Once more he would trust himself to the swift turbulent river.
He came to the place where his raft was swinging in the sedge grass near the shore. His eyes scanned the river anxiously. But there were no more of those streaks of phosphorescence in evidence. The alligators had waited for a while perhaps, angry and disappointed, and then returned sullenly to their usual haunts.
To be sure, others might come and take their places, but as Bomba knew that the brutes usually slept at night he did not apprehend much danger on that score.
He unlashed the raft from its mooring and with a hard push of his paddle sent it out from the shore, where it was promptly caught in the grip of the current.
Now he was on the last lap of his journey, the journey that had taken him so many weary days, that had been so full of peril and adventure, and during which his life had so many times seemed to depend upon the turning of a hair.
Was not the very fact that he had been so preserved, Bomba asked himself, a proof that the gods of the Indians, in whom he half believed, were on his side? Surely he could not have come so far only to be mocked at last at the very moment when the end of his mission was in sight.
From these reflections Bomba derived what comfort he could, while his keen eyes scanned the tumbling waters ahead of him and darted from shore to shore.
Presently he became conscious of an odd humming sound, as of the buzzing of innumerable bees. In fact, he thought that a hive might be swarming from one side of the river to the other, and looked to see if he could detect the presence of the insects in the moonlight. Then he remembered that the bees swarmed only in the daytime.
Now the noise took on a deeper note, and with the humming were mingled discordant notes, rumbling notes, ominous notes, with an occasional crash as of faraway thunder.
Something like this Bomba had heard on his visit to the Moving Mountain. At that time they had been a prelude to a frightful earthquake. Was anything of that kind threatening now?