"Yes," agreed d.i.c.k, "I have no doubt you are right. Well, I am quite ready to make the attempt whenever you say the word."

"But what about thy fatigue?" demanded Phil.

"Oh," answered d.i.c.k, with a laugh, "I am not so tired but that I dare say I can manage to do whatever may be necessary to secure our escape from this wretched place."

"Very well, then," said Phil; "in that case let us get our supper, make our preparations--Heaven knows they will be few and simple enough--and then lie down and get what rest we can; it will be two or three hours, yet, before it will be safe for us to make the attempt."

The friends were awakened out of a sound sleep by a blaze of lightning that flashed across their closed eyelids with the vividity of noontide sunshine, followed an instant later by a crash of thunder that caused them to start upright from their fern beds in something akin to panic, so appalling was the sharpness and intensity of the sound, followed as it was by a series of deep, heavy, reverberating booms which might have been caused by the broadsides of an entire navy simultaneously discharged, and the concussion of which sent a perceptible tremor through the earth beneath them. The booming sounds seemed to echo back and forth from cloud to cloud, rumbling and growling as though reluctant to cease, but at length it subsided into momentary silence, only to burst forth with even greater violence a few seconds later as a second flash tore across the ink-black sky.

"That is our signal," remarked Phil quietly, as he rose to his feet.

"We may safely move now, for the 'bad spirits' are abroad with a vengeance to-night, and every Indian in the place--man, woman, and child--will be cowering with head tightly wrapped in blanket and unable to move for fear of what may be seen. There! listen to that!" as another vivid flash illumined the hut, and low, terrified wails burst forth from all round about them, mingling with the roar and volleying of the thunder--"that gives one some idea of the state of mind that the poor wretches are in. I believe that if the village were to take fire they would remain in their huts and burn rather than turn out and face the lightning. Come along; we must get clear away, if we can, before the rain comes, because when it begins we shall be able to see nothing.

Now; have we all our belongings--my medicine case, our pistols and ammunition, swords, bows and arrows? Yes; I think there is nothing missing. Are you ready? Then--march!"

"But where are we going?" demanded d.i.c.k, as they groped their way out of the hut in the opaque darkness that followed upon a dazzling flash of lightning.

"First, round to the back of the hut, and then past the rear of the other huts--since, although I believe we might walk straight through the village without being seen, I do not believe in running unnecessary risks. Then, down to the beach," replied Phil.

For the first few minutes of their journey the going was exceedingly difficult, the eyes of the pair being alternately dazzled by the vivid electric flashes and blinded by the Cimmerian darkness that followed them; but by the time that they had groped their way through the village and were approaching the beach, the flash and glimmer of the lightning, both fork and sheet, had become almost continuous, and they were able to see their way for the rest of the distance without difficulty.

"Now," said Phil, when at length they reached the beach and stood among the canoes, "our first business must be to choose a handy canoe for ourselves--I hope we shall not require her for more than an hour--and then send the rest adrift down the river, which will put it out of the power of the villagers to pursue us. It is, of course, a bit hard upon them, but it cannot be helped; and after all, they have kept us enslaved here for three months, so it is not so very unfair an exchange. Now, this is a handy little craft, and ought to serve our purpose very well, even if we cannot find our own canoe again, so help me to haul her up, d.i.c.k; and then we must push the others off as quickly as we can. The suck of the current will soon draw them down the creek into the main stream; and when once they are there the Mayubuna may say goodbye to them."

It took them the best part of half an hour to send the whole of the canoes adrift, but they did the job effectually, and by the time that the last canoe had been thrust off into the middle of the creek the first dozen or so were fairly in the main stream and being rapidly sucked out toward the middle by the strong current. Then d.i.c.k and Phil, after giving a last look round, and flinging a parting glance toward the silent and apparently deserted village, thrust off the canoe which they had reserved for themselves, sprang lightly into her as she went afloat, seized the paddles, and headed down the creek. Upon reaching the main stream they found that the current was running very strongly, showing that there had been much rain higher up among the hills; but, on the other hand, the storm, which was still raging violently, although it had brought no rain as yet, had bred a strong breeze from the northward which would be of incalculable value to them if they could but recover their own canoe, with her sail; they therefore paddled across to the opposite side of the river, where the current was to a great extent nullified by eddies, and worked their way upstream, close insh.o.r.e, until they reached the creek near which their own canoe remained--as they hoped--concealed, when, turning into it, they paddled up it until they arrived at their former landing-place, easily recognisable in the light afforded by the incessant lightning flashes. In like manner they had no difficulty in finding the detached clump of bush in which they had hidden their canoe on the evening preceding their capture by the Mayubuna; and toward this they now hurried, eager to learn whether she still remained where they had put her.

As they strode rapidly across the little meadow they noticed that the tall gra.s.s all round the clump in which they hoped to find their canoe was much beaten down, as though a number of people had been walking round it, and they also observed several well-defined trails leading away from the clump toward the forest, all of which sent their hopes down to zero, for the signs all pointed to the fact that someone--or something--had made frequent visits to that clump of bush--some of them quite recently; and if those visits had no reference to the hidden canoe, they could not very well guess what their purpose could be. But one thing was evident: that clump of bush must be approached with caution; and accordingly they loosened their hangers in their sheaths, strung their bows, fitted an arrow to the string, and then stole cautiously forward, their figures strongly outlined in the vivid light of the incessantly flashing lightning.

Reaching the spot where a slight thinning of the undergrowth had first suggested to them the idea of hiding the canoe there, d.i.c.k suddenly thrust Phil aside and, cautiously parting the bushes, proceeded to insinuate himself into the opening thus made, Phil following him close up, with his drawn hanger in his hand, raised ready to strike a blow if necessary, although, hemmed closely in on every side, as they were, by the tough, elastic stems and boughs of the undergrowth, it was almost as difficult to strike a blow with a sword as it was to effectively draw a bow. Working his way quietly but rapidly forward in the effective manner which he had acquired by several months' practice in the penetration of such growth, d.i.c.k at last stretched out his hand and touched what he at once knew was the hull of the canoe.

"All right, Phil," he exclaimed, delightedly, "here she is. Now, if you will stay where you are, and widen the opening a little, so that she will pa.s.s out easily, I will go to the other end, and help you to lift her out."

Accordingly, he proceeded to work his way along the length of the canoe, forcing the boughs aside to make a pa.s.sage for himself, until he had reached to about mid-length of the canoe, when, the darkness in there being almost impenetrable in spite of the continuously flashing lightning, he reached his hand over to ascertain whether the sail and paddles were still in the craft as they had been left. As he did so he became conscious of a strong musky odour, and while he was still pondering what this might portend his hand came in contact with a cold, clammy, scaly body which his touch told him, before he hastily withdrew his hand with a low cry of astonishment and repugnance, must be not far short of as thick as his own body. And the next instant there occurred a sudden rustling that caused the canoe to shake and quiver and the paddles in her to rattle, a huge, dimly-seen shape upraised itself in the canoe, a gust of hot, fetid breath smote d.i.c.k in the face, and a loud angry hiss made itself heard even through the heavy booming of the thunder.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

HOW THEY ESCAPED ONE GREAT DANGER, ONLY TO FALL INTO A GREATER.

There was no need for d.i.c.k to ask himself, or his friend, what was the nature of this monstrous, indistinctly seen shape that upreared itself out of the canoe and poised its head within a foot of his face, its two eyes flashing baleful green fires into his as its long forked tongue flickered angrily in and out of its slightly opened jaws; he knew it at once for one of the enormous boas that dispute the sovereignty of the South American forest with the puma, and the black jaguar, that most rare and ferocious of all the cat tribe. And, for an instant, so great was his astonishment at thus unexpectedly finding himself at close quarters--nay, face to face--with a creature big enough to envelop his body half a dozen times over, and strong enough to crush him into a shapeless ma.s.s, that he was completely paralysed. He had no fear of the serpent, although he was perfectly aware of the awful danger in which he stood--he knew that in another instant the enormous body might fling its great coils about him and gradually bring into action the tremendous pressure which should crush every bone in his body to splinters--but, on the other hand, it never occurred to him to make the slightest effort to save himself from so hideous a fate. But as he stood there perfectly quiescent for, as it seemed to him, a quarter of an hour or more--the actual length of time did not probably exceed three seconds--a sharp rattling of the dry twigs over his head and a heavy thud met his ears, a little shower of twigs and leaves rained down upon him, and at the same instant a terrific upheaval occurred in the canoe, coil upon coil the vast length of the serpent's body leaped into view, and plunged over the side, there was a violent rustling and crackling of branches for a few seconds as the monster snake writhed its irresistible way through the neighbouring bushes; and then it was gone. And as the last sounds of its hurried retreat died away, d.i.c.k Chichester sank helplessly to the ground, violently sick.

For a minute or two the paroxysms of vomiting were simply dreadful, and then the feeling of horrible nausea gradually pa.s.sed away, and, pulling himself together, d.i.c.k struggled to his feet.

"That's right, lad," he heard Stukely's voice say, as he felt his friend's encouraging pat on the shoulder. "Feel better, now? That's capital. Faugh! what a disgusting stench! No wonder it made you sick; I feel almost as bad myself. But I'll bet a trifle that the brute feels a good deal worse than either of us, for I must have hit him pretty hard; indeed if it had not been for the thick growth that baulked me and hindered my stroke I could have cut his head clean off."

"Well, you--you--have--saved my life, Phil, and I--" gasped d.i.c.k thickly, as he felt for the other's hand and pressed it convulsively.

"Pooh! nonsense; that's all rubbish, you know," interrupted Phil, patting d.i.c.k on the back, "I should have cut at the brute just the same, if thou hadst not been there. And now, if you feel all right again, let us get the canoe out and see what she looks like; a nice mess he will have made of her, I expect, making his lair in her; with a murrain on him!"

"You have put something worse than a murrain on him, or I am no judge,"

laughed d.i.c.k, a trifle hysterically. "The brute will certainly die before morning. Now, then, are you ready? Then--lift!"

With some difficulty they at length extricated the canoe from her hiding-place, to find, a good deal to their surprise, that, apart from two broken paddles, the craft was very little the worse for having been made the lair of a snake so big that he must have practically filled her from end to end. Luckily the mast, yard, and sail had been placed in the bottom of her and so had not been broken, although almost the whole of the boa's ponderous weight must have rested upon them. So when presently they put her into the water, they were rejoiced to find that although she had been lying dry for three months, so completely had she been shielded from the sun's rays that her hull was still intact and that she leaked not a drop. This was far better than they had dared to hope for, so, stepping into her, appropriating the paddles of the other craft, and leaving the latter moored to the bank, they joyfully shoved off, and three minutes later were in the main stream, with the canoe's head pointed up the river.

Meanwhile, the storm still raged as furiously as ever, the flashes of lightning were incessant, the rolling of the thunder was continuous and deafening, and the northerly wind was blowing so fiercely that the surface of the stream was whipped into small, foam-capped waves. But they were not high enough to imperil the safety of the canoe, moreover the wind that roared so savagely aloft among the tree-tops and stripped off the dried leaves and rotten branches in blinding showers was a fair wind for the fugitives, so they stepped their mast, close-reefed their sail, and were presently foaming up the river in midstream--where, although they had a strong current to contend with, they were at least safe from the branches that flew hurtling through the air--as fast as a horse could trot.

Now, all this time the storm had been a dry storm, that is to say, not a drop of rain had fallen from the bosom of the scowling clouds that seemed bursting with it, but it was bound to come, sooner or later, and come it did, with a vengeance, when our friends had been under way about an hour, and just as the canoe had shot into a broad, lagoon-like stretch of the river where it broadened out to about a mile in width, and where consequently the water was shallow and the current scarcely perceptible. And well was it for them that the rain caught them just at that point, for otherwise they must perforce have landed until the worst of it had blown over. For it came down, not in the sober, steady, respectable fashion in which it falls in temperate climates, but literally in sheets, through which it was not possible to see anything more distant than an ordinary boat's length. With it came more wind, so that the canoe, with the gale right behind her and a close-reefed sail set which, in that condition, was not very much bigger than a man's shirt, rushed along with the foam boiling up level with her gunwale, and sometimes even in over it. While this state of affairs prevailed, and nothing could be seen beyond the dripping sail glistening in the flash of the lightning, the Englishmen continued their headlong flight up the river, unable to see where they were steering but keeping the boat steadily dead before the wind, confident, from the glimpse they had had just before the rain came on, that so long as they were able to do this they would be running up the centre line of the river and could not come to very much harm.

The first violence of the rain lasted about twenty minutes, and then it settled to a quiet, steady downpour for about an hour, during which the thunder and lightning gradually subsided until the thunder became a mere muttering in the extreme distance, and finally died away altogether.

But the sheet lightning continued to play intermittently, low down on the northern horizon for some time longer, affording light enough for the fugitives to see where they were going, and as the wind still continued to blow strongly they held on, hour after hour, making the most of the splendid opportunity thus afforded them to make good their escape, so that when at length the morning came and the wind died down with the rising of the sun, they were far beyond the reach of pursuit by the Mayubuna.

Now ensued a month of comparative uneventfulness, during which the two dauntless young Englishmen forced their way up that great river which, where it falls into the Amazon, is named the Maranon, while in its higher reaches it is called the Ucayali, and higher still, the Quillabamba. But although their journey up this magnificent stream may be fitly described as comparatively uneventful, it must not be inferred therefrom that they met with no adventures at all; on the contrary, there was scarcely a day when they did not meet with an adventure of some sort, but it was scarcely of a sufficiently notable character to justify amplification in these pages, being merely the sort of occurrence that is inevitable in a river journey through wild country in the tropic zone. For example, there were frequent rapids and cataracts to be negotiated, food to be sought for and obtained, in the course of which search many strange creatures were seen, many curious and wonderful sights witnessed, and occasionally savage animals encountered.

Also Indians began to be met with at frequent intervals, some of whom proved friendly while others were hostile and would fain have disputed the right of the white men to be in the country at all--thanks to the tyrannical treatment which they had experienced at the hands of the Spaniard; and once they encountered a tribe of genuine Amazons, women who had turned the usual order of things upside down, having usurped the functions of the men, such as fighting, hunting, and fishing, while their men folk were compelled to cultivate the land, care for the cattle, cook the food, look after the children, and so on! Then there was the gradual change in the nature of the vegetation and the character of the scenery as the travellers worked their way upward from the level of the great plains, or pampas, into the mountainous region toward Cuzco, with the ever-increasing difficulties of the navigation, which at length became so great that the canoe had to be abandoned altogether, and the journey continued by land, although they still followed the course of the river as closely as possible, in order that they might always be able to get water, and also because it served them as a guide.

But it was not until they had been journeying a full month, after their escape from the Mayubuna, that their next really important adventure befell. They had by this time climbed upward out of the low, hot, tropic forest region, and had attained an alt.i.tude at which the climate might almost be described as temperate, where, while the days were still distinctly hot, the nights were cool, sometimes even to the extent of sharpness, and where dense morning-fogs were frequent at that particular period of the year. Those fogs were the cause of much inconvenience and delay to the pair; for they could neither hunt nor travel in a fog, the result being that they were frequently obliged to remain in camp until eight or nine o'clock in the morning, instead of resuming their journey at daybreak, as had heretofore been their custom.

Such was the case on the particular morning when the young Englishmen encountered their next important adventure. The sun had been above the horizon nearly two hours when at length the dense fog which had enveloped their camp cleared sufficiently to permit of their proceeding upon their journey, but it still hung about here and there in heavy wreaths, motionless in the still morning air, when they quite unexpectedly came upon one of the old Peruvian roads constructed by the Incas. This road bore evidences of having at one time been a magnificent highway; but under the rule of the Spaniards it had been neglected until now it was little more than a sandy track over which Nature was fast resuming her sway. But it happened to lead in approximately the right direction for the Englishmen, and heavy as was the travelling over it, it was less laborious than toiling over a rough, trackless country, they therefore promptly decided to follow it so long as it ran their way.

About a mile from the spot where our two travellers came upon the road it entered a dense wood; and here the fog still hung thickly. But the friends decided that this was of little consequence, since the road, though its surface was broken up and much overgrown, was still easily distinguishable; accordingly they plunged into the wood without hesitation. A quarter of an hour later, as they rounded a bend in the road, they made the exceedingly unwelcome discovery that they had walked right into the midst of a party of some fifty Spanish soldiers who, having recently partaken of breakfast, were now resting by the roadside until the fog should clear.

The encounter was so sudden, so absolutely unexpected on the part of the Englishmen, that almost before they realised the presence of the Spaniards the latter--who had heard d.i.c.k and Phil talking together as they approached--had surrounded them, rendering flight an impossibility, and in a trice the pair were disarmed and, hemmed in by an escort of a dozen armed men, conducted to the spot where the captain--a tall, dark, handsome man, in full armour, but without a helmet--with his horse standing beside him, was reclining against the trunk of an enormous pine.

"Ah, Jorge!" exclaimed this individual, in Spanish, rising to his feet, as the party approached; "what have we here? Prisoners? Who and what are they? Surely not Indians--although they might well be, from their garb."

"Truly, senor Capitan, I know not who or what they are," answered the man addressed as Jorge, and who seemed, from his dress and equipment, to be some sort of inferior officer, possibly a sergeant; "but we heard them approaching along the road, and as their speech was strange I deemed it my duty to seize them; I therefore hastily arranged an ambush, into which they the next moment walked; and--here they are. If they were not so dark in colour I should say that they might possibly be Englishmen."

"Ingles! here!" exclaimed the captain. "But that is impossible! Who are you, picaros?"

Now, during their six weeks' residence in Cartagena, under the hospitable roof of the senoritas Clara and Dolores, the two Englishmen had, by a.s.siduous study, acquired a sufficient knowledge of Spanish to enable them to understand the nature of the question thus contemptuously addressed to them; and Phil--who, as usual, took the lead whenever any talking was to be done--at once replied:

"Impossible or not, senor, we are Englishmen; but, beyond that bare statement of fact, you must pardon us if we decline to say anything."

"Oh!" retorted the Spaniard. "You decline to say anything, do you?

Very good. I am not at all curious to learn the history of such vagabonds as you appear to be. The fact that you are--by your own confession--English, is enough for me. But there are others who may be more interested than I; and, if so, you may rest a.s.sured that they will find a way to make you speak. Take them away and secure them, Jorge,"

he continued, addressing his subordinate; "and take care that they do not give you the slip. I shall hold you responsible for their safekeeping. And as soon as you have secured your prisoners to your satisfaction, let the men fall in, and we will resume our march."

The man to whose charge our friends had been committed saluted, and then gave the signal for the prisoners to be led away, adding to his signal the significant order "Shoot the rascals at once upon the slightest sign of an attempt to escape."

At a spot among the trees, situated about a hundred yards from where the captain had been standing, the little party came to the place where a dozen pack mules had been tethered; and a brief search among the heterogeneous articles which comprised the packs furnished the sergeant with a raw-hide rope, from which he cut off a couple of lengths sufficient to securely bind the hands of Phil and d.i.c.k firmly behind their backs, and this operation was at once so effectually performed that anything in the nature of escape by simply breaking away and running for one's life was rendered impossible, quite apart from the sinister and significant order to shoot which had been given to the soldiers. A quarter of an hour later the entire party were on the move, and the two Englishmen had the mortification of finding themselves marched back along the road by which they had come.

Shortly after pa.s.sing the spot where our friends had struck the road, the path--for it was little more--curved away toward the left, and led along the top of an extensive plateau of rich pasture land, upon which, about midday, they sighted the first herd of cattle that the Englishmen had seen since their escape from the Mayubuna; and during the afternoon they saw other herds in the charge of peons, showing that the party were gradually approaching civilised territory; and about half an hour before sunset they marched into a small village, composed chiefly of adobe huts, where a halt was called for the night, and where our friends were confined in a ramshackle barn of a place in company with the sergeant and ten men. That the sergeant was quite determined not to get into trouble by the neglect of any possible precaution soon became perfectly evident; for when, about half an hour after the arrival of the party at the village, supper was served, the individual in question gave orders that before the hands of the prisoners were released to enable them to convey food to their mouths, their ankles were to be securely bound together; and this was done. Then, after supper was over, without unbinding the ankles of the prisoners their wrists were again bound together behind their backs, after which their ankles and wrists were drawn as closely together as they could be induced to come, and firmly lashed behind them; and in this constrained and exceedingly painful posture they were unceremoniously flung into opposite corners of the hut, where, upon the bare floor, and suffering torments from the vermin with which the place was infested, and from which, in their constrained position, they were helpless to defend themselves, they were left to pa.s.s the night as best they might.

A seemingly interminable night of torture for the hapless prisoners came laggingly to an end at last when, about half an hour after daybreak, the lashings which had confined their limbs all through the hours of darkness were loosed, and they were allowed to scramble to their feet and walk to and fro for a few minutes before partaking of breakfast.

After breakfast the march was resumed; and--not to dwell at unnecessary length upon this portion of the narrative--about an hour before sundown the entire party marched into a city which one of the soldiers surlily informed Phil was Cuzco; and here the two young Englishmen were at length safely deposited in an underground dungeon of a building which had once been one of the Inca's palaces; escape being rendered impossible by the simple process of chaining them to the wall by means of a heavy iron chain about six feet in length, one end of which was attached to an iron girdle locked round the prisoner's waist while the other end was welded to an iron ringbolt, the shank of which was deeply sunk into the solid masonry of the dungeon wall.

On the morning of the following day they were temporarily released from their loathsome prison--where their bed had consisted merely of a thin layer of damp straw cast upon the stone flags with which the dungeon was paved, and where the only ventilation consisted of a small iron grating let into the masonry above the door--and conducted, under a strong guard, into the presence of the Governor of the city, who questioned them closely concerning their names, nationality, where they had come from, where they were bound for, and why they wished to go there. At first the two Englishmen resolutely refused to answer any of the questions put to them; but when at length the Governor, growing exasperated at their obstinacy, threatened them with the torture of the boot, Phil so far satisfied the man's curiosity as to inform him truthfully of their names and nationality, adding the fict.i.tious information that, having quarrelled with their captain, they had been forcibly put ash.o.r.e somewhere in the Gulf of Darien, and had since been wandering aimlessly about the country, not knowing where to go or how to escape from it. The story was well enough concocted, considering that it was made up on the spur of the moment; but it was evident that it did not altogether satisfy his Excellency, who finally ordered them to be taken back to their dungeon and kept there pending certain enquiries which he proposed to make. Later in the day, when they once more found themselves alone, and again chained to the dungeon wall, d.i.c.k, in his simplicity, ventured to question Phil as to his reasons for resorting to fiction instead of boldly telling the truth, or refusing to say anything at all; to which Phil replied:

"My gentle buzzard, if I had persisted in refusing the Don's request for information, we should have been put to the torture; for when these fellows threaten a thing like that, they usually mean it; or, if they do not actually mean it at the moment, they would unhesitatingly carry out their threat, rather than give themselves the lie; and we should show ourselves singularly deficient in common sense were we to submit to be tormented for hours, and probably maimed for life, rather than impart a little information--so long as that information is of such a nature as to harm n.o.body. At all costs we must avoid being tortured, if we can; for how could we hope to escape, or, having escaped, hope to carry out our plans, if our bones were broken, or our limbs twisted out of joint.

Therefore, as soon as torture was mentioned, I decided that the time had arrived when speech was to be preferred to silence. But I was careful to avoid saying anything which might connect us with the _Adventure_; because sooner or later news of the exploits of that ship is certain to penetrate as far south even as this, and I have a suspicion that the partic.i.p.ants in those exploits will not be altogether popular with the dons. Also, we must remember that there was a rumour that two of the crew of that ship had found shelter and succour in a certain house in Cartagena; and if two persons belonging to the _Adventure_ should eventually be found at large in this country a certain colour of probability might be imparted to the rumour; in which case our gentle friends Clara and Dolores might get into serious trouble. Therefore I thought it best on all accounts to mingle a little fiction with my facts. And I trust that long before his Excellency's proposed enquiries have borne fruit we shall be far enough away from Cuzco and its Governor."

"Do you think, then, that there is the slightest chance of our effecting our escape?" asked d.i.c.k, glancing expressly at the chain which bound him to the wall.