At the first sight of the water shining in the sunlight, Pinto showed signs of great uneasiness.
"This must be the Lake of the Man-eaters," he said to Professor Ditson.
"I have heard the wise men of the tribe speak of it many times. All the animals around it are eaters of men. See, perhaps there be some of their tracks now!" and he pointed to where there showed in the soft sand what looked like the paw-prints of a huge cat.
"Pinto," said the professor, severely, "I"m ashamed of you! The sight of those Mayas has made your mind run on man-eaters. Don"t you know a puma"s track when you see them, and don"t you know that a puma never attacks a man?"
"The perfesser"s right for once," chimed in Jud. "That"s the track of what we call a mountain-lion or panther up north, an" they don"t never hurt n.o.body."
Pinto was still unconvinced. "Perhaps they do here," he insisted.
"You come along with me," returned Professor Ditson. "We"ll explore this lake a bit before dark." And, followed by all of the party except Will and Jud, whose turn it was to make camp, he disappeared around a bend in the sh.o.r.e.
The two who were left behind soon found a high, sandy bank where they cleared a s.p.a.ce and started a small fire. Just in front of them was a tiny bay, connected with the lake by a narrow channel edged by lines of waving ferns, while a little beach of white sand curved away to the water in front of the camp-site.
"Here is where Judson Adams, Esquire, takes a bath," suddenly announced the old trapper, producing a couple of cakes of tree-soap, which he had picked along the trail, and slipping out of his clothes like an eel.
"Pinto said never to go into strange water," warned Will.
"Pooh," said Jud. "He was talkin" about rivers where them murderin"
catfish an" anacondas hide. This pool ain"t ten feet across an" there"s nothin" in it except a few stray minnies"; and he pointed out to Will a little school of short, deep-bodied fish which looked something like the sunfish which the boys used to catch along the edges of Cream Hill Pond.
Otherwise no living creature showed in the clear water, nor could be concealed along the bright, pebbly bottom.
"Better not," warned Will again. "This ain"t your country, Jud. Pinto seemed to know what he was talking about. Let"s wait until the professor gets back."
"Pinto will never win any Carnegie medals, an" I guess I can take a bath without gettin" permission from the perfesser," returned Jud, obstinately. "However," he went on, "just to show you that the old man never takes any chances, I"ll poke a stick around in this pool to drive out the devil-fish that may be hidin" here."
Nothing happened as the old man prodded the water with a long branch cut from a near-by tree, except that the motion of the stick seemed to attract more and more of the chubby fish which he had first seen from the outer channel into the pool.
"Gee," remarked Jud, "but those fish are tame! I"ll bet if I had a hook an" line I could flick out a dozen. Better come in with me, Bill," he went on. "I promised your family that I"d see that you boys took plenty of baths an" kept your hair brushed all through this trip."
"I"ll wait till the boss comes back," said Will, laughingly.
That was enough for Jud.
"I"m my own boss!" he remarked indignantly, and waded in with a cake of tree-grown soap clenched tightly in one hand.
His first step took him well above his knees. There was a swirl and a flash from the center of the pool, and in an instant the whole surface was alive with a furious rush of the short, deep-bodied fish toward Jud.
As they approached, the old man noticed uneasily their staring, malignant eyes, and that they had projecting, gaping lower jaws, thickly set with razor-edged, triangular teeth.
Suddenly the whole school were upon him, crowding into the shallow water where he stood and snapping at his bare legs like mad dogs. Before he could stir, two of them had bitten pieces of flesh out of the calves of both of his legs. As the blood from their bites touched the surface of the pool, the fish seemed to go entirely mad, snapping their fierce jaws frantically and even springing clear of the water, like trout leaping at a fly.
If they had not been so numerous that they jostled each other, or if Jud had not been quicker than most men twenty years younger, he would have been terribly mutilated. As it was, when he finally reached the safety of the bank, the water which he had just left boiled and bubbled like a caldron, and two of the fish followed him so closely that they landed, flapping, snapping, and squealing, far up on the white sand.
When Will approached them, the stranded fish tried to spring at him, clicking their jaws with impotent, savage fury. A moment later, as he tried to hold one of them down with a stick, it drove its keen wedge-shaped teeth clear through the hard wood. When the rest of the party came back, they found Jud and Will staring as if fascinated at the desperate, raging dwellers of the pool.
"I told you strange water not safe," said Pinto, as Professor Ditson skilfully bandaged Jud"s legs with a dressing of sphagnum moss and the thick red sap of the dragon"s-blood tree. "Look," and he showed Will that a joint of one of his fingers was missing. "Cannibal-fish more dangerous than anaconda or piraiba. They kill tiger and eat up alligator if it get wounded. Once," he went on, "white man ride a mule across river where these fish live. They bit mule and he threw man off into the river. When I got there an hour later only skeleton left of mule. Man"s clothes lie at bottom of river, but only bones inside. You wait a little. I pay them well." And he disappeared into the woods.
Professor Ditson corroborated the Indian.
"They are undoubtedly the fiercest and most dangerous fish that swim,"
he said. "If the water is disturbed, it arouses them, and the taste or smell of blood seems to drive them mad."
By the time Jud was patched up, Pinto came back trailing behind him a long length of liana, from either end of which oozed a white liquid.
This vine he pounded between two stones and threw into the pool. A minute later the water was milky from the flowing juice, and before long was filled with floating, motionless piranhas stupefied by the poisonous sap. Pinto fished out several with a long stick, and breaking their necks, wrapped them in b.a.l.l.s of blue clay which he found along the sh.o.r.e, and, first making air-holes, set them to bake in the hot coals of the fire. When at last a smell of roast fish went up from the midst of the fire, Pinto pulled each ball out and broke the hard surface with light taps of a stick. The skin and scales came off with the clay.
Opening the fish carefully, he cleaned it, leaving nothing but the savory white baked meat, which tasted and looked almost exactly like black ba.s.s. Jud avenged himself by eating seven.
Toward the end of the afternoon, Professor Amandus Ditson left the rest of the party reclining in that state of comfort and satisfaction which comes after a good meal. Each day the professor devoted all of his spare time toward realizing the greatest ambition of his life, to wit, the acquirement of one full-grown, able-bodied bushmaster. To-day armed with nothing more dangerous than a long crotched stick, he strolled along the trail, leaving it occasionally to search every mound or hillock which showed above the flat level of the jungle, since in such places this king of the pit-vipers is most apt to be found. Two hundred yards away from the camp, the trail took a turn, following the curved sh.o.r.e of the great lake, and in a few minutes the scientist was entirely out of sight or sound of the rest of the party. At last, finding nothing inland he turned his steps toward the lake itself. On some bare s.p.a.ces showing between the trail and the edge of the water, he saw more of the puma-tracks like those which Pinto had pointed out earlier in the day.
Remembering the Indian"s fear the scientist smiled as he examined the fresh prints of big pads and long claws.
"Harmless as tomcats," he muttered to himself.
A moment later something happened which upset both the professor and his theories. As he straightened up, a hundred pounds of puma landed upon him. The legend of the lake, as far as pumas were concerned, was evidently correct. Harmless to man in other places, here, it seemed, the great cat stalked men as if they were deer. This one intended to sink the curved claws of her forepaws in the professor"s shoulders, and, with her teeth at his throat, to rake his body with the terrible downward, slashing strokes of the catamount clan. Fortunately for himself, he had half-turned at the sound which her sudden spring made among the bushes.
Instead of catching his throat, the panther"s fanged jaws closed on the upper part of his left arm, while her forepaws gripped his shoulders, which were protected by a khaki coat and flannel shirt. Professor Ditson promptly caught the animal"s throat with his sinewy right hand and held the great beast off at arm"s length, thus keeping his body beyond the range of the deadly sickle-like hind claws. For a moment the puma"s luminous gooseberry green eyes stared into his, and he could see the soft white of her under parts and the long, tawny tail which is the hall-mark of her family. As he sank his steel-strong fingers deeper into the great brute"s throat, Professor Ditson abandoned all hope of life, for no unarmed man can hope to cope successfully with any of the great carnivora.
"A dozen zoologists have lied in print!" he murmured to himself, indignantly.
Even as he spoke, he tried to wrench his left arm free. He immediately found, however, that it was impossible to pull it straight out from between the keen teeth. Sinking his fingers deeper into the puma"s throat, he squeezed it suddenly with all of his strength. Involuntarily, as the wind was shut off from her lungs, the gripping jaws relaxed enough to allow the scientist to pull his arm through them for a few inches sidewise. Again the puma caught the moving arm, a few inches lower down. Again, as the man gripped her throat afresh, she relaxed her hold, and he gained an inch or so before the sharp teeth clamped tight again. Inch by inch, the professor worked the full length of his arm through the fierce jaws which, in spite of the khaki sleeve and thick shirt beneath, pierced and crushed terribly the tense muscles of his arm.
Throughout the struggle the tawny beast kept up a continual grunting, choking snarl, while the man fought in utter silence. At last the whole length of the professor"s left arm had been dragged through, until only his hand itself was in the mouth of the puma. Shoving it down her hot gullet, he gripped the base of her tongue so chokingly that the struggling panther was unable to close her jaws, and, for the first time during the fight, the professor was free from the pain of her piercing teeth.
In a desperate struggle to release the grip which was shutting off her breath, the puma lurched over and fell full length on her back in the loose sand, dragging the man down with her, and the professor found himself with his left hand deep in her gullet, his right hand still clutching the beast"s throat desperately, while his knees, with the weight of his body back of them, pressed full against her ribs on each side. As they struck the ground he sank his elbows into the armpits of the puma beneath him, spreading her front legs and pinning them down, so that her frantic claws could reach inward only enough to rip his coat, without wounding the flesh beneath. Once on the ground, the panther struggled fiercely, pitching and bucking in an effort to release herself from the man"s weight so that she could be in a position to make use of the curved scimitars with which all four of her paws were armed. The loose sand shifted and gave her no purchase.
As they fought, Professor Ditson felt his strength leaving him with the blood that flowed from his gashed and mangled arm. Raising himself a little, he surged down with both knees and felt a rib snap under his weight and the struggling body relax a trifle. For the first time he dared hope to do what no man had done since the cavemen contended with their foes among the beast-folk, and to his surprise noted that he was beginning to take a certain grim pleasure in the combat. The fury of the fight had pierced through the veneer of education and culture, and Professor Amandus Ditson, the holder of degrees from half a dozen learned universities, battled for his life that day with a beast of the forest with all the desperation and fierce joy which any of his prehistoric forebears might have felt a hundred thousand years ago.
It had become a question as to which would give up first--the man or the beast. Fighting off the waves of blackness which seemed to surge up and up until they threatened to close over his head, he fought desperately with clutching hands and driving knees, under which the thin ribs of the puma snapped like dry branches, until at last, with a long, convulsive shudder, the great cat stopped breathing. Even as he felt the tense body relax and become motionless under his grip, the blackness closed over his head.
There the rest of the party, alarmed by his long absence, found him an hour later. His gaunt body was stretched out on the dead panther and his right hand was sunk in the long fur, while his left hand and arm were buried to the elbow in the fierce gaping mouth and his bowed knees still pinned the great cat down. Around the dead beast and the unconscious man sat four black vultures. Thrusting forward from time to time their naked, red, hooded heads, they seemed about to begin their feast when the rescuing party arrived. With his face hidden in the panther"s tawny fur, Professor Ditson seemed as dead as the beast that lay beneath him.
It was not until Hen had pried his fingers away from the puma"s throat and carefully drawn his gashed hand from the beast"s gullet that his eyes flickered open and his gaunt chest strained with a long, labored breath.
"I was wrong," were his first words. "The _Felis concolor_ does occasionally attack man. I"ll make a note of it," he went on weakly, "in the next edition of my zoology."
"I was wrong, too," burst out Jud, pressing close up to the exhausted scientist and clasping his uninjured hand in both of his. "I thought you were nothin" but a perfesser, but I want to say right here an" now that you"re a _man_."
The danger, however, was not yet over. The scratches and bites of a panther or a jaguar, like those of a lion or tiger, almost invariably cause death from blood-poisoning if not immediately treated. Under Professor Ditson"s half-whispered directions, they stripped off his clothes, washed away the blood and dirt with clear water, and then, using the little surgical kit which he always wore at his belt, injected a solution of iodine into every scratch and tooth-mark.
"It is necessary," said the scientist, gritting his teeth as the stinging liquid smarted and burned like fire, "but I do not believe that life itself is worth so much suffering."
The rest of the party, however, did not agree with this perhaps hasty opinion, and persisted in their treatment until every puncture was properly sterilized. Then, bandaged with great handfuls of cool sphagnum moss and attended by the faithful Hen Pine, the professor slept the clock around. While he was asleep, Will and Pinto slipped away together to see if they could not bring back a plump cura.s.sow from which to make broth for him when he finally woke up; while Jud and Joe, with similar good intentions, scoured the jungle for the best-flavored fruits they might find.
Will and his companion found the birds scarce although they slipped through the jungle like shadows. As they penetrated deeper among the trees they were careful to walk so that their shadows fell directly behind them, which meant that they were walking in a straight line, along which they could return by observing the same precaution. As they reached a tiny grove of wild oranges, Will"s quick eye caught sight of something which gleamed white against the dark trunks, and the two went over to investigate. There they saw a grisly sight. Coiled in a perfect circle were the bones of an anaconda some fifteen feet in length. Every vertebra and rib, and even the small bones of the head and the formidable, recurved teeth, were perfect, while in all the great skeleton there was not a fragment of flesh nor a scale of the skin remaining. Strangest of all, inclosed by the ribs of the snake was the crushed skeleton of a large monkey, which likewise had been cleaned and polished beyond the skill of any human anatomist or taxidermist. Some terrible foe had attacked the great snake while lying helpless and torpid after its heavy meal and had literally devoured it alive. The face of the Indian was very grave as he looked at the gleaming bones before him, and he stared carefully through the adjoining thickets before speaking.
"Puma bad man-eater," he said at last; "cannibal-fish worse; but anicton most dangerous of all. He eat same as fire eats. He kill jaguar, sucurucu, bushmaster, alligator, Indian, white man. He afraid of nothing."
"What is the anicton?" inquired Will, frightened in spite of himself.
Even as he spoke, from far beyond in the jungle came a strange, rustling whisper which seemed to creep along the ground and pa.s.s on and on through the woods like the hiss of spreading flames.
"Come," said the Indian, briefly, "I show you." And he led Will farther out into the jungle through which the menacing whisper seemed to hurry to meet them.