“How do, old chap! Glad to have the pleasure of seeing you at last.”
To which, to the stupefaction of everybody, Dick included, the figure replied in a high, thin voice:
“The pleasure is mine, oh wonderful medicine-man, who has come to heal my people. Tell them that ye are my particular friends, and that they must treat you and yours well during your stay among them, upon pain of incurring my lasting anger.”
“Got that, Inaguy?” asked Earle, turning to his headman, who seemed so paralysed with amazement that he could scarcely reply in the affirmative. “Good! Then just translate to the chief and his followers what I said, and what their god answered.”
With chattering teeth and lips that quivered with terror to such an extent that he could scarcely articulate, the thoroughly frightened Inaguy obeyed his master’s order, and his astonishment and terror were so obviously genuine that they only added to the already profound effect produced upon the Indians by the seeming miracle of speech from their hitherto dumb god. Had the chief been a little less astonished than he was, it might have occurred to him to wonder why the idol had chosen to express his will in a language that needed interpretation; but obviously he was altogether too profoundly impressed by the marvellous happening for the smallest shred of suspicion to enter his mind, and upon receiving the message he immediately wheeled round, and prostrating himself with his face to the ground—an example instantly followed by those about him—mumbled a long statement which, upon being translated by Inaguy, proved to be an emphatic assurance that nothing whatever should be done that could provoke the god’s displeasure. This done, he rose to his feet and shouted an order for the immediate release of the hostages; after which he turned to Earle and Dick and reverentially bade them welcome to the village, at the same time requesting them to pitch their camp wherever they pleased.
Earle, having chosen a spot well out in the open, where anything in the nature of a sudden surprise would be difficult—though he explained to Dick that, after what had happened, he had little or no fear of anything of the kind—intimated to the chief his desire to see the sick people at once, and went off with that individual, leaving Dick to supervise the arrangement of the camp.
Meanwhile Dick, who was by no means a fool, had been thinking matters over, and had come to the conclusion that he understood the apparent mystery of the idol’s speech, and chuckled to himself over Earle’s cleverness, which had been so wonderful as to mystify even the young Englishman for the moment.
By the time that Earle reached the camp, after paying his professional visit to the sick, the camp was all in order, and supper was nearly ready. Earle was in fine feather, for not only had he discovered that the invalids were all down with swamp fever, which, severe as it was, he was confident of his ability to cure, but upon questioning the chief with regard to the great object of his quest, he had been informed that a tribe of Indians known as the Mangeromas, occupying territory many days’ march toward the south-west, were believed to possess some knowledge of a wonderful people answering to the description which Earle had given, but that the Catus—the tribe whose guests the party now were—had as little as possible to do with the Mangeromas, since the latter were an exceedingly fierce, warlike and barbarous race, more than suspected of cannibalism. This unsavoury reputation, however, affected Earle not in the least, he was out for adventure, and was determined to have it, moreover he wanted definite information concerning El Dorado and the city of Manoa, and was prepared to take his chance, even among cannibals in order to get it.
“Well,” remarked Dick, “that’s all right; where you go, I go with you, even if it should be into a country where cannibals are as common as blackberries in August. And I have no doubt that, if need be, you can scare them as effectually as you did those niggers this evening. And let me tell you, while I think of it, that you did it remarkably well. Why, you puzzled even me for the moment.”
“Did I, really?” demanded Earle, with every symptom of extreme gratification. “I am glad of that, for, to tell you the truth, I am a bit out of practice, and the idea did not occur to me until Inaguy mentioned the idol this afternoon. Then I thought that if, by means of ventriloquism, I could make the idol speak, it would cause our friends here to sit up and take notice, as it did. Ventriloquism, Dick, is a very useful accomplishment for a man who goes much among savages, as I have done, and it has got me out of an extremely tight corner more than once. It always appealed to me powerfully, from the time when, as a boy of seven years old, I attended a ventriloquial entertainment and heard the guy conversing with unseen people in mid-air, and heard remarks addressed to him by obviously inanimate objects. There seemed to me to be useful possibilities in it, and I started trying to do it at once, finally taking lessons from a wonderfully clever guy, who told me that my throat was specially well adapted for it. Ah! here comes Peter with supper, for which I’m glad, for I happen to be possessed of a ten dollar appetite to-night.”