“I know better plan than that. We do like Indians before white men come. I make ’em bows an’ arrows. Only trouble is we no shoot straight at first.”
“But what about the strings for our bows?”
“We use fish-line.”
Dick slid off the rock, his expression more hopeful.
“All right, let’s set to work. I’ll help you, Toma. We’ll eat birds for dinner, squirrels—anything! Perhaps we might even be lucky enough to get a rabbit. If we don’t find something to eat pretty soon we’ll——”
The words died in his throat. On that instant back at camp, Sandy let out a scream—a ringing, pulsating, vibrant, piercing scream of terror. Looking back, they perceived Sandy tearing along toward them, arms and legs swinging, hat gone and the loose sides of his unbuttoned jacket billowing up in the wind.
While Dick stood there, wondering what it was all about, Toma stooped swiftly then straightened up, a rock in either hand, his cheeks the color of yellow parchment. At that moment, Dick caught sight of the apparition himself. His eyes popped and unconsciously he made a queer, choking noise in his throat. A thing that looked like a beast and yet, somewhat resembled a man, was making its way slowly down the steep bank toward their campfire. The horrible creature’s face was covered with a long black beard and the hair of his head straggled down over his eyes and fluffed out in a sinuous black wave around his shoulders.
It was a man undoubtedly—but what a man! A skin of some sort had been wrapped and tied around his torso, but both his arms and legs were quite naked. In every sense—a wild man. His huge frame supported bulging muscles. His chest expanded like a barrel. He walked with a gliding motion. His head rotated from side to side and, during the breathless silence that followed Sandy’s arrival, they could hear him clucking and grunting to himself.
The three boys waited there, rigid with terror. Never before had they seen a wild man. His awful appearance, his constant gibbering, his bobbing head and fearful eyes reminded Dick of gorillas and huge hairy apes, whose pictures he had often studied in his natural history book at school. When the hideous creature had turned from a momentary inspection of their campfire and commenced gliding toward them, with one accord they shrieked and fled.
They had no thought of their sore feet now, neither were they aware of the incessant, gnawing pains of hunger. In a great crisis of this sort, the mind has a peculiar tendency to become wholly subjective to the feelings of instinct. Instinct inherited from a thousand generations of jungle-prowling ancestors, told them to flee—and they fled.