By guidance of the hand of God, they steered in the right direction. As soon as they came within sight of the trees, they perceived a wide water-way opening out of the lagoa, and running with a clear line to the horizon beyond. Through this they directed the igarité, and, favoured by a breeze blowing right upon their stern, they rigged up their rude sail. With this to assist their paddling, they made good speed, and had soon left the lagoa many miles behind them.
They saw no more of the Muras. But though safe, as they supposed themselves, from pursuit, and no longer uneasy about the ape-like Indians, they were still very far from being delivered. They were yet in the Gapo,—that wilderness of water-forests,—yet exposed to its thousands of dangers.
They found themselves in a labyrinth of what appeared to be lakes, with land around them, and islands scattered over their surface, communicating with each other by canals or straits, all bordered with a heavy forest. But they knew there was no land,—nothing but tree-tops laced together with llianas, and supporting heavy masses of parasitical plants.
For days they wandered through its wild solitudes, here crossing a stretch of open water, there exploring some wide canal or narrow igarápe, perhaps to find it terminating in a cul-de-sac, or bolson, as the Spaniards term it, hemmed in on all sides by an impenetrable thicket of tree-tops, when there was no alternative but to paddle back again. Sometimes these false thoroughfares would lure them on for miles, and several hours—on one occasion a whole day—would be spent in fruitless navigation.
It was a true wilderness through which they were wandering, but fortunately for them it had a character different from that of a desert. So far from this, it more resembled a grand garden, or orchard, laid for a time under inundation.
Many kinds of fruits were met with,—strange kinds that had never been seen by them before; and upon some of these they subsisted. The Mundurucú alone knew them,—could tell which were to be eaten and which avoided. Birds, too, came in their way, all eaten by the Indians, as also various species of arboreal quadrupeds and quadrumana. The killing and capturing of these, with the gathering of nuts and fruits to supply their simple larder, afforded them frequent opportunities of amusement, that did much to beguile the tediousness of their trackless straying. Otherwise it would have been insupportable; otherwise they would have starved.
None of them afterwards was ever able to tell how long this Gypsy life continued,—how long they were afloat in the forest. Engrossed with the thought of getting out of it, they took no note of time, nor made registry of the number of suns that rose and set upon their tortuous wanderings. There were days in which they saw not the sun, hidden from their sight by the umbrageous canopy of gigantic trees, amidst the trunks of which, and under their deep shadows, they rowed the igarité.
But if not known how long they roamed through this wilderness, much less can it be told how long they might have remained within its mazes, but for a heaven-sent vision that one morning broke upon their eyes as their canoe shot out into a stretch of open water.
They saw a ship,—a ship sailing through the forest!
True, it was not a grand ship of the ocean,—a seventy-four, a frigate, or a trader of a thousand tons; nevertheless it was a ship, in the general acceptation of the term, with hull, masts, spars, sails, and rigging. It was a two-masted schooner, a trader of the Solimoës.