“What is it?” I said.
“Something bit me—a little fish,” she said. “It has nipped a morsel out of my finger.”
She held up her hand as she spoke before wrapping a scrap of linen round it, and I could see that it was bleeding freely.
“Surely it could not have been that tiny fish,” I said, thrusting one hand into the water and snatching it back again, for as it passed beneath the surface it was as if it had been pinched in half a dozen places at once; and when I thrust it in again I could see that the water was alive with little fish apparently about a couple of inches long, and instantaneously they made a rush at my hand, fastening upon it everywhere, so that it needed a sharp shake to throw them off; and when I drew it out, hardened and tough as it was with my late rough work, it was bleeding in a dozen places.
“Why, the little wretches!” I exclaimed; and by way of experiment I held a piece of leather over the side, to find that it was attacked furiously; while even later on, when I had been fishing and had caught a small kind of mud-carp, I hauled it behind the canoe, in a few minutes there was nothing left but the head—the little ravenous creatures having literally devoured it all but the stronger bones.
I remember thinking how unpleasant it would be to bathe there, and often and often afterwards we found that it would be absolutely impossible to dip our hands beneath the water unless we wished to withdraw them smarting and covered with blood.
What more these little creatures could effect we had yet to learn, but we owned that they were as powerful in the water as the fiercer kind of ants on land, where they were virulent enough in places to master even the larger kinds of snakes if they could find them in a semi-torpid state after a meal—biting with such virulence and in such myriads that the most powerful creatures at last succumbed.
At last, as the days glided on, we became more and more silent. Very little was said, and only once did my uncle talk to me quietly about our future, saying that we must get to one of the settlements on the Orinoco, low down near its mouth, and then see what could be done.
A deep, settled melancholy seemed to have affected us all; but the sight, after many days, of a small trading-boat seemed to inspire us with hopefulness; and having, in exchange for a gun, obtained a fair quantity of provisions, we continued our journey with lightened spirits.
In spite, though, of seeing now and then a trading-boat, we got at last into a very dull and dreamy state; while, as is usually the case, the weakest, and the one from whom you might expect the least, proved to have the stoutest heart. I allude, of course, to Lilla, who always tried to cheer us on.