While he was seeking some solution, his eyes caught sight of a light on the river ahead of him. He thought at first it might be a torch in the canoe of some native. But if that had been so, it would have moved steadily in one direction.
Instead, it leaped about irregularly as though a sport of the wind and waters. Then it disappeared altogether.
Now other lights, some faint, some bright, began to stud the surface of the stream. There were many of them, and they flared up and went out as though at the caprice of a magician. All the time the humming sound persisted.
Bomba began to feel the hair slowly rising on his head. This transcended anything in his experience. He recalled the warnings of Hondura, of Neram and Ashati. Was he entering a realm of spirits, of malignant ghosts and demons? Were they even now laughing in glee as they saw the young voyager coming within their reach?
So engrossed was he in these eerie imaginings that for a moment his vigilant watch of the course he was taking lessened. He was brought to a rude sense of reality when his raft struck violently on a rock that protruded above the boiling foam of a rapid, so violently that it broke apart, the tough withes that bound it snapped by the force of the impact.
The next moment Bomba found himself struggling in the waters of the river.
He rose to the surface and shook the spray from his eyes. In the churning waters he could see the separated logs of the raft tossing about in wild confusion. He grasped one of them and hung on desperately until the current carried him and his slender support into the comparatively quiet waters beyond.
Then he climbed up on the log and sat on it astride.
His mind was a welter of conflicting thoughts and emotions. In a moment the whole outlook had changed. He had been in comparative safety as long as the raft was beneath his feet. Now he was a mere floating derelict, unable to shape his course, powerless to use his weapons if he were assailed.
The other logs were tossing about in dangerous proximity. At any moment one of them might be hurled against him, breaking a leg or knocking him senseless.