At the edge of the jungle I turned around. He was slumped down in his chair on the veranda. All I could see of him was his pinched white face under the brim of his immense cone-shaped hat. He didn't bother to wave.
Nearly two months passed before I returned to the settlement on my way back to Cuyaba. I had separated from the government party several days before and I arrived with my own Indian guides.
I immediately crossed to Cecil Hubbers' shack. He was not on the veranda. I went up the three steps and rapped on the screen door. A short swarthy man who looked part Indian and part Portuguese got up from a cot inside and came to the screen. I asked for Mr. Hubbers.
"He's dead," the dark man said in good English.
Somehow I had expected it, but still I was startled.
"What happened?" I inquired bluntly.
The man rolled his thick shoulders as if explanations were distasteful to him. "The little bat took too much blood," he said. "One morning they found him dead on his bed."
"How horrible! I'm very sorry," I said. And I meant it.
There was something more I wanted to know. "Did they ever find out how the bat got in?" I asked.
The man rolled his shoulders again. "It didn't get in," he said. "It was in—all the time. It was living in his hat."