“How long have I been here?”
“Nigh six months, señor.”
“Six months!” Stephen repeated; “surely not, Hurka. I never could have been ill all that time; I must have died long ago.”
“You were ill for six weeks, señor, with fever. When at last that passed away, your mind did not come back to you. Sometimes you raved about a great snake that was about to seize you; sometimes you thought that you were wandering in the forest; more often you lay quiet and without saying any[pg 336]thing. We gave you plenty of food and you got stronger, but there was no change in your mind. A month before your mind came back the fever seized you again, and we had little hope that you would live; but we had got medicine from the mission, and just when it seemed to us that you were on the point of death, you fell into a deep sleep, and when, after lying for twenty hours so, you opened your eyes and knew Pita, we found that your mind had come back to you again. That is all.”
“And you and Pita have remained here for six months nursing me!” Stephen said, holding out his hand to the Indian; “you are indeed good comrades and faithful friends, and I owe my life to you.”
The exhaustion caused by listening to Hurka’s story prevented Stephen from saying more, and in two minutes he dropped off to sleep. The next day he related to the two Indians the story of his passage through the forest.
“It was wonderful indeed that you should have alighted upon my mother’s village,” Pita said. “It was not to this that the three Indians belonged, but to another thirty miles away. Their disappearance has been the subject of much talk. It was at first thought that they had lost their way in the inundation and so perished, but when their canoe was discovered at the edge of the water-mark, long after the inundation had ceased, no one could account for it. The village was but three or four miles from the spot where the canoe was found, and there was no possibility of their missing their way. They could hardly have been all three devoured by wild beasts, unless, indeed, they had fallen in with a herd of peccaries; and this, it is now thought, must have been their fate. Fortunately, no one associated your coming with the discovery of the canoe.”
Gradually Stephen regained strength, but it was some weeks before he was fit to travel again.
“I suppose,” he said one day to Hurka, “that you will [pg 337]follow the track straight through the forest to the mission, instead of going all the way round as you did.”
“I don’t know yet, señor. We shall have some difficulty in getting away. Our skill with the bow and gun have so impressed them that they want to make Pita their chief and keep him here, and they want to adopt me into the tribe for the same reason. Till you began to get stronger we could roam about as we liked alone, but of late we have noticed that we are always watched, and Pita has been told that unless he consents to remain, you and I will both be killed and eaten. Pita has put off giving them a decided answer, but he cannot do so much longer; and now that you are well enough to travel, we shall have to make off as soon as we can. He has been told that if he and I consent to remain with them, they will take you to a place among the hills, eight days away, where you can find much gold and return rich to your own country.”