And Henry, very much bepuzzled, clasped her tightly and leaped off into the white turmoil of water.
On the bank of the Gualaca Kiver sat two Indian girls fishing. Just up-stream from them arose the precipitous cliff of one of the buttresses of the lofty mountains. The main stream flowed past in chocolate-colored spate; but, directly beneath them, where they fished, was a quiet eddy. No less quiet was the fishing. No bites jerked their rods in token that the bait was enticing. One of them, Nicoya, yawned, ate ja banana, yawned again, and held the skin she was about to cast aside suspended in her hand.
"We have been very quiet, Concordia," she observed to her companion, "and it has won us no fish. Now shall I make a noise and a splash. Since they say what goes up must come down,' why should not something come up after something has gone down? I am going to try. There!" She threw the banana peel into the water and lazily watched the point where it had struck.
"If anything comes up I hope it will be big," Concordia murmured with equal laziness.
And upon their astonished gaze, even as they looked, arose up out of the brown depths a great white hound. They jerked their poles up and behind them on the bank, threw their arms about each other, and watched the hound gain the shore at the lower end of the eddy, climb the sloping bank, pause to shake himself, and then disappear among the trees.
Nicoya and Concordia giggled.
"Try it again," Concordia urged.
"No; you this time. And see what you can bring up."
Quite unbelieving, Concordia tossed in a clod of earth. And almost immediately a helmeted head arose on the flood. Clutching each other very tightly, they watched the man under the helmet gain the shore where the hound had landed and disappear into the forest.
Again the two Indian girls giggled; but this time, urge as they would, neither could raise the courage to throw anything into the water.