“He’s saved the camp all right,” assented Dorn, as he directed some of the natives to drag the heavy bodies to the places that Bomba indicated.
That the sight of their dead kindred daunted whatever other jaguars might have intended to make an onslaught on the camp, seemed clear as time went on. The jungle was vocal, as it always is at night, with the strident notes of insects, the howling of monkeys, and now and then the distant bellow of an anaconda.
But the jaguars seemed to have taken themselves off. Bomba’s keen ears could no longer detect the subdued growling and purring of the four-footed raiders, the soft thud of their padding feet. Nor were his nostrils conscious of their presence.
After a full hour had passed, he relaxed his tense attitude, stretched, and yawned.
“They have gone,” he announced.
“Are you sure?” asked Gillis, eagerly.
“They have gone,” repeated Bomba. “And they will tell the others. They will not come back. I will sleep.”
“Go to it, my boy,” said Dorn. “You’ve earned it, if ever anyone did. I don’t know what we’d have done without you.”
“Our name would have been Dennis,” declared Gillis.
“I thought your name was Gillis,” said Bomba wonderingly.