At first sight it looked like a crumpled heap of rags. Bomba’s thought was that it was the remains of an old hammock or native rug thrown aside as useless.
But there was something in the shape of it that made him revise his opinion, and he approached it with the caution that he always used when in the presence of something which he did not understand.
When at last he stood beside it he started back with a gasp.
It was a skeleton that lay there amid the shreds of garments that had previously clothed the body!
Bomba had seen such grisly sights before. They were not uncommon in the jungle, where natives without number met their end by the jaws of the puma and the fangs of the snake.
No, it was not the mere sight of a skeleton that made Bomba start so violently.
It was the fact that the skeleton was that of a white man!
CHAPTER IX
THE SKELETON
Bomba knew at once that the poor remnant of humanity that lay before him was not that of a native of the country.
He knew it by the character of the hair that still adhered to the scalp, by the fragments of skin that still were in evidence.