"We shall have to wait now, comrades, until Yuara tells his father and the chief about us," Lourenço said. "So let us take off our packs and rest."
He set the example by laying his rifle on the ground, unslinging his pack, squatting beside it, and coolly rolling a cigarette. Apparently he was paying no attention whatever to the savages, who watched his every move. But McKay, glancing at him as he followed suit, saw that, for all his seeming unconcern, the Brazilian bush rover was keenly watchful and that his gun lay within reach of his hand.
From within the tribal house sounded the monotonous voice of Yuara. After listening a moment Lourenço quietly addressed the nearest warrior. A slightly surprised looked passed over the cannibal's face. He replied, and a slow conversation ensued.
Meanwhile the others looked over the array of savage fighting men. Except for difference of stature, build, and expression, they were as like as brothers. All were light skinned—hardly darker than the river-tanned whites themselves; all had straight-set eyes, with no hint of the slant often found among the Indians of the Amazon headwaters; and the cheek bones of all were fairly low. Their average stature was a little under six feet, and most of them had an athletic symmetry of physique. Their feet, McKay noticed, were small and shapely.
All wore tall feather headdresses of parrot and mutum plumes. All had the scarlet and black rings around the eyes, the streaks from temple to chin, the wavy design on their bodies. And each wore in the cartilage of his nose a pair of small feathers slanting outward. At another time and under other circumstances the white men might have smiled at those nose feathers, which resembled odd mustaches; but as they studied the austere faces around them they found no occasion for merriment. Nor was the tension lessened by the sight of the weapons grasped in the strong hands of the warriors.
Great bows and arrows, such as the hunters had borne, were supplemented here by the long clubs of heavy wood and by ugly spears. The clubs terminated in balls studded with jaguar teeth. The spears were triple pronged, each prong ending in a saw-toothed araya bone and each bone darkened by the fatal wurali. Frightful weapons they were—the one designed to smash skulls and tear out brains, the other to stab and poison at the same thrust.
Lourenço stopped talking, and the others observed that now the wild men stood more easily, their holds on their weapons loosened.
"I have shown them, Capitao, that I can speak their tongue, and told them we go to visit the chief Monitaya as friend," he explained. "They tell me Monitaya has grown great since last I saw him. Another tribe which lost its chief and subchiefs by a swift sickness has joined his own, and he now rules two big malocas together. He is a powerful fighter, and if he is friendly to us we have a good chance of success. Ah! here is Yuara."
The son of the subchief came through the doorway as he spoke, followed by an older man whose facial resemblance and ornaments indicated that he was the subchief himself. His headgear was more elaborate than that of his men, and around his shoulders and down his chest hung a brilliant feather dress, while a wide belt of green, blue, and black plumes encircled his hips. Yuara himself had inserted feathers in his nose and donned a headband of tall parrot plumes a trifle more ornate than those worn by the ordinary fighters, and somehow the simple addition seemed to transform him into a bigger, fiercer man. Also, his eyes now held a smoldering light which had not been there before.
The older man, Rana, the subchief, glanced swiftly along the line of new faces. Then his gaze returned to McKay. His mouth set and his countenance turned hard. He spoke curtly to Yuara, who replied with one word. After another long, unpleasant look at McKay, who stared coldly back at him, Rana grunted a few words and re-entered the house.