01 Amazon Adventure Read online

  ‘I just wanted to try her out.’

  Hunt eyed his younger son with disapproval but could not help grinning at his sorry appearance.

  ‘Your middle name is Mischief,’ he remarked.

  ‘Everything stayed in the boat,’ Hal said, inspecting his packing. Most of the bundles were fairly waterproof, but all the kit was put out on the bank to dry in the hot sun and was then repacked.

  Roger was very quiet for a while but as his clothes dried out his spirits revived.

  ‘We’re off!’ he whooped an hour later as they left the shore. The chief and his warriors stood on the bank making gestures of farewell. One of their number was in the boat. He would accompany the explorers to the edge of hostile country. More than that he would not promise. But John Hunt hoped that he could be persuaded to go on down the unknown part of the Pastaza, the river of the dotted line.

  There was nothing to suggest any danger ahead. The sun shone gloriously, the monkeys chattered in the treetops, parrots and macaws made waves of brilliant colour, and far off to the west over the green forest loomed the snowy head of twenty-thousand-foot Chimborazo, looking down towards the Pacific on one side and, on the other side, to the travellers on their way to the Atlantic.

  A bend in the stream, and the friendly Jivaro village disappeared. Dense jungle closed in on both sides. The river was about a hundred feet wide. The water was glassy smooth but was hurrying forward as if eager to get to an appointment. The four paddles had little to do except to keep the boat straight.

  ‘Look at the birds,’ cried Hal.

  Roger looked up.

  ‘No, look down. Down in the water.’

  Sure enough, at the bottom of the clear, shallow stream small dark birds were fluttering about, seeking food.

  There was no time to watch them, for the boat sped on.

  ‘Water ouzels,’ Hunt said.

  ‘But they were flying under water.’

  ‘You might call it flying. They beat their wings to help them move through the water. They’re hunting for snails and water insects. They can stay down two or three minutes.’

  A shadow as of a small black cloud seemed to pass over the water. They looked up to see a wonder above as great as the wonder they had just seen below.

  ‘A condor,’ exclaimed Hunt. It easily measured ten feet from tip to tip.

  The Indian was much excited. ‘Very bad,’ he said out of his little store of English acquired from serving American cinchona men. He made passes over his head as if to put a protective charm over himself.

  ‘The Indians are very superstitious about the condor,’ Hunt said. ‘I’m afraid he thinks its a bad omen for our trip. You see, the condor hangs around where anything is dead, or where he thinks something is going to be.’

  ‘Here he comes back. Well see who’s dead.’ And Roger grabbed his .22.

  ‘Save your ammunition. The bird isn’t doing any harm and it’s no good to eat. Besides, you couldn’t hurt it with that popgun.’

  ‘He’s immense,’ murmured Hal as the bird made another circle.

  ‘The world’s largest flying bird,’ said Hunt. ‘And although it is so heavy, it can fly higher than any other bird. It can get along without eating for forty days if necessary, but when a condor does get a chance to eat, he can put away eighteen pounds of meat at a sitting.’

  ‘I know,’ Roger said. ‘They carry away lambs and babies.’

  ‘Not exactly. They’re not afraid to attack anything large, even a horse, if he looks weak or sick. But they never fly away with their food. Their talons are too weak to lift a heavy load.’

  The condor sailed away, discouraged, but he left behind him a very much disturbed Indian.

  ‘No good, no good,’ he insisted, backwatering vigorously with his paddle. ‘We go back, we go back.’

  But it was impossible to go back at the moment, for a powerful current had seized the boat, making argument quite unnecessary.

  From around the bend came the hollow roar of rapids. Whirling, boiling eddies burst up around the boat, as if sticks of dynamite were being set off at the bottom of the stream. Choppy waves began to bob up.

  They swept around the curve, and the full roar of angry waters struck their ears. Ahead, the river was full of dancing white figures. Sharp rocks sent fountains of spray into the air. Over rounded rocks the water rolled in big humps.

  Napo, the Indian, was in the bow, John Hunt in the stern. Napo pointed to a chute between two big rocks. All the paddles joined forces to speed the boat like an arrow through the narrow passage. The faster the better. In water like this it was necessary to have plenty of steerage way. The boat must go faster than the current if it was to be successfully steered around rocks.

  The water humped itself into a ridge as it shot through between the rocks. The canoe rode the hump like a cowboy on horseback. The spray thrown up by the rocks soused everybody on board.

  No one noticed the wetting. The paddles were going like mad. The boat rolled and darted, dodged and plunged. A rollercoaster was tame compared with this.

  Roger let out a whoop and the others joined him, regardless of age. This was the sort of thing that would make boys out of greybeards. The blood coursed swiftly and the spine tingled. Rocks fled past.

  The boat plunged into a hollow and Napo disappeared. The bow seemed to be pointed straight towards the bottom. John Hunt and Hal backwatered powerfully to bring the bow up, and there was Napo no worse for wear. But his next yell had a watery gurgle in it.

  The dugout was performing acrobatic feats. It seemed miraculous that a boat cut out of a single log could be so nimble. It almost seemed to snake through between rocks or to draw in its stomach when it went over them. Like its passengers, it would shout with joy if it could.

  Now it shot downhill in a last victorious sweep and then ran out under its own momentum, paddles idle, into a smooth, broad basin.

  It was pleasant to relax and to look back at the boiling staircase down which they had come.

  ‘There’s a lot of that sort of thing in these Amazon rivers,’ Hunt said. ‘I suppose you know the origin of the word Amazon?’

  ‘Doesn’t it have something to do with a tribe of warrior women that the first explorers discovered?’ Hal said.

  ‘That’s one theory. The other is that the river is named after the Indian word Amassona, meaning boat destroyer. It’s not just the rapids that make it deserve this name. Some of the rivers are full of dangerous logs floating just below the surface. And where the main stream of the Amazon becomes as wide as a sea there are pretty bad storms. And then there’s the bore.’

  ‘What’s a bore?’ asked Roger.

  ‘A moving wall of water something like a tidal wave. It rushes up the river from the ocean. It may be ten or twelve feet high.’

  ‘I’d like to see that,’ Roger said.

  His father smiled grimly. ‘You will. But I hope we’re in a bigger boat than this when it comes.’

  ‘How soon do we get a boat big enough so we can collect some animals?’

  ‘As soon as we get out of this river. Nothing bigger than this would get us down the Pastaza. But we don’t need to wait to collect little animals — and sometimes they’re just as important as the big ones.’

  A sullen roar ahead warned that collecting would have to be postponed a little while longer. This roar was not like the last. It was a deeper thunder. The source of the thunder could not be seen. The river simply dropped out of sight, and where it disappeared vapour rose into the air.

  ‘Falls!’ exclaimed Hal. ‘We’d better stop and look this one over.’

  At the right was a little bay in which an eddy circled. They pulled in to the shore, beached the boat, and then picked their way through the jungle to the river’s edge where they could inspect the falls.

  At one point the water made a sheer drop of twelve feet into a mass of jagged rocks.

  That’s where we don’t want to go,’ remarked John Hunt. ‘But see that slide over yonder? We
can’t shoot it, but perhaps we could ease the boat down by the painter.’

  This project proved fully as exciting as shooting the rapids. The boat was paddled to a position near the head of the chute but close to the shore where the current was not too strong. Everybody was tense with anticipation. Napo seemed to have forgotten the shadow of the condor.

  They stepped out into the swift but shallow stream. The water came about chest high. What a good way to escape the tropical sun! The hunters did not wear the heavy hunting clothes common in northern climes. Thin shirt and thin trousers and a pair of South American sandals called alpargatas completed their costume. There was nothing that could be spoiled by a wetting — unless you were to count the tobacco in John Hunt’s pipe.

  The contents of the canoe were fairly well protected. Even the guns were in waterproof cases. Ammunition was packed in an aluminium box as waterproof as a bottle, and camera, films, medicines, and valuable papers in another.

  But Charlie, the Jivaro head, was merely tied by his hair to a thwart. He had weathered sun, rain and wave while alive and was just as capable of doing so now.

  Hal and Napo held the painter. This rope attached to the bow of the boat was made of plaited vines and was as strong as hemp. They braced themselves against the rocks and let the painter out a few inches at a time, letting the boat into the chutes stern first.

  Roger and his father hung on to the stern, one on each side. It was their job to guide the canoe down through the rocks.

  ‘If the water sweeps you off your feet, Roger, hang on to the gunwale.’

  The boat was in a slide of water that slanted down like the roof of a house. The bottom was very uneven. Now Roger would be perched on a rock where the water was only ankle deep, and then he would drop into a hole up to his neck. He grimly hung on to the gunwale. The boat helped him as much as he helped the boat.

  ‘Not too fast,’ John Hunt yelled to the two who were paying out the painter. He could hardly make himself heard above the roar.

  He spoke just too late. The advancing stern pushed him from his slippery foothold and he went over like a ninepin into a foaming whirlpool.

  This could be serious. Whirled around beneath the surface, he might easily be badly bruised against the rocks. He might be knocked unconscious and be unable to come up.

  The three looked anxiously for some sign of him. When they were about to abandon the boat to its fate and go to the rescue, his head emerged from under the stern. It came up slowly and Hal laughed with relief when he saw that his father’s pipe was still stuck in his teeth. The dripping face wore a surprised and rather offended expression. Dad was not used to being manhandled in this fashion by the forces of nature.

  A little later it was dad who laughed. They were all aboard once more and slipping down a fast but not dangerous stretch under some overhanging trees. Hal was bent over, groping for something in the bottom of the boat. A dead snag on one of the branches slipped under his belt, and before he could make any remark on the situation, he was suspended in air and the boat was going on without him. He tried to grab the boat but got only a sack of potatoes.

  There he was left, in a very undignified position, tail up and head down, hanging grimly to a bag of spuds. The snag broke and he and his potatoes took a bath.

  The canoe had been beached on a sand spit and Hal was greeted hilariously as he staggered out, still holding his burden.

  Lunch was served on the sand spit. During the afternoon there were more rapids, and more, and more, until it was a very weary foursome who beached the canoe late in the afternoon on a bank under some large trees that would serve as a hotel for the night.

  Chapter 6

  The Face on the Trail

  It seemed an ideal place to make camp. A lovely pool a hundred yards across lay before it. Fish punctuated its smooth surface with darts and circles. Beyond the pool the jungle wall rose black but was topped by flowering trees that glowed yellow and crimson in the setting sun. Lazy white egrets drifted past.

  Under the great ceibas where they proposed to make camp there was no undergrowth near the river bank, but it began a few yards back.

  Where the clear space ended and the jungle began, John Hunt found a slight opening.

  ‘Looks like a trail,’ he said, and he turned to Napo. ‘Indians?’

  Napo looked doubtful. Then he examined the soft ground and pointed to footprints. But they were not made by human feet.

  ‘Look, boys,’ Hunt said. ‘Here’s your introduction to the animals of the Amazon. These stabs are made by the hooves of peccaries.’

  ‘Aren’t they wild boars?’ said Hal. ‘I was reading up about them. It seems that they go around in gangs and don’t hesitate to attack men.’

  ‘You’re right. When they come around, the safest place is up a tree. I knew one explorer who was treed for three days and three nights.’ He examined other tracks. ‘Looks to me as if the animals come down here to drink at night. These tracks were made by a capyvara,’ pointing to tracks made by queerly splayed feet. ‘It’s the world’s biggest rat — as big as a sheep. And these are deer tracks.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hal. ‘I’d recognize them anywhere,’ remembering the deer trails of Colorado, Canada, and the Maine woods.

  ‘But there is something I never saw before.’

  The tracks he indicated were smooth and round as if they had been made by large saucers.

  ‘Tigre! exclaimed Napo. ‘This place is no good.’

  That’s the tigre all right,’ Hunt admitted.

  ‘What’s a tee-gray?’ Roger wanted to know, for that was how both his father and Napo had pronounced the word.

  ‘It’s the Spanish word for tiger. All through Mexico and South America they call this animal the tigre although it is really not a tiger. It wears spots, not stripes. When we get over the Brazilian border where Portuguese is spoken well hear it called the onca, meaning ounce. Our own name for it is jaguar. But call it what you like, it’s the king of the forest.’

  ‘No good,’ wailed Napo. ‘We go back.’

  ‘He’s got the we-go-backs again,’ Hal said in disgust. ‘What a chance to get some photographs tonight if they come down to drink!’

  ‘And what a chance for them to get some nice little explorers,’ wondered Roger.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ dad said. ‘They’re not likely to attack us if we leave them alone. Besides, we’ll be well up out of their way — in our hammocks.’

  The method of camp making was new to Hal and Roger, accustomed to the tents, canvas flies and sleeping bags of the north. The jungle traveller cannot be burdened with heavy gear. He sleeps in the open. For him, no canvas house completely sealed in with canvas door and mosquito netting over the windows. The Minneapolis clerk who takes a run up into the Minnesota lake country for a few nights carries more elaborate gear for camping in this land where the most dangerous beast is the mosquito than the experienced explorer takes for a year’s trek through the Amazon jungle.

  In ten minutes camp was set up. It consisted merely of three hammocks strung between the trees.

  The hammock is the bed of Amazonia. It was invented by the Amazon Indians and we owe our garden hammocks to their invention. Even in the town, the hammock is the only bed in most homes. All that one sees in the daytime is iron hooks in the wall — but at night the hammocks are strung up and the living room becomes a bedroom. Hotels, too, are furnished only with hooks in the wall. The guest is supposed to bring his own hammock.

  But there are a few tribes in hammockland who do not subscribe to the custom, and the Jivaros are one of them. So Napo, instead of stringing up a hammock, made a hole in the ground. He was going to bury himself. The earth, superheated during the day, keeps the body warm during the night which is sometimes surprisingly chilly.

  After the beds, three aerial and one subterranean, had been made, Napo took up his bow and arrows. ‘Me get fish,’ he said.

  Dad suggested that Roger would probably like to see how fishing was done
with bow and arrows. Roger went along, but he seemed to have something else on his mind. He kept glancing back at the break in the jungle where animals came out at night, and where Indians, too, might emerge. Who could tell? Anybody watching him would have seen that he was up to no good. But nobody was watching.

  He went with Napo along the river bank and stayed with him until Napo had spotted a trout swimming about a foot beneath the surface and had pierced him with an arrow. Napo took the fish back to camp to be baked in mud for supper — but Roger went to the boat, got something from it, and disappeared into the jungle. Presently he strolled back into camp and joined in building the fire.

  It was now quite dark under the trees but a flickering yellow light began to radiate from the fire. Ghostly shadows leaped about. A scream or two came from the jungle as a preliminary to the nightly chorus.

  Hal shivered slightly and glanced at the point where the trail entered the undergrowth. Then his eyes froze.

  ‘Dad, look,’ he whispered. ‘An Indian.’

  His father looked. There was no doubt about it. An Indian face peered from the brush. The light was too poor to see it distinctly.

  ‘Must be Napo,’ Hunt said. ‘He’s getting wood.’

  ‘Yes, but he’s getting it down near the river.’

  Napo came up the bank with a load of driftwood.

  Hal reached for his gun but his father said, ‘Don’t be hasty, they may be friendly. Let’s try a present first.’ And he took a small mirror out of his pocket. Indians liked mirrors.

  Napo, following the gaze of the others, was much puzzled at what he saw. In his astonishment he dropped his load of wood on his own toes. This brought a yell out of him that further startled Hal and his father, but did not seem to disturb the face on the trail. And Hal noticed that Roger, too, was strangely calm.

  ‘That kid has more nerve than I gave him credit for,’ he thought.