The snakes didn’t stop their mad rush. They whacked natives as well as boats when they passed them and left the canoes drifting in a churn of foam that made the canal look like a rapids clear beyond the bend. Then the living tidal wave was gone as quickly as it had begun. But Mr. Brewster wasn’t waiting for the natives to reclaim their canoes and spears so as to return to action.
“Back to the poles!” he ordered. “Heave away—away, everybody—and you, too, Nara!”
Old Joe, his face gleaming in happy surprise at the thing he had touched off, now laid aside his rifle and helped pry the barge from its sandy perch. By the time the hostile tribesmen were wading up on the sandbars that the anacondas had left, Nara’s boat was free. Outboards roared anew as the flotilla plowed its way to the main channel and on to the junction of the Casquiare and the Orinoco, where they headed downstream.
The rhythmic beat of distant tom-toms could still be heard that evening, when the motors were stopped and the boats allowed to drift down the river under a brilliant tropical moon. By morning, the drums had ceased, indicating that the Maco tribe had either given up the chase or that the flotilla was beyond the danger zone.
From then on, the expedition traveled mostly by day and picked suitable campsites overnight. Biff and Kamuka fished frequently and replenished the food supply by catching huge river turtles as well as a tasty species of catfish called cajaro. Biff landed one that measured well over three feet in length.
Some nights, the boats were lashed side by side and moored near river settlements where they formed what Hal Whitman termed a “floating mansion,” complete to the kitchen. At one village, Joe Nara bought stacks of huge cassava cakes. These measured two and a half feet across, but were only a half-inch thick. They had been brought upriver wrapped in plantain leaves.
These formed the main food for the Wai Wais accompanying Nara, and Jacome and Kamuka liked them too, though Biff found them rather tasteless. In contrast were some cayman eggs, which the boys dug up on a sandy shore while hunting turtles with Jacome. The Indians, Kamuka included, found them tasty indeed, but they were too strong in flavor to suit Biff.
Caymans were the great menace of the Orinoco, so the boys were duly warned against them. Closely resembling alligators, they were supposed to measure twenty-five feet or more in length. But when Kamuka called, “There’s a big one!” and Mr. Brewster promptly drilled it with a rifle shot, the cayman measured only twelve feet, when it was hauled on board the kitchen monteria.
“When you see a creature in motion,” Mr. Brewster told the boys, “and particularly a bird, or its cousin, a reptile, you always gain an exaggerated idea of its length.”
“Eggs-aggerate?” Kamuka repeated the unfamiliar term. “You mean eggs look long too?”