Suddenly, when it seemed to Will as if his tortured brain absolutely could not stand one more repet.i.tion of this song, the talented cicada, with one farewell screech that surpa.s.sed all previous efforts, lay off for the day. For a few minutes there was almost complete silence in the darkened forest. Many of the guardian herd had laid down, wallowing in the soft mold and fallen leaves, while others, although they stared redly up into the tree-tops, no longer moved around and around in a circle of which the trapped hunters were the center. Suddenly, from the depths of a near-by tree, a pure, sweet, contralto voice sounded, as if some boy were singing to himself. For a moment it rose and fell, and then followed a few plaintive notes almost like those of a tiny flute.
Then a slow melody began, full of mellow notes, only to be broken off abruptly. After a pause, there came a few clicking notes like those made by a music-box as it runs down, and the performance was over. Although the song came from the dark, glossy leaves of the very next tree, stare as he would, Will could gain no sight of the singer. Twice more the same thing happened. Each time he listened with a feeling that this time the tune would be finished and would be such as no mortal ears had heard before; but each time the song would die away in futile clicking notes.
When at last the silence was again unbroken, Will turned toward the Indian.
"What was it, Pinto?" he asked softly.
"That organ-bird."
"What does it look like?"
"Don"t know. No one ever see it."
"How do you know it"s a bird?"
"Professor Ditson say so," returned Pinto, conclusively.
"That settles it," broke in Jud, jealously, from his tree. "He never saw it; n.o.body ever saw it; but the professor calls it an organ-bird. If he said it was an angel, I suppose it _would_ be an angel."
"Yes," returned the Indian placidly.
The argument was suddenly ended for Will in a terrible manner. A sharp, burning pain shot through his left shoulder, as if a red-hot coal had been pressed there. As he turned, he saw, trickling down the tree-trunk, long crimson streams, one of which had already reached him, and he recognized, to his horror, a troop of the dreaded fire-ants. Even as he looked, the bites of several others pierced his skin, and the pain ran like a liquid poison through his veins as each blood-red ant rushed forward and buried its envenomed jaws deep into his flesh. Brushing off with frantic haste those torturers that had succeeded in reaching him, the boy began to slip down the vine toward the ground, for it was no more possible to resist this red torrent of poison and agony than it would be to stand against a creeping fire or a stream of molten lava.
Old Jud heard the involuntary cry, which the sudden pain had wrung from Will, and looked over, only to see the red columns of ants streaming slowly, inevitably down the tree, driving Will before them to what seemed certain death. The peccary herd, aroused by his movements, had gathered around the tree in close-packed ranks, and frothing, clattering, and moaning, waited for him, making a circle of gleaming tusks.
"Go back!" called out Jud. "Go back! You can"t possibly get through "em."
"I can"t!" called back Will. "I"d rather die fighting than be tortured to death up here."
As he spoke he slid another yard toward the ground. Jud drew in his breath in a gasp that was almost a groan, and, unslinging his ready automatic, began to scramble down to the ground."
"What you do?" called out the Indian, aghast, from his tree.
"I"m a-goin" to stand by that kid," said the old trapper, grimly. "I"ll never go back to the boat alive without him."
"Stay where you are, Jud," shouted Will, desperately, as he gripped the keen hatchet which he had borrowed from Joe when he started on this ill-omened hunt.
"Come on, boy!" shouted the trapper, unheedingly, as he neared the ground. "I"ll meet you, an" you fight through them to my tree. The old man"s a-goin" to be right with you."
His words were punctuated by the deadly pop of Pinto"s blow-gun.
Although the Indian could not attain to Jud"s height of self-sacrifice, yet he had made up his mind to do all that he could do to save the boy with the weapon he had. Again and again and again, as fast as he could level, load, and discharge his long blow-pipe, the fatal little arrows sped through the gloom and buried themselves in the thick hides of the peccaries. Already some of the inner ring were wavering and staggering under the effects of the deadly urari poison. The sight of their stricken comrades, however, only seemed to drive the herd into deeper depths of dumb, unreasoning madness. They pressed closer and closer to the tree, trampling their dead and dying comrades unheedingly underfoot, and the chorus of moaning grunts and clicking tusks sounded loud and louder.
The blood-red stream of fire-ants was half-way down the tree by this time, and Will was within a scant ten feet of the ground. The ants were very close as he lowered himself another yard, then a foot lower, and a foot beyond that, until the tusks of the plunging, leaping peccaries beneath him nearly touched his shoes. Bracing his feet against the rough trunk, he drew the little ax from his belt, and prepared to spring as far out toward Jud"s tree as possible, although his heart sank and the flesh of his legs and thighs seemed to curl and chill as he looked out upon the gleaming ring of sharp, slashing tusks among which he must leap. Once downed by the herd, and he would be ripped to pieces before he could regain his feet.
Jud by this time was on the ground, and was just about to shoot, in an attempt to open a pa.s.sage through the packed herd, when unexpected help came from above.
Out of the dark depths of a near-by silk-cotton tree sprang with silent swiftness a great black figure which gleamed in the half-light like watered silk.
"Look out! Look out! The black tiger!" shouted Pinto, despairingly, from his tree, having shot his last arrow into the frothing circle. Even as he spoke, the "tiger," as the Indians call the jaguar, landed full on the back and shoulders of the hindmost of the desperate, raging circle.
As he landed, the great cat struck one blow with that terrible full stroke of a jaguar, which has been known to break the neck of an ox, and the peccary, with a shrill squeal of terror, went down before the death which haunts every peccary herd. At the squeal, the wild swine swung away from the tree with an instantaneous rush. A jaguar is to a peccary herd what the gray wolf is to the musk-ox of the north and the very life of each member of the herd depends upon facing their foe. Upon the instant, every peccary left the trees and hurried toward their dying comrade.
Unfortunately for the jaguar, the force of his spring, added to the impetus of his stroke, carried him too far, and for a moment he whirled over in a half-somersault and was entangled among the vines. Those lost seconds were fatal, in spite of all his strength and swiftness. Even as he recovered his feet in a lithe whirl and flirted over one shoulder the body of the dead peccary as a man might toss a rabbit, the death-ring formed around him. Two deep, the maddened swine circled him. With a deep, coughing roar, the tiger dropped his prey and struck with his armed paws lightning-like blows that ripped the life out wherever they landed. By this time, however, the peccaries were beyond all fear of death, and a score of them dashed in upon him. Jud had involuntarily leveled his automatic at the great brute as it struck the ground, but lowered it with a grim laugh.
"He"s fightin" for our lives as well as his own," he called quietly to Will, as the latter reached the ground and slipped unnoticed past the heaving, tossing, fighting circle of peccaries. In another minute the boy had gained the safety of Jud"s tree and gripped the old man"s hand between his own.
"Let"s stay here," said the old trapper, "an" see it out. We can climb this tree if they come back, an" you"ll never see a fight like this again."
Even as he spoke, the circle bent in upon the great cat. With desperate leaps, he tried to spring over its circ.u.mference; but each time it widened out so that always in front and at his back and on both flanks was a fence of sharp, slashing tusks. All around him lay dead peccaries which had fallen before his incredibly rapid strokes; but now his dark, gleaming skin was furrowed and slit with long b.l.o.o.d.y slashes where the tusks of dead and dying boars had gone home. His strength ebbed with his blood. Once more, with a deep, despairing roar, he struck with both paws, killing a peccary at each blow. Then he staggered forward, and in a minute was down!
Time and again his great jaws opened and closed, sinking fierce white fangs deep through the skull or spine of some peccary, but at last only a black heaving of the furious wild pigs could be seen. At times the dark, desperate head of the dying tiger thrust its way out, only to fall back, smothered and slashed. Amid a scene of brute rage and fury which even Jud, old hunter as he was, had never imagined before, the little party slipped shudderingly away and hastened back over the trail along which they had come, nor ever stopped until they had reached the refuge of the montaria. There they found the rest of the party peacefully sleeping through the midday hours under a cool canopy of broad green palm-leaves which Hen had thrown together. Professor Ditson was more interested in their description of the black tiger than in any of the other details of their adventure.
"It was the melanic type of the jaguar and very rare," he said regretfully. "It was certainly unfortunate that you couldn"t have collected this one, for there is no specimen, living or dead, in any of the zoological gardens or natural-history museums of the world."
"You see, Professor," explained Jud, "we were kind o" busy in keepin"
some seventy-five peccaries from collectin" us. What does "melanic" mean in American?"
"Any animal may develop either a black or a white type," Explained the professor. "When black, it is called "melanic"; when white, "albino."
You probably have seen black squirrels, muskrats, or skunks. They are simply color-variations of the ordinary species. So this "black tiger"
was only a jaguar which for some unknown reason happened to have a black skin. These black examples," he continued, "are neither fiercer nor larger than the ordinary kind, although generally considered so by unscientific observers."
"What about some of those peccaries?" remarked Joe, practically. "Can"t we bring in one or two that Pinto killed for fresh meat?"
"No, sir," returned Jud, emphatically, "I wouldn"t go back into that black bit of woods for all the fresh peccary pork in South America."
It was Hen Pine who noted that Will had taken no part in the discussion, and that he was flushed and feverish and suffering intensely from the intolerable pain of the fire-ant bites.
"Honey, you come along with ol" Hen," he said soothingly, "an" he"ll fix you up so that you won"t feel that fire-poison hurtin" any more."
Followed by Will, he led the way along the river-bank until they came to a small, round-topped tree with intensely green leaves. With his machete, Hen cut off several of the smaller branches. From the severed ends a thick, brilliant red sap oozed.
"It"s the dragon"s-blood tree," he explained "an" its juice makes the best balm in the world for burns or stings."
As he spoke he rubbed the thick, gummy liquid gently on the swollen and inflamed welts which the venomous bites of the fire-ants had raised on Will"s shoulders and back. Almost instantly the throbbing, rankling pain stopped, and there came such a feeling of grateful coolness that Will told Hen it was almost worth the pain of the bite to feel the relief of the cure.
On the way back, Hen discovered another tree which brought the rest of the party nearly as much pleasure as the dragon"s-blood had given to Will. It had long, glossy leaves, and a straight smooth trunk as large around as a man"s body, though it was only about twenty feet high. It was loaded down with what looked like huge plums nearly the size of muskmelons. Hen told Will that it was the wild papaw tree. The fruit was delicious. When they brought back samples to the rest of the party, there was a stampede to the place and the boat was soon loaded with the luscious fruit.
As they explored the bank farther, Jud noticed that Hen was constantly chewing the dark green leaves of the wild cinnamon, which grew abundantly and had a spicy, pleasant smell like the well-known bark of that name. Without saying anything to Hen, the old man picked several and sampled them. Unfortunately for him, it takes prolonged practice to be able to chew wild cinnamon with any degree of comfort. As the fragrant fiery juice touched Jud"s tongue and gums he gasped, the tears ran from his eyes as if he had swallowed red pepper, and he spat out the burning leaves emphatically.
"You must have a leather-lined mouth," he remarked to the grinning negro.
A little later, Hen added insult to the injury of the old trapper. They had come to a small tree loaded down with little round, rosy, fruit.
"That what you need, Mars" Jud," Hen a.s.sured him.
Thinking that it was perhaps a smaller edition of the papaw tree, Jud trustingly sank his teeth into one of the little spheres, only to find it bitter as gall.
"What do you mean by tellin" me I need anything that tastes like that,"
he howled.
"I didn"t say for you to _eat_ it," laughed the black giant. "I say you needed it. That tree the soap-tree," and Hen pointed to Jud"s grimy hands suggestively.