Pipina sent up a shrill cry, for she expected that moment to be her last.
By a marvelous exercise of muscular control, Bomba balanced himself and retained his foothold upon the log with one foot while he drew up the other and gradually regained his equilibrium.
But Pipina, in panic, was now squirming about in his arms and disarranging his calculations. He measured the distance still to be traversed, staked his all on one swift run, sped across the treacherous log, and with one last leap reached the farther shore in safety.
A great joy was singing in his heart as he set Pipina on her feet.
“The gods are with us, Pipina!” he exulted. “Where are your bad spirits now? Tell Bomba that!”
“We have not yet reached the maloca of Hondura,” the old squaw reminded him, holding tenaciously to her superstition. “It is not well to rejoice too soon. We may yet find evil spirits hiding, waiting for us behind the trees.”
But Bomba laughed such fears to scorn. He was buoyant with confidence. Fate had been kind to him thus far that night, fate and his own quick brain and strong arms.
His knowledge of the savages and their ways told him that he and Pipina had passed through the ring of the headhunters. Moreover, the maloca of Hondura was now only two hours’ journey away and through a less tangled part of the jungle.
True, there was not a moment that did not hold possible peril for them. A boa constrictor might dart from a tree branch and seek to encircle them in its folds. The roar of a jaguar might prelude its spring. Every thicket might harbor a bringer of death.
But evil as they were, they were better understood and more easily dealt with than those human enemies, the men who carried at their belts the heads of their victims.