tails, which clanked and rattled as theymoved. Moreover, they wore armored hides, set with square plates of boneand ringed around the middle with nine horny bands, while big pricked-upears, like those of the rabbit, and long sheep eyes made them appear tothe old trapper as among the strangest animals he had ever met.
"Armadillos," whispered Pinto, delightedly, as he too caught sight ofthem. "Spread out and we'll catch 'em both. Better 'n roast pig to eat."
In a minute the four hunters had made a wide circle around the unwaryanimals. It was not until they were close to them that the pair tookalarm. Stopping their feeding, they suddenly squatted with their forelegs off the ground, much as a woodchuck might do. Instead of curling uplike porcupines and trusting to their armor for protection, as Jud hadexpected them to do, they suddenly dropped on all fours and rushed andrattled down the slope toward the old trapper, like two small armoredtanks, almost as fast as a rabbit would run. Jud was as much surprisedas if he had seen a tortoise start to sprint. Going like race-horses,they bore down upon the old man.
"Hi! hi! stop! shoo!" bellowed Jud, waving both his arms over his head."What'll I do to stop 'em?"
"Trip 'em up," volunteered Will, from where he stood.
"Catch 'em by the tail!" yelled Joe. "Don't let 'em scare you."
In another minute they were upon him. Dodging his outstreched hands,their wedge-shaped heads plunged between his legs. Jud's feet flew up,and he sat down with a startling bump, while, rushing and clankingthrough the bushes, both of the armadillos disappeared in the depths ofthe thicket. The old man rose slowly and felt himself all over.
"I'd just as soon try to stop a racing automobile with my two hands asto head off a scared armadillo," he observed indignantly. "They got noright to run that way. Their business is to curl up an' be caught."
"Never mind, Jud," said Will, comfortingly; "you had the right idea, butyou tackled 'em a mite too high."
That day, as they rested after lunch, Will wandered up toward themountains, as usual studying his beloved birds. Along the pampas-likestretches of the plateaus and up among the hills, he found the bird lifevery different from what it was in the jungle. It was Pinto who taughthim the bassoon notes of the crested screamer, changing at times to thelong roll of a drum, and pointed out to him "John o' the mud-puddles,"the South American oven-bird, which, unlike the northern bird of thesame name, builds a mud nest a foot or more in diameter, strengthenedwith hair and weighing several pounds. The birds mate for life, and havea quaint habit of singing duets while standing facing each other. Thenthere was another bird which Pinto called the "fire-wood gatherer,"which built great nests of sticks in trees, dropping a wheelbarrow loadof twigs under each nest. Of all the new birds, the boy liked the onecalled the "little cock" the best. These were ground-birds some nineinches long, with little tails that stuck straight upward, and bristlingcrests on their heads. Looking like small bantam roosters, they scurriedaround through the brush, following the travelers inquisitively andgiving every now and then a loud, deep chirp. Whenever Will would chaseone, it would scurry off, chirping with alarm, but always returned andfollowed him through the grass and brush.
As the days went by, Professor Ditson became more and more uneasy, and,when camp was pitched, overtaxed his unrestored strength by huntingthrough dark nooks in the jungle and peering and prying among tangles offallen trees or the rare ledges of rock which showed now and then amongthe waves of green. At last he told the rest of the party the cause ofhis anxiety.
"In a few days more," he said, "we shall begin to climb the foot-hillsof Peru. Under my contract with Mr. Donegan, we were to collect abushmaster before we began the search for emeralds. So I would suggestthat we make our camp here and scatter out through the jungle until oneof us is fortunate enough to discover a specimen of this rare andbeautiful serpent. Let me beg of you, however," he continued earnestly,"to use the utmost care in catching a bushmaster. They are easilyinjured."
Jud's face was a study. "I will," he promised. "I'll bet there isn't anyone on the continent of South America who will use more care than me."
The next day the first hunt began. Armed with long, forked sticks, thesix adventurers poked their way painstakingly through the thickest partsof the jungle, but without any success so far as bushmasters wereconcerned, although Pinto aroused a fine specimen of a boa-constrictor,one of the smaller boas of South America, which flowed through theforest like a dark shimmering stream, while Jud scared up anotherhideous iguana, it being a disputed question as to which ran away thefaster.
Toward the end of the afternoon Will found himself some distance fromthe others, following what seemed a little game trail, which zigzaggedback and forth through the jungle. At one point it led between two greattrees, and there Will caught sight of a blaze on either side of thepath. As he stepped forward to examine the marks more carefully, adreadful thing happened. The ground under his feet suddenly sank awaywithout a sound, and the next moment he found himself at the bottom of ajug-shaped pit some fifteen feet deep, whose sides curved in so sharplythat not even a monkey, much less a man, could climb out. The openinghad been covered over with the stretched skins of animals, stitchedtogether and cunningly hidden under turf and leaves.
Although shaken and half-stunned by his sudden fall, the soft earthfloor of the trap saved him from any serious injury. Far above he couldsee the light streaming in through the irregular hole which his weighthad made in the covering which masked the pit. All too late Willrealized that the blazes on the sides of the game path had been warningsfor human beings to avoid the pitfall which they marked. The neck of thegreat earthen bottle was some five feet in width, but at the base itwidened into a space fully double that distance across. As the boy'seyes became accustomed to the half-light below, he found that he couldsee the sides and the bottom of the pit more and more clearly, and,scrambling to his feet, he started to explore its full circumference.
At the first step came a sound which no man born of woman has to hearmore than once in order to stand stone-still--a fierce, thick hiss.Stopping dead in his tracks, Will moved slowly back until he waspressing hard against the earthen wall behind him. Even as he stopped,from the half-darkness before him, with a dry clashing of scales, glidedinto the center of the pit, with sure, deadly swiftness, thepinkish-yellow and black-banded coils of a twelve-foot serpent. From itseyes, with their strange oval pupils, a dark streak stretched to theangles of the mouth from which a long, forked tongue played like a blackflame. As the fierce head crested the triple row of many-colored coils,Will saw the curious hole between eye and nostril, the hall-mark of adeadly clan, and knew that before him was the king of all thepit-vipers--the dreaded bushmaster.
He stared into the lidless, fatal eyes of the snake, as they shoneevilly through the dusk until it seemed as if his heart would stopbeating and icy drop
s stood on his forehead, for he knew from talks hadwith Professor Ditson that bushmasters possess a most uncertain temper,and he feared that this one might instantly attack him. Once he tried tomove to a point farther along the circumference of the earthen circle.At the first stir of his cramped muscles, the great snake hissed againand quivered as if about to strike. Will settled despairingly back,resolved to move no more; yet ever his thoughts kept running forward tothe long, dark hours which were to come, when he would be alone throughthe night with this terrible companion. Then if, overcome by sleep orcramp, he should move, he feared horribly to be stricken down in thedark by the coiled death that watched him.
Suddenly, as he set himself against making the least stir of a muscle,he heard from the jungle through the broken covering of the trap, thesame far-reaching whisper of death which had sounded when he was huntingwith Pinto. A moment later, with staring eyes, he saw a black streammove sibilantly down the opposite wall of the pit, and realized that theblind black ants of the jungle were upon him--and that there was noescape.
Slowly the head of the moving column approached the bottom of the pit,and Will remembered in sick horror how the ants had torn away shredafter shred of living flesh from the tortured body of the agouti. As theinsatiable, inexorable mass rolled toward him, the bushmaster seemedeither to hear or scent its approach. Instantly its tense coils relaxed,and it hurried around and around three sides of the pit, lashing upwardagainst the perpendicular walls in a vain attempt to escape. In itsparoxysm of terror, it came so close to the motionless boy that itsrough, sharp scales rippled against his legs. Only when the van of theant-army actually reached the floor of the pit and began to encircle itswhole circumference did the great serpent seem to remember Will'spresence. Then, as if entreating the help of a human being, it forceditself back of him, and, as the ants came nearer, even wound its wayaround Will's waist in an attempt to escape.
For a moment the fearful head towered level with the boy's face.Instinctively, Will's hand flashed out and caught the bushmaster by theneck. It made no attempt to strike, nor even struggled under the boy'schoking grip; only the coiled body vibrated as if trembling at theapproach of the deadly horde. For a moment the advance of the ant-armyseemed to stop, but it was only because, in accordance with its tactics,the head of the column began to spread out until the base of the pit wasa solid mass of moving ants and the black tide lapped at Will's veryfeet. Half-turning, and placing his ankles instead of his heels againstthe sides of the wall, the boy gained a few inches on the rising pool ofdeath that stretched out before him, while the straining body of thebushmaster vibrated like a tuning-fork.
By this time, the opposite wall of the pit was covered and the wholecircle of the base of the cone-shaped pit black and moving, except thelittle arc where Will stood. The ants were so close that he could seethe monster heads of the leaders, and the pit was full of the whisper oftheir moving bodies flowing forward. Will shut his eyes and every muscleof his tense body quivered as if already feeling their ripping, shearingmandibles in his flesh.
Just as the front line of the fatal legion touched his shoes, somethingstruck him on the head, and he opened his eyes to see a liana danglingin front of him, while the light at the entrance of the pit was blurredby old Jud's head and shoulders. With his free hand, Will reachedforward and seized the long vine, to find it ending in a bowline-knotwhose noose never gives.
"Slip it under your arms," called down the old trapper, hoarsely, "an'hang on! We'll pull you up."
It was the work of only a second to carry out the old man'sinstructions. Thrusting the loop over his head and under his arms, theboy gripped the tough vine with his left hand and tightened his clutcharound the unresisting body of the great bushmaster.
"I won't leave you behind for those black devils," he murmured, as ifthe snake understood, and tugged at the liana rope as a signal that hewas ready to start. In an instant he was hauled aloft, just as the antsswarmed over the space where he had stood. Fending himself off from theslanting walls with his feet, Will went up with a rush and through theopening at the top almost as fast as he had entered it. Close to therope stood old Jud, with face chalky-white as he watched the army ofants pouring down into the pit, while Hen, Joe, and Pinto, and evenProfessor Ditson, hauled with all their might on the vine.
Jud had become uneasy at Will's long absence and had tracked him to theentrance of the trap just as the army-ants reached it. His shouts hadbrought the rest, and it was Hen Pine who, with his machete, had cut thesupple liana and knotted the noose which had reached Will just in time.Directed by Jud, his rescuers hauled on the vine so vigorously that theboy shot out of the pit and was dragged several yards along the groundbefore they knew that he was safe.
Jud hurried to help him up, but promptly did a most creditableperformance in the standing-back broad-jump.
"Bring your machete here, quick!" he shouted to Hen; "a bushmaster's gotthe kid!"
"No," corrected Will, scrambling to his feet with some difficulty andwaving off Hen with his unoccupied hand, "the kid's got a bushmaster."
Professor Amandus Ditson was delighted to his heart's core.
"That is the finest specimen of the _Lachesis mutus_," he remarked, ashe unwound the rough coils from Will's waist, "that has ever beenreported. Whatever happens now," he went on, relieving Will of hisburden, "the trip is an unqualified success."
"The man's easily satisfied," murmured Jud, watching from a safedistance the professor grip the snake by the back of its neck and pushit foot by foot into a long snake-bag which he always carried forpossible specimens. When at last the bag, filled with snake, was tiedtightly, it looked much like a long, knobby Christmas-stocking. Theprofessor swung it carelessly over his shoulder like a blanket-roll.
"No snake ever bites through cloth," he remarked reassuringly. "Now forthe Inca Emerald!"