It occurred to Hal, then, that he was in an Indian maloka, one of those vast houses of thatch which the captain of the boat had told them housed the entire tribe. He was lying in one of the apartments at the rear, for the low, sloping roof he could have touched with his foot if he had had the strength to raise it.
A medley of snores resounded through the vast hut and from time to time he saw the squat figures of warriors replenishing their fires, murmuring to each other for a moment or two, then retiring again to their apartments to sleep.
The Indian women guarding Hal watched him continuously while he was taking stock of his surroundings. Neither one spoke, but he caught a questioning look in the eyes of the older-looking hag and saw her dart behind him, bringing up a huge calabash filled with water.
She held it to his lips and Hal drank it greedily. It was warm and rather too sweet tasting but, nevertheless, water. Never in his life was he so grateful for anything, although he realized that they must have been feeding him water on and off through the day, for he felt not nearly so parched as when he lay under the tree that morning.
When the calabash was empty he looked up at the Indian woman and smiled his most brilliant smile.
“You spiggotty—no?” he asked softly, remembering how often he got some response from Panama Indians by means of that address.
But he might just as well have spoken to a stone statue, for the woman stared at him with the same blinking eyes. After a moment she took the calabash and arose, waddling past the burning fires toward the front of the maloka.
Hal turned his eyes to the other Indian woman who was regarding him gravely from under half-closed lids. He used the same alluring smile upon her, but his earnest efforts were all in vain, for she continued to watch him with the same impassivity as before.
He closed his eyes after that and drowsed at intervals. In his waking moments he could feel the presence of his female guardians, but preferred to keep his eyes closed as long as they wouldn’t speak to him. But on the whole, silence reigned in the vast maloka and now and again Hal could hear the night voices from the jungle.
Goatsuckers repeated their monotonous refrain by the hour and several times the eerie plaint of the sloth drifted faintly in on the breeze. The women dozed occasionally, as was evidenced by their sonorous breathing, but the moment Hal opened his eyes they seemed to awaken instinctively.