His chief concern was the loss of his weapons. At any moment he might be called upon to use them in defence. His knife, to be sure, was a terrible weapon at close quarters. Even at some distance he could hurl it with great precision, as he had on the night when he had sent it whizzing through the air and buried it in the throat of the jaguar that was leaping at the white rubber hunters.
But he saved that as a last resort. His main dependence had been the bow and arrows, that might enable him to make a stand even if attacked by several enemies at the same time.
They were essential, too, in hunting game for food. But that thought just now gave him little concern. He could always find jaboty eggs in the jungle or catch fish in any stream he might encounter. And at present he was well supplied with dried meat.
If he had been superstitious, he might have thought that a malign fate had been following him ever since he set out on his journey. There was the loss of his revolver and harmonica, the enforced return to the hut when Hondura’s braves had come upon him, the further loss of his bow and arrows, his submergence in the pool when the tree had trapped him.
A native would have interpreted these things as evidence that the gods frowned on his undertaking, and would have turned back. But they only increased Bomba’s determination to play the game out to the end. He thrived on opposition. What were obstacles for but to be surmounted?
He traveled on for perhaps an hour. Then he came to a clearing among the dense underbrush. He welcomed this as enabling him to make more rapid progress.
Suddenly he stepped back, startled. There before him, grazing placidly beneath the heat of the tropical sun, was a great drove of peccaries, the fierce wild pigs of the jungle.
Ordinarily, Bomba would have been able to circle that grazing drove so silently and swiftly that before they had caught the scent of human presence he would have been far beyond their reach.
And that was the most intense desire in Bomba’s mind at that moment! He had seen natives after the peccaries had finished with them, and shuddered at the sight. If they should get at him in the open, his life would not be worth a moment’s purchase. This would be true even if he had his weapons. How much more certain would be his fate under present conditions!
But Bomba now had not as full control of his limbs as usual, and he made a slight noise as he stepped back into the forest fringe.