01 Amazon Adventure (15 page)

The meat was tough, wiry, and as sour as vinegar. Roger took one bite and no more. Hal made a brave business of finishing his portion, but his face was screwed up into a knot with distaste.

‘Believe I’d almost rather have plain ant without bear,’ he said.

‘Fire!’ exclaimed Hal.

His fleet was once more sailing down the Amazon. As it rounded a point, a red reflection came across the water from a blaze on shore.

‘An Indian village burning up,’ Roger guessed.

‘No Indian village,’ Banco said. ‘Young man from Rio. He made a farm here. Perhaps attacked by Indians.’

‘Steer for shore,’ Hal ordered.

Banco did not move the tiller. Indians may be there still. We would all be killed.’

‘We could help him put out the fire,’ Hal insisted. ‘Make for shore.’

Banco stubbornly held his course. Hal mounted the platform and forced over the tiller. The caboclo went down to the deck, muttering.

Both boats were moored a Few feet from shore, for Hal was ever mindful of his cargo of little boas that would escape if the vessels were allowed to touch the bank. The men leaped ashore.

Hal and Roger each took the precaution to carry a rifle, and the Indians were armed with bows and arrows and spears.

Banco made a show of trying the edge of his long knife but he lagged behind when the men climbed the bank. He had no stomach for a fight. When no one seemed to be noticing, he turned back towards the boats.

But Hal had been watching him. He was not quite ready to believe that Banco would cut loose and sail away, leaving them to whatever fate was awaiting them. But he was taking no chances.

‘Up in front!’ he ordered sharply. ‘Quick, get up in front. You are going to lead us.’

Banco grumbled and growled, but he went forward with the willing Aqua and stayed there for a while at least.

As soon as they topped the bank they could see the fire plainly. A frame farmhouse was ablaze. There were no Indians to be seen. A lone man was vainly trying to douse the flames with buckets of water from the well.

Hal broke into a run. He took care to see that Banco ran also, encouraging him by pressing the muzzle of his revolver between his shoulders. So stimulated, Banco developed remarkable speed.

The man looked around and, seeing armed men rushing at him, he had every reason to think that he was about to be attacked. He clapped his hand to where his revolver should have been — but there was no revolver.

‘Have you got some more buckets,’ cried Hal, not thinking to try to say it in Portuguese.

The man looked mightily relieved. ‘Over in the shed,’ he answered in English.

Hal and his crew dashed to the shed and found an assortment of buckets, pails, and cans.

Then to the well. It was equipped with an endless chain to which were attached six tubs. As the windlass was turned they came up full and each man in turn filled his vessel, ran to toss the water on the fire, and came back for more.

The roof of the little house was of corrugated iron. That may not be beautiful, especially when it has been rusted by Amazon rains, but it has the advantage of being fireproof. The blaze in the walls was quickly put out by the relay of fire fighters. The young farmer went inside the somewhat blackened interior and lit a lamp. Then he slumped to the floor.

Hal and Roger carried him to his bunk. He lay there as limp as a rag, with eyes closed. Hal went over him to see if he was wounded. Aqua took a towel from the wall, ran out to soak it in water and returned to put it over the prostrate man’s forehead.

Hal admired the strong, clean-cut, and intelligent features of the young farmer. Then the eyes fluttered and opened. A wan smile passed over the

pale face. The lips moved and he spoke just one word: Thanks.’

Roger came with a glass of water and they held the man’s head as he drank. The eyes of their patient roved about the room and they followed his gaze. Everything was at sixes and sevens, empty boxes on the floor, cupboards opened and stripped of their contents. It was plain that the man had been robbed. The place had been thoroughly looted. Nothing of value remained, only scraps and fragments. Blood was spattered over papers and floor. Hal picked up a purse. It was empty.

‘You must have had a real fight,’ Hal said, looking at the smashed chairs and the bloodstains. The farmer nodded. ‘A real fight,’ he said faintly. ‘Do you live here all alone?’ Another nod.

Isn’t that dangerous — in Indian country?’ They weren’t Indians.’

‘Not Indians! Then who… ?’ He guessed the truth. Croc’s gang. ‘What language did they speak?’ ‘English, mostly. They asked me if I had seen boats with animals go by. I said no. They wanted food. There were eight or ten of them to feed, and I gave them all I could spare. Still they demanded more. They helped themselves, took all my supplies, put them in their boats. When I objected, the big fellow knocked me down.’ The one with a face like a vampire bat’s?’ That’s right. How did you know?’ ‘I’ve met him. In fact, he’s chasing us down river. We’re the ones with the animals. I hope that’s his blood.’

‘I’m afraid not. I went for my guns but they had already stolen them. I got a knife. When the big fellow saw it he slipped behind the others and let one of them take it. The fellow I cut swore he’d get revenge. He fired the house. They took me out and held me off until the fire was too strong for me to stop it. Then they let me go and went off to their boats. By the way they laughed, they must have thought it was very funny.’

‘How does it happen that you speak English? You’re not English?’

‘No, Brazilian. My name is Pero Sousa. I learned English in school in Rio.’

‘I’ve heard it’s the most beautiful city in the world,’ said Hal. ‘Why did you ever leave it?’

The young pioneer smiled and lay quiet for a moment before he answered. ‘There were posters on the walls in Rio. They said just what used to be said in North America — ‘Go West, Young Man.’ Only they said it in Portuguese. Our government wanted us to develop this back country. So I came. Perhaps I was foolish.’ He lay quiet again, eyes closed.

Then he opened his eyes and a light burned in them. ‘No, I wasn’t foolish,’ he said fiercely. ‘Not unless Columbus was foolish when he went west to discover the New World. Not unless the Pilgrims were foolish when they went west to land on Plymouth Rock. Not unless Americans are foolish when they went west to build the United States.’ He raised himself on his elbow and fixed his eyes intently upon Hal. Think what a chance there is here for young fellows like you and me. This is the world’s last great frontier. A lot of it hasn’t even been explored. It’s rich in minerals. It has the biggest forests of fine woods on earth. It has the world’s greatest river to carry all of its products to the sea. This Amazon valley could feed the world. But not unless it has men — plenty of men. Now there’s less than one man to the square mile. Think of that! In the United States there are forty-three to the square mile, and nobody considers that country crowded. We need men — not just Brazilians, but men from your country and everywhere. There are fortunes waiting here for men who are willing to work.’

‘You had better rest just now,’ Hal advised.

‘Fortunes!’ Pero repeated. ‘But the most important thing is not the money we can make here. The most important thing is peace in the world. And why don’t we have peace? Because there is too much suffering and hunger. If the Amazon is brought into production it can relieve that suffering and hunger.’

‘I know.’ said Hal. ‘But don’t you think you’d better relax now and get some sleep?’

Pero smiled and settled back on his pillow. ‘This must all sound like hot air to you. But tomorrow morning 111 take you around the farm. You won’t believe it until you see it — what this soil will do.’

Hal looked about at the fire-ruined walls, the smashed furniture, the gun racks without guns, the looted drawers and boxes, the empty purse.

‘Don’t you realize that you have been wiped out?’ he said. ‘You have no guns, no clothes, no supplies, no money to buy seeds or farm machinery. I can see you have a good education. You would do well in the city. Why don’t you go back to Rio? We’ll take you downriver. If this happened once it will happen again. There are plenty of other gangs like that one. Besides, there are always the Indians. One man can’t do anything against the jungle. Go with us tomorrow morning.’

But Pero only smiled that gentle, tired smile of his. ‘Thank you, my friend. But I’ll stay here. In the morning I’ll show you why.’

And, in the morning, Hal understood why. Pero could not show him the pigs, for they had been stolen; nor the cattle, for they had been slaughtered and the meat taken away to feed Croc’s gang. But the thieves had not been able to take away the vegetable gardens in which beans, rice, corn, lettuce, cucumbers, radishes, and carrots flourished. Hal was astonished.

‘But I understood that the soil was so leached by the rains that nothing much would grow.’

‘That’s the story,’ laughed Pero. ‘But you can judge for yourself whether it is true. The only trouble we have is that things grow too fast. We have to be all the time fighting back the jungle, and fighting down the weeds. Things grow as if by magic. A bamboo shoot will grow a foot in a night. I’m not joking. Seed corn that would take two or three weeks to bud in the United States, buds here in three days. And look at the size of those oranges.’

Hal gazed at a young tree loaded with fruit as big as footballs.

‘They can’t be oranges! No oranges ever grew to that size.’

They are oranges. In California they call it the Washington navel, but they got it from Brazil. It grows only one-third as large in California.’

There were young mango trees, avocado trees, cocoa trees, breadfruit trees, banana plants, all heavily loaded with fruit. There was a tract of good pasture land covered with fresh green elephant grass. In the woods within the borders of Pero’s property were fine hardwoods, mahogany, cedar, rubber, towering skyscrapers of trees loaded with Brazil nuts and cream nuts, and huge, wide-spreading fig and garlic trees. There were trees valuable for their oils, much in demand in the industrial north. Pero was right. The world needed Amazonia. Men who dared to bring its riches to mankind were performing a great service.

‘Just to show you how important all this is,’ Pero said, ‘the United Nations is taking a hand in it now. They’ve raised millions of dollars from all the nations that are interested in what the Amazon has to give them. They’ve organised what they call the Amazon Institute — and they’re sending dozens of experts in mining, forestry, agriculture, and everything else, down into this country to map out its possibilities. Some of them were here. They liked my farm.’

Hal put out his hand and gripped Pero’s. ‘I don’t blame you for sticking. Good luck!’ But when Hal and his crew sailed away they were short one revolver and the precious .270 Winchester rifle. They hung on the gun racks in Pero’s cabin. He would discover them there in due time. He would also find a box of ammunition for the guns, some clothing, and, in one of the pockets, his own purse, not empty.

But Pero had given Hal more than Hal had given him — a new determination to win in spite of both man and jungle.

Days passed with no sign of Croc. He continued pursuing, not knowing that what he pursued was behind him. Sooner or later he would realize the truth and would lie in ambush for the arrival of the Ark. Hal kept a constant lookout.

He kept on taking on new passengers, most of them small: a gorgeous scarlet ibis, a roseate spoonbill, a golden conure, a cock of the rock, and a curassow that soon became a pet.

But Hal was dissatisfied.

‘These small things are all right. But we’ve just got to get an anaconda. And a tiger.’

He took his problem to Aqua. He had come to rely more and more upon the faithful young Indian. During the long hours on deck Aqua had been teaching the two boys the lingua geral, which means general language. Each Amazon tribe has its own language, but there is also a general language known to Indians throughout the great Amazon basin. Any explorer should be acquainted with it, since many Indians did not speak Portuguese, and almost none of them knew English.

‘I think you will get el tigre soon,’ Aqua said. ‘We are coming now into tiger country.’

‘I can never get this quite straight,’ complained Roger. ‘Is it a tiger or a jaguar?’

‘Jaguar is the literary name for it,’ Hal admitted. ‘But you won’t find anybody down here calling it that. South Americans call it a tiger and since it’s a South American beast I suppose they have a right to name it. 111 call it a tiger too. No matter what we call it, I want one.’

‘You say it’s South American,’ Roger objected. ‘But we heard of one in Arizona.’

‘Yes, and there are plenty of them in Mexico. But they’re different. They’re small. They seldom weigh over fifteen stone — these run up to thirty. The Mexican animals are dark coloured — these are a bright yellow with black markings. Of course the mark isn’t a stripe; it’s a sort of broken ring. The Mexican variety will run away from trouble if it can. These down here don’t hesitate to charge. And they’re very fierce and strong. I’ve just been reading here what Sasha Siemel says about them. He says that a South American tiger can kill an African lion.’

‘Isn’t he the fellow they call the ‘Tiger Man’?1

‘Yes. The big cattle ranches employ him. The tigers are hard on cattle. One ranch loses three thousand cattle a year to the tigers. Siemel fights with a spear. He thinks it’s more reliable than a gun — because it takes a lot of shots to kill a tiger. Even when you shoot a tiger through the heart it may continue its charge and kill you before it dies.’

‘I’ll enjoy seeing you tackle a tiger with a spear,’ Roger grinned.

Tm afraid you won’t have that pleasure. That’s an old Indian custom — I’ll leave that to Aqua. But I hope it won’t be necessary; we want to capture one alive, not dead.’

Tigers were certainly becoming more common. Their roars at night were more frequent. The terrifying thing about the roar of a tiger was that it seemed to be very close at hand even if the animal were two or three miles away. The roar began with a series of coughs that came faster and faster and louder and louder until they turned into a thunder that seemed to shake the woods — certainly it shook the nerves of anybody listening. Then the cry died away and ended in a few grunting growls. When it was all finished the air seemed to be still vibrating.