"There we get what a few minutes ago I was willing to give a big silver piece to hear," declared Jack. "By my faith, the fellow has lusty lungs. He must be getting excited, too."
"His tone shows he is in great fear," said Ronie. "Whoever he be, he is in some great danger or critical situation."
"Perhaps we had better push ahead, so as to lend him a helping hand in case he needs one."
Quickening their pace they tore through the tropical vegetation, the undergrowth of which stood high over their shoulders, in the direction of the appeals for help. These grew rapidly louder and more fraught with terror.
"He is close at hand," panted Jack, and the next moment they came upon a startling sight, which, for a brief while, held them spellbound. The underbrush had here been beaten down, and bruised into fragments by the furious trampling back and forth of a huge specimen of that king of the South American forest, the jaguar. The cause of the anger of this terrible brute, equal in size and ferocity to the tiger of the jungles of Asia, was the sight of a human being—a man—suspended in midair, almost over the head of the maddened creature. It was this person who had given forth his frantic cries for help, and who, unconscious of the arrival of strangers upon the scene, was continuing to utter his piteous appeals. His situation was as singular as it was startling. Somehow his feet had become caught in the topmost branches of a tall, slender sapling, which, bowed by his weight, held him head downward in the air, swaying to and fro like the pendulum of a clock. Fortunately, the tree was too small for the jaguar to climb so as to reach him in that way, while he hung just above the clutch of the brute as it sprang upward time and again in its furious attempt to seize its prey.
At that moment the infuriated creature was crouching to the earth preparatory to making another vault into the air in order to pounce upon its victim. Then the scent of newcomers reached its nostrils, and its small, piercing eyes quickly became fixed upon its prey within reach. The long tail lashed the air with renewed fury, the lissom form hugged closer to the ground, as it made swift preparation to spring upon the couple who had dared to enter its domain at this critical time.
To Jack and Ronie it was a moment not to be forgotten. The first clutched his knife savagely, but what could he hope to do against such a foe with so simple a weapon? In the brief interval between the discovery of the brute and its attack upon them, Ronie's gaze fell upon a thrice-welcome sight. This was nothing less than a short, serviceable-looking firearm, lying scarcely a yard distant from his feet. It was doubtless the property of the man hanging from the pendant tree, and who had somehow dropped it at the outset of his meeting with the jaguar.
He had no time to think of this, or even to question whether the gun was loaded or empty before the dark form of the jaguar shot into the air, and the maddened creature came like a cannon ball toward the twain.
"Jump for your life!" cried Jack, and so closely followed the animal upon his words that, as the couple separated, Ronie springing to the right and he to the left, an outstretched paw of the creature brushed a shoulder of each as it sped past them!
The jaguar had not struck the ground a few feet away, flinging up a cloud of dirt where he landed in a heap, before Ronie had seized the firearm. It was the work of but another instant for him to cock the gun and bring its stock to his shoulder.