Then came a long interval when a hush seemed to have fallen over everything. Hal knew the women were dozing but he kept his eyes closed, content to lie quiet and rest. He knew that curiosity would avail him nothing where an Indian was concerned. That much he had learned in Panama.
Consequently, when he heard the muffled scream of a human voice toward dawn, he did not stir. But the women were on the alert immediately, for he could hear them straighten up and lean over him. He feigned deep, even breathing, however, but continued to listen.
Another scream pierced the early morning darkness, echoing and reëchoing about the maloka. Suddenly the cry, though muffled, was more intelligible, and Hal was certain that it sounded like someone trying to call “help,” though he could not be sure. It was too muffled, too distant for him to distinguish anything definite.
In any event, the cry pierced the air for the third time, and, though it seemed ghostly and unhuman, its poignancy was distressing. Then all was still again, but Hal had been so startled that he found himself up resting on his elbow and staring hard at the women.
The elder of the two women stared back at Hal, then suddenly she got to her knees and with her brown, bony hands made a number of gestures which the young man was at a loss to fathom. After a few moments of continued eerie, cowering gestures, he began to understand what she was trying to explain.
The cries he had just heard were ghostly, not human.
CHAPTER XVIII
CONVALESCENCE
Hal took no stock in that, of course, but, during the long nights of the week following, he was more than once inclined to be credulous in the matter. Not a night passed that he did not hear the sad cries issuing from some point beyond the maloka. And though he questioned both the women and the warriors who came and stared curiously at him, none could do more than shrug their shoulders and make meaningless gestures in answer.
Consequently, he was glad when his strength returned and enabled him to walk as far as the door of the maloka. Two young but stalwart warriors had now taken the place of his female guardians and on this first day of his convalescence they hovered about constantly, and he was at a loss to know whether it was because of their tender solicitude for his uncertain gait or whether they considered him a prisoner.
In any event, he got absolutely no encouragement from either warrior when he motioned them to show him where the weird night cries originated. They simply shrugged their shoulders and gestured in such a way as to indicate that the Indian considered the supernatural to be an evil manifestation and all evil was to be shunned.