Arrived at the spot, he turned the carcass of the “killer” over to one of his Caribs. Having told him to drag it into camp, he sat down beneath a cocoanut tree that hung over the river.
“Wait here and see what happens,” he said.
There is no time so still as night on a tropical river. Shut off by dense virgin forests from every breath of air, damp, oppressive tropical heat seems to place a blanket of silence over all. The great river, with its sweep of waters, is as silent as the stars in the heavens. The whole universe appears to sleep.
Pant felt all this as he sat there listening and watching by the river. This was an eventful night. Would they come? Would the trap serve the purpose for which it was intended? So he questioned as the silence hung over all.
Now that vast silence was broken by the bark of an alligator. Did that mean that they were coming?
Of a sudden, as he waited, there rose out of the silence a strange sound. Pant was all action at once.
With a look of mingled joy, determination and anxiety on his face, Pant seized his axe and lifting it high, severed at one blow the rope which held that end of the long trailer that now spanned the river. Instantly, caught by the current, the whole long streak of brown swung toward midstream. Even as it did so, between it and the other shore there appeared a long black shadow.
“They come! It will work!” whispered Pant, dropping on his knees to watch.
CHAPTER XIX
CAPTURING A BLACK SHADOW
The black shadow which Pant had seen making its way up the river under cover of night, was a pit-pan, electrically driven. In his conclusions regarding this he had not been mistaken.