01 Amazon Adventure (13 page)

That night the miracle happened, and one snake became sixty, or perhaps even seventy, no one ever knew exactly how many because it was impossible to tell just how many the big stork swallowed when no one was looking.

The flotilla was sliding down river under a moon even more forlorn than the one the night before. Suddenly, above the bedlam raised by the howler monkeys, frogs and big cats of the forest, came a whoop from Roger. He was in the skiff with two of the Indians. He clutched at his knee where something was squirming up inside his trousers. Then something dropped from a halyard on to his shoulder and wriggled around his neck.

The two Indians stopped rowing and started yelling. They danced about as if shaking things from their bare feet. Then they scrambled up on to the bow and stood perched there on all fours, chattering like monkeys and looking down with dread into the hold of the boat.

Roger shinned up the mast and looked down. Were his eyes deceived by the weird moonlight, or was the whole inside of the boat crawling?

‘What’s the matter?’ It was Hal’s voice. The Ark had pulled alongside and the gunwales of the two boats rubbed. Instantly there could be seen something like little waves or ripples running over the gunwales from the smaller boat to the larger. Then the crew of the Ark joined in the dance. ‘Snakes!’ yelled Hal. ‘Are you all right, Roger?’ ‘They’re all over me.’ ‘Have you been bitten?’

‘No. They don’t seem to bite. But how those little beggars can climb!’

And he slid back to the deck, for he had found that snakes could go up a mast as readily as he. Hal turned on his flashlight. Snakes everywhere! They were little fellows about a foot long and as thick as a pencil. Hal took one up and pressed its jaws open. He was thankful that there was no sign of poison fangs.

Then it dawned upon him. The big boa had became a mother.

‘Whoopee!’ he cried. ‘Now we have enough boas to supply all the zoos in the world.’

The other members of the crew were not so happy about it. It was difficult to step anywhere or put a hand to anything without contacting a slithering little form. The youngsters seemed especially fond of pockets. Perhaps they liked the warmth. Hal pulled them out until he was tired and resigned himself to carrying a baby serpent in each pocket. The Indians were reassured by the evidence of the flashlight. They knew that the little boas were quite harmless — in fact the girls in the villages allowed them to twine through their hair.

Roger was already beginning to worry about having to feed the multitude.

‘Perhaps they’ll all swim away,’ he said hopefully.

‘No chance,’ said Hal. ‘If they were anacondas — yes. But boas don’t like the water. They’ll probably stay near their mother.’

The only other individual on board who was as happy about the snakes as Hal was the big stork. Tonight, tethered out on deck, he thrust his great bill like a shaft of lightning in this direction and that, each time engulfing a snake. His long neck wriggled as they went down. When Hal noticed these goings-on, he quickly put a stop to them by tying the stork’s beak shut with a piece of cord.

That’s a job for you,’ he said to Roger, ‘to keep Stilts so full of fish that he won’t want our babies.’

The boats went on their way, raising their sails when a breeze came up shortly after midnight. The jungle was now still. The passage was narrow, between an island and the mainland.

A canoe shot out from the shore into the dim path ahead, and there were shouts in Portuguese. Someone seemed to be calling for help. Hal, though suspicious, could not pass anyone who really needed ‘assistance. He ordered down the sails. The Ark slid up alongside the canoe.

‘Is this the Hunt outfit?’ a voice came from the canoe.

‘Yes,’ said Hal, more suspicious than ever. But what had he to fear from two men in a canoe?

It’s them!’ one of the men shouted. And there was an answering shout from the shore and a clattering of oars being made ready in a boat.

‘Sails!’ called Hal, but before they could be hoisted one of the strangers stood up in the canoe,

grasped the gunwale of the Ark with one hand and levelled a revolver with the other.

‘The first man who moves will get plugged,’ he warned.

The men froze in their places as if struck by a sudden paralysis. Roger had been collecting snakes on the deck of the Ark and putting them into a covered basket. He stood with the basket in his arms by the gunwale just above the canoe.

Judging by the sounds from shore there were quite a number of men boarding a boat considerably larger than the canoe in which the two sentinels had been stationed. It was painful to Hal to have to stand helpless while his enemies prepared to attack, but the levelled revolver was very persuasive. It was pointed straight at him.

Roger made a slight movement. The man standing immediately swung the gun to cover him.

‘Never mind him,’ said his companion. ‘He’s only a kid.’

The muzzle went back to Hal. Roger felt heartily insulted. So he was only a kid! Not even worth covering with a gun!

He took advantage of the fact that he was not closely watched. He quietly uncovered the basket. A large boat could now be seen putting out from shore, well loaded with men. The oarsmen were being urged on by a ragged-edged voice that was certainly Croc’s. Croc’s voice reminded you of a stone wall with broken glass on top.

Roger swung the basket and threw the contents upon the two men in the canoe.

A bath of snakes slithered down over the heads of the unwelcome visitors. Bang went the revolver, let off by a nervous trigger finger. The bullet panged into a tree on the island. The men roared with rage and terror, thrashing about violently, trying to free themselves of the uncanny little crawlers. Who was to know that they were not deadly?

The man standing let go of the gunwale of the Ark in order to have both hands free for his battle with the serpents. He had no sooner done so than he lost his balance and went overboard, capsizing the canoe.

‘Hey, I can’t swim,’ blubbered one of the men, but Hal did not tarry to rescue him. The sails were

up in a flash and the men bent to the oars. The pursuing boat also ran up a sail.

Hal noticed that the shouted words of the men following were only rarely in Spanish or Portuguese, but mostly in a wharfside English. Croc might have brought the thugs to South America with him or, more likely, he had picked them up in Iquitos. Along the wharves of Iquitos where ocean liners dock after a voyage of 2300 miles up the Amazon from the Atlantic, there were always plenty of rough characters from North America or Europe who were quite willing to engage in crime for a consideration. Along with such a gang of willing murderers, Croc doubtless had one or two Indians or caboclos who knew the river. Perhaps one of them was sheeting home the sail, for it seemed to be making the best use of every puff of air.

But the men at the oars could not be river men. Perhaps they were more accustomed to the deck of a cargo steamer than to the rower’s post in a montaria. There seemed to be a bank of four oars on each side. Of course they had to work in unison to be successful, but they were continually tangling with each other to the accompaniment of curses that echoed back from the forest wall.

Croc had been forced to pause long enough to pick up the two men dumped from the canoe, right the canoe, and attach the painter to the stern of the larger boat.

‘Good boy, Roger!’ said Hal, seeing the fruit of his brother’s endeavours. Every moment gained might mean the difference between success and failure, life and death.

He felt less cheerful when bullets began to come from the pursuing boat. They zinged by in such a savage hurry that Hal knew they must be coming from powerful rifles of a long enough range to reach them even if they were half a mile away instead of a poor 500 feet.

One struck the stern, one crashed through the toldo, and one crumpled a leg of the helmsman’s platform so that it tipped precariously. Banco abandoned the rudder and came tumbling down to safety. The Ark swung off course. ‘Get back to the helm,’ Hal ordered. Banco replied with a torrent of excited gibberings and huddled down in the shelter of the toldo. Hal leaped to the platform, grasped the tiller, and brought the Ark back on her course. But a precious moment had been lost.

Bullets smashed around him. ‘What a fool target I must make!’ he thought. High on the platform, he must be plainly silhouetted against the stars. It could only be a matter of time before he would be hit — unless he could do something to delay Croc’s boat.

‘Roger!’ he called, and Roger came running. ‘Cut the painter of the dugout.’ What for?’

‘Quick! Cut the canoe loose and swing it broadside.’

Roger caught the idea. Lay this heavy, hollowed log across the path of Croc’s boat. The canoe would be lost, but in a good cause.

He drew in the line until he had his hand on the bow of the canoe. Then he cut the line and gave the log boat a strong push backwards and sidewards. Its forward progress checked, it floated with its port beam towards the oncoming boat.

‘That’ll stop them for a minute,’ said Hal jubilantly.

As if in answer a bullet ripped through his trousers barely escaping his hip, and disturbing a boa in his pocket. The snake wriggled, then became quiet again as it snuggled against his warm leg.

The black dugout, he hoped, would blend in with the black of the Ark so that Croc and his men would not be able to see it until it was too late to avoid it.

His guess was nearly correct, but not quite. Croc’s boat was only some ten feet from the floating canoe when it was observed and a hoarsely barked order shifted the course far enough to the right so that the big boat merely grazed the dugout’s stern.

A yell of derision came from the boatload of thugs. The yell drowned out a shouted warning in Portuguese. Someone who knew the channel was trying to make himself heard. With all their might, the men at the oars shot their boat straight on to a sand bar. The keel ground and gritted with a screech, and the sail, still pulling, instantly upset the craft. Some of the occupants rolled out on the bar, some into the water.

Hal’s men slackened a little to enjoy the situation.

‘Pull!’ Hal shouted. ‘Keep going! If we just keep going, we’ve got them licked!’

The two boats, with the skiff in the lead and Banco once more at the tiller of the Ark, sped down the dark, winding passage. One or two more shots came from the men on the sand bar, but they went wild. The sound of angry voices died in the distance. Hal breathed again.

But he knew that he could hardly hold his lead. There seemed to be eight or ten men in Croc’s gang. Even if they were not very good oarsmen they should be able, with the help of the sail, to propel their light montaria faster than Hal’s eight, including himself and Roger, could row two boats, one of them a heavy batalao.

He could not. depend upon the sail. The one on the Ark was large and pulled powerfully when the wind was from behind. But both sails were squares and so were useless except with a following wind. Besides, his job was collecting, and that meant making frequent stops. No, a straight getaway was impossible. The game of hide-and-seek must continue. But it was not easy to hide two large boats made conspicuous by their masts and toldos.

The flotilla swept out of the passage into an expanse of river perhaps five miles wide. It kept getting broader and there was no other island in sight. If dawn found them here they would be as conspicuous as a fly on a windowpane.

The jungle animals were already beginning to announce morning. Gradually the stars dimmed in the east, a cold, grey light crept over the water, small clouds in the sky began to blaze pink, and then up bounced the tropical sun.

Everybody peered back along the course. A speck in the distance was probably Croc’s boat. If

they could see it, certainly Croc could see the Ark. Unluckily the river was becoming wider and wider. It was now ten miles from shore to shore, and more than ever like a sheet of glass on which it would be impossible to hide.

Hal looked at his map. Ahead there should be a cluster of islands — but beyond them there was another embarrassingly open stretch.

Then he noticed a blue line indicating a passage between what appeared to be the mainland and what really was the mainland. He thanked his stars for a highly detailed map. He looked towards the north shore and could see no passage — but he knew it was there and he changed the course of his little fleet.

‘There is nothing there,’ said Banco. Used to following the main channels, he knew of no such passage.

But it was there, and they found it. The boats were now temporarily cut off from Croc’s view by a screen of islands concealing the entrance to the passage. Croc, Hal hoped, would waste time looking for them among the islands and would not discover the little waterway through the jungle.

The passage was narrow and the trees met overhead. Their great white trunks went up two hundred feet before they branched to form a roof. It was like going down the nave of a cathedral — except that no cathedral would be alive with brilliant birds and chattering monkeys. The sails were of no use here, for the breeze was cut off by the forest. However, the surface was glassy smooth, and rowing was easy.

Crocodiles grunted as the waves from the boats struck them. Stilts exchanged remarks with two stately jabirus standing one-legged on the bank.

‘Look! A lizard walking on the water!’ cried Roger.

Everyone stopped rowing to witness the remarkable sight. The lizard, tail and all, was about three feet long. It stood on its hind feet and balanced itself with its tail which touched the surface of the water. Its clawed front feet were raised in the air like hands.

‘It’s a basilisk!’ cried Hal.

‘It looks savage,’ Roger said.

‘But it isn’t. The men who named it thought it must be the ferocious creature of the old stories — you know, a basilisk was supposed to be able to kill a person just by breathing upon him or merely by looking at him. And the way it stands up like man, or a ghost, must have made it seem more weird.’