“What are you doing here?” demanded Hart, riding up to the hut.
“Ah don’ know what dat got t’do wid yō,” answered the “Sha’k.”
“You black ——!” said Hart. “I asked you what are you doing here.”
“Don’ yō curse me!” screamed the negro, in the bold terms of the British “object” the world over, though already a bit tremulous from the seriousness of his situation.
Hart was by nature anything but a belligerent man, but his future in the colony depended on the evidence he gave at the start of being able to take care of himself. He sprang from his horse, drew his heavy revolver, and rapped the “Ocean Shark” over the head with the butt of it. Then he thrust the weapon back into its holster and waded into the negro in approved mining-camp style, rapidly changing his color from black to red, and ended by giving him ten minutes to pack his traps and remove his battered face forever from that corner of British Guiana. During that time the Indians who formed the negro’s band ran back and forth “just like ants” collecting his belongings, and every time his “secretary” had to pass the American he took off his hat, ducked as if to dodge a blow, and said, “Yessir! Yessir!” Soon the whole caravan was on the move and the “Ocean Shark” had never been seen in this region since, though fanciful tales continue to drift in of the “free city” he and his obsequious followers have founded in another corner of the colony.
At two in the afternoon we reached the Manarí Creek and found it too deep to cross on horseback, though when Hart had passed that way a week before it had not been knee-deep. That is the greatest difficulty of the overland trip from Manaos to Georgetown; one can only get up the Rio Branco in the rainy season, which is the very time when the savannahs are flooded and virtually impassable. Luckily I am fairly tall, and Hart was taller. We unloaded, stripped, and carried everything, including the saddles, across on our heads, the water just reaching my nostrils. Then we gave the horses a bath, for which they seemed grateful, went through all the loading process again, and rode on, the crossing having cost us more than an hour. There were more bogs and creeks, but all were passable, and we had only to stop occasionally to adjust the pack. All the time we kept drawing nearer the Kanuku Mountains, now a long blue range across the southern horizon. We had to pass around the end of this to get to Melville’s, which was almost due south, though I was supposed to be traveling north.
Dom Antonito and one of the ant-hills that dot the open campo of the upper Rio Branco
I crossed the boundary between Brazil and British Guiana in a leaky craft belonging to Ben Hart, who lived on the further bank of the Mahú