The half-breed grasped the back of the tree with the open palms of his hands and placing the bare soles of his feet in front like a jack-knife he just naturally walked up it. These same fellows can travel for miles through the jungle by swinging themselves from vine to vine and going as fast as you or I can walk. So you see there are some things an ignorant Amazonian can do that an educated New Yorker can’t do. And thus does Nature’s law of compensation work out.
After we got the aerial swung between the palms we set the engine and dynamo in place on their foundations and with some tinkering we got them to running pretty smoothly. To Señor Castro’s delight we had enough current not only to work the wireless set but for lighting up his house as well. Last of all came the transmitter and receiver and although these were of French make we had no difficulty in either installing or operating them and it was a cinch to get either Manaos on the west or Almeirir on the east.
It seemed that the operators at both stations could get us a deal better than we could get them though all of the transmitters were fitted with one kilowatt transformers. But never mind, we had established communication, thus fulfilling our part of the agreement, and Señor Castro, by all the arts of a true gentleman, showed us how deeply he appreciated our work. Nothing was too good for us. The only flaw in the whole system was the operator at Manaos. He was like the sloth in that he was just as liable to go to sleep as he was to stay awake.
I believe that every message I ever sent had something in it about rubber, whether the body of it related to the doctor, medicines, or what not, for along the Amazon River they live and die by that commodity.
After we had been at Jurutty a few weeks Bert and I got so we knew the fezenda about as well as its owner did and we walked or rode about the place either alone or with Señor Castro for we made it a point for one or the other to be on duty all the time and so make a reputation for ourselves and for future United States operators who might happen that way.
I often thought, in my rambles, that I could feel the presence of some human being back of a tree, or see a human shadow come and go before I could really make it out, but as this happened very often I came to believe it was merely a case of nerves. I talked with Bert about it and he said he frequently heard and saw things too but that there was nothing more to it than a snake or an animal moving about.
“Señor Castro,” he said, “has told us this little yarn about cannibals so that we would keep inside the fezenda. There used to be tribes of cannibals in the interior but all that sort of thing has been wiped out by the Jesuit missionaries long ago.”
I was out for a walk one morning not long after and I heard a monkey crying as though he was in great pain. I located him a dozen or twenty paces in the jungle and went after him. He seemed to have gotten tangled up in some vines and the harder he tried to get away the tighter they held him.
Just as I reached up and released him a piece of wood was slipped into my mouth by some one from behind making it impossible for me to utter a sound and before I could take my revolver from its holster my hands were pinioned back of me and my feet were bound so that I couldn’t kick, much less run. Although I kept my eyes open I couldn’t see a man-jack of my captors nor did they make the slightest noise.
They lifted me up bodily and after a few manœuvers in penetrating the jungle we finally reached a pretty well trodden trail and then they set me down and took the gag out of my mouth. Four strapping big, copper colored bucks with splashes of red paint on their stark naked bodies were the imps of Satan who had so unceremoniously abducted me. I would have given just $7.00 in American gold to have gotten each one of them to hold on to the spark-gap of a 10-inch induction coil for just one second.