Wherefore he became all the more alert. Instead of resuming his slow pace, he stood quiet at a corner, scrutinizing everything within his range of vision, listening more intently than ever. Two or three times he leaned forward and lifted his piece as some splashing noise in the creek came to him; but each time the cannibal guards on the other bank also sprang to see what caused the sound, then grunted to one another and relaxed, so he knew it was made by piscatory or reptilian life. Near him nothing moved. And the moon sailed on westward, smoothly, steadily measuring off the silent hours of the night watch.
Then all at once every nerve in him strained toward the back of the tambo. Something was there! He had not heard it—seen it—smelled it—but he felt it; a nameless thing that did not belong there. With smooth speed he pivoted, looked, listened. Nothing there.
Motionless, feeling slightly creepy, concealed under the roof corner, he waited. A sound came—a stealthy sound. Something was creeping in. Lourenço and Pedro, perhaps? Stooping low, he peered along the ground under the hammocks.
A man was coming—coming on all-fours like an animal. He was too stealthy to be either of the Brazilians. Knowlton glimpsed him only dimly, but he was sure this was no man who belonged here. And now, as on a previous occasion almost identical in its circumstances, the watchman acted in accordance with Tim Ryan's General Order Number Thirteen.
In three jumps he was upon the invader. His gun butt crashed down on the rising head. The other collapsed on the ground.
Swiftly Knowlton snapped a match with his thumb-nail. The sudden flare half blinded him, but what he saw made him suck in his breath. When the match went out he turned the senseless body over, drew his pocket flashlight, stabbed its white ray downward. Then he committed the unpardonable sin of the army—he dropped his rifle.
Dark haired, dark bearded, streaked with red dye and bleeding slightly at the nose, at his feet lay the man for whom the indomitable trio had traveled thousands of miles and dared all the deaths of the jungle—the Raposa.