Chapter Eighty Three.
Following the Float.
Unfortunately for our adventurers, as well as for the cow-fish itself, other eyes than those of the tapuyo had been watching the gambols of the two cetaceans, and had paid particular attention to the one now taking its siesta on the surface. Neither Munday nor his companions had any suspicion of this; for, excepting the peixe-boi itself, no living creature was in sight. Having observed it for a considerable length of time, still reclining in its attitude of repose, they had almost ceased to think of it; when all at once it was seen to spring clear out of the water, and, after making two or three grotesque plunges, sink suddenly below the surface!
The action was too violent and unnatural to be voluntary. The peixe-boi had evidently been assailed in its sleep by some enemy, from which it was but too eager to retreat.
But what could this enemy be? The tapuyo knew of nothing under the water that was likely to have made the attack. There are no sharks nor swordfish in the Gapo, and an alligator would scarcely dare to meddle with a creature of such enormous dimensions. Much less could an enemy have come from the air. There is no bird in South America, not even the great condor itself, that would think of swooping down upon a peixe-boi.
Some of the party said that they had seen something glancing towards the cow-fish at the moment it made the leap,—something that looked like a flash of lightning! What could that be? There was no cloud in the sky, no thunder. It could not have been lightning.
“Pa terra!” exclaimed the tapuyo, in evident alarm. “I know what it was. Keep quiet or we are lost!”
“What was it?”
“A harpoon,—look yonder, patron! Don’t you see the water in motion where the juarouá went down?”
“Certainly I do. That’s very natural. The waves are caused by the plunging of the animal.”
“The waves! not that; look again. You see a thin ripple. There’s a cord making it. Yonder’s the float! and close behind that you will see something more. There, there he is!”
Sure enough, there was a rippling line caused by a cord drawn rapidly along the surface; at the end of this a small buoy of wood dragged rapidly after, and close behind a canoe, with an Indian in it, the Indian in a bent attitude, plying his paddle, and evidently in pursuit of the wounded cow-fish. The log was a “float,” the line drawing it along was at its other end attached to a harpoon, and that harpoon had its barbs buried in the body of the peixe-boi!
Such a specimen of a human being, even for a savage, none of the spectators—the tapuyo perhaps excepted—had ever beheld. He was as naked as if he had never been outside the Garden of Eden; and this very nakedness displayed a form that, but for the absence of a hairy covering, more resembled that of a monkey than a man. A body extremely attenuated, yet pot-bellied, too; a pair of long, thin arms, with legs to match, the latter knotted at the knees, the former balled at the elbows; a huge head, seemingly larger from its mop of matted hair; a face with high cheeks and sunken eyes,—gave him an appearance more demoniac than human. No wonder that little Rosa screamed as he came in sight, and that dismay exhibited itself on the features of several others of the party.
“Hush!” whispered Munday. “Silence all! Not a word, or we shall be seen, and then not he, but perhaps a hundred of his tribe—Hush!”
Fortunately the scream of Rosita had been only slight; and the savage, in eager pursuit of the peixe-boi, had not heard it, for he continued the chase without pause.
He had no difficulty in discovering the whereabouts of his game. The float guided him; for, no matter where the cow went, the tether was still attached to her, and the movement of the log along the surface betrayed to the eye of her pursuer every change of direction.
Two or three times, the savage, dropping his paddle, was enabled to lay hold of the line and commence hauling in; but the great strength of the juarouá, as yet unexhausted, proved too much for him, and he was compelled to let go or be pulled out of his craft.
The latter was but a frail concern, of the smallest and rudest kind,—consisting of a shell of bark, gathered up at both ends and tied by sipos, so as to give it somewhat the shape of an ordinary canoe. Even when paddling with all his strength, its owner could make no great speed; but great speed was not required in the chase of a peixe-boi with a barbed spear sticking through its skin and rankling between its ribs. It only required patience, until the huge creature should become exhausted with its struggles and enfeebled by the loss of blood. Then might the conquest be completed without either difficulty or danger.
For twenty minutes or more the chase continued; the float being dragged hither and thither, until it had crossed the water in almost every direction. Sometimes both log and canoe were in sight, sometimes only one of them, and sometimes neither,—at such times the cow-fish having passed far beyond the limits of clear water visible to the spectators.
On the last of these occasions, several minutes had elapsed before the chase came again in sight. Our adventurers were in hopes they would see no more of either fish, float, or follower. The interest they might otherwise have taken in such a curious spectacle was destroyed by the thought of the danger that would result in their being discovered.
Just as they had begun to congratulate themselves that they were to be spared this misfortune, the float once more came before their eyes, still being dragged along the surface, but with much less rapidity than when last seen. The manatee was coming into the arcade, the canoe following close after, with the hideous savage eagerly plying his paddle, while, with outstretched neck and wild, scintillating orbs, he peered inquiringly into the darkness before him!
There was no chance to escape discovery.