Chapter Sixty Nine.
The Pashuba Spear.
Munday was now prepared to set out on a little exploring excursion, as he said; so, enjoining upon Tom, who was determined to awake the sleepers that they might share the sight of the feeding fish-cow, to keep them all strictly quiet until his return, he slipped softly into the water and swam noiselessly away.
The enforced silence was tedious enough to the party, who were all eager to talk about the strange spectacle they saw, and it would surely have been soon broken, had not the Indian returned with a new object for their curiosity. He had stolen off, taking with him only his knife. At his reappearance he had the knife still with him, and another weapon as well, which the knife had enabled him to procure. It was a staff of about twelve feet in length, straight as a rush, slightly tapering, and pointed at the end like a spear. In fact, it was a spear, which he had been manufacturing during his hour of absence out of a split stem of the pashuba palm. Not far off he had found one of these trees, a water-loving species,—the Martea exorhuza,—whose stems are supported upon slanting roots, that stand many feet above the surface of the soil. With the skill known only to an Amazonian Indian in the use of a knife-blade, he had split the pashuba, (hard as iron on the outside, but soft at the heart,) and out of one of the split pieces had he hastily fashioned his spear. Its point only needed to be submitted to fire, and then steel itself would not serve better for a spear-head. Fortunately the hearth was not yet cold. A few red cinders smouldered by the wet circle, and, thrusting his spear point among them, the Indian waited for it to become hardened. When done to his satisfaction, he drew it out of the ashes, scraped it to a keen point with the blade of his knife, and then announced himself ready to attack the juarouá.
The amphibious animal was yet there, its head visible above the bed of grass upon which it was still grazing. Munday, while rejoiced at the circumstance, expressed himself also surprised at it. He had not been sanguine of finding it on his return with the spear, and, while fabricating the weapon, he had only been encouraged by the expectation that the peixe-boi, if gone away for the night, would return to its grazing ground in the morning. As it was now, it could not have afforded him a better opportunity for striking it. It was reclining near the surface, its head several inches above it, and directly under a large tree, whose lower limbs, extending horizontally, almost dropped into the water. If he could but get unperceived upon one of those limbs, it would be an easy matter to drive the spear into its body as far as his strength would enable him.
If any man could swim noiselessly through the water, climb silently into the tree, and steal without making sound along its limbs, that man was the Mundurucú. In less time than you could count a thousand, he had successfully accomplished this, and was crouching upon a limb right over the cow. In an instant his spear was seen to descend as the spectators were expecting it to do; but to their astonishment, instead of striking the body of the peixe-boi, it pierced into the water several feet from the snout of the animal! What could it mean? Surely the skilled harpooner of fish-cattle could not have made such a stray stroke. Certainly he had not touched the cow! Had he speared anything?
“He’s killed the calf!” cried Tipperary Tom. “Luk yandher! Don’t yez see its carcass floatin’ in the wather?”
Still the spectators could not understand it. Why should the calf have been killed, which would scarce give them a supper, and the cow spared, that would have provisioned the whole crew for a month? Why had the chance been thrown away? Was it thrown away? They only thought so, while expecting the peixe-boi to escape. But they were quickly undeceived. They had not reckoned upon the strong maternal instincts of that amphibious mother,—instincts that annihilate all sense of danger, and prompt a reckless rushing upon death in the companionship or for the protection of the beloved offspring. It was too late to protect the tiny creature, but the mother recked not of this. Danger deterred her not from approaching it again and again, each time receiving a fresh stab from that terrible stick, until, with a long-drawn sigh, she expired among the sedge.
These animals are extremely tenacious of life, and a single, thrust from such a weapon as he wielded would only have put the peixe-boi to flight, never to be encountered again. The harpoon alone, with its barbed head and floats, can secure them for a second strike; and not being provided with this weapon, nor the means of making it, the old tapuyo knew that his only chance was to act as he had done. Experience had made him a believer in the affection of the animal, and the result proved that he had not mistaken its strength.