Setting off with strides like those of a deer, Bomba vowed that he would outrace the Indians. He must get to the hut before them, or Casson was lost.
But the Indians, too, were swift and adept in getting through the jungle. Knowing that they would take the most direct trail, Bomba was forced to choose a more circuitous one.
His chief hope lay in his extraordinary fleetness of foot. If this did not fail him and if he met with no other mishaps in the jungle, he might yet be able to reach the hut and make some preparations for defense before Nascanora and his followers reached it on their errand of destruction.
He made his way with desperate energy and all the speed he could infuse into his legs, pausing for no obstacle great or small.
In the course he had chosen lay a primitive bridge that had been placed across one of the streams that abounded in the region. The bridge consisted simply of the trunk of a mirity palm, wet and slippery from the recent storm.
If Bomba had followed his usual custom on such occasions and kicked off his sandals, so that his bare feet might get a grip on the log, he could have passed over it in perfect safety, as he had done hundreds of times before.
But so frantic was his haste and so great his belief in his ability to maintain his balance on any footing, however precarious, that this time he did not stop to remove his sandals.
He had traversed almost the entire length of the bridge and had nearly reached the further shore when he slipped and fell, scrambling and kicking, into the water.
It would not have been so bad if in the fall he had not struck his head against the log. This dazed him for a moment, but the shock of the water revived him and brought him to the surface sputtering and furious.
He struck out strongly for the shore, but at the same moment something bit viciously at his leg. Bomba knew at once what it was—the saw-toothed piranha, the voracious fish that abounds in all the tributaries of the Amazon.