In his eagerness to prove to the old crone that he was human and no ghostly visitor, Bomba drew forth his machete and thrust the sharp point of it into his brown, sinewy forearm. Blood welled up from the slight cut, red, pulsing blood.
“See—I am no ghost!” cried the lad again. “Ghosts do not have blood. Ghosts do not have bones. One can walk through ghosts as one walks through the mists of the early morning. Let anyone try to walk through me, Bomba, the jungle boy!”
The natives had stopped dancing and singing their wild invocation to the dawn. Now they stood in a half circle about Sobrinini and Bomba, looking on curiously.
At Bomba’s challenge, not one of them stirred. He looked exceedingly dangerous, standing in all his splendid strength with the sunlight glinting on the red point of his upraised machete. It would not be well to try to walk through him.
The puzzled expression had deepened upon the face of Sobrinini. She stood regarding Bomba with bewilderment and a dawning suspicion.
“Then if you are not Bartow and no ghost,” she demanded, “who are you?”
And suddenly all the lad’s long groping for the truth, his passionate eagerness to learn the facts concerning his parents, the many disappointments he had suffered and the realization of his desperate loneliness rushed over him in an overwhelming flood, and filled him with emotion that found vent in a headlong torrent of words.
“Who am I? If I could give you the answer to that question, Sobrinini, I would not be here. I know nothing about myself except that I am Bomba, a boy of the jungle, and have spent my life with Cody Casson on the edge of the swamp. Casson could not tell me who I am nor who my father and my mother were. He sent me to Jojasta, and Jojasta before he died said, ‘Go to Sobrinini, she will tell you!’ I have come, Sobrinini.”
He took a step toward her, hands outstretched.
At that instant there was a wild yell, and a native, panting, the sweat streaming from him, dashed toward them and flung himself at the feet of Sobrinini.