The white men! He would never know now about that mysterious world from which they had come, to which at this moment they were returning. He would not know. He would not know!
The words beat themselves over and over in his brain, while his straining muscles labored to snatch a few more moments from eternity.
He cast one more look behind him. The hideous brute was nearer now, the fangs in its frightful jaws gleaming as the cayman clove the water.
Now it was close upon him! Bomba’s legs were instinctively drawn up to his body to escape the slash of those dreadful jaws. His hand reached for his knife.
What was that his dimming eyes saw directly ahead of him? Bomba’s heart leaped with renewed hope as he saw that the flat object floating almost within his reach was a rude raft—four hollow logs strapped together with bush cord. The work of caboclos, probably, who had later discarded it for a more convenient mode of river travel—the regatao or river canoe.
Could he reach it? The splashing of the alligator was close behind him. The brute was preparing for its spring. Every moment Bomba expected to feel the clamp of those iron jaws, to be dragged beneath the swirling surface to the slime and ooze of the river bed, to be feasted on at leisure.
The boy summoned all his expiring strength in one last effort. A mighty spurt carried him a few feet ahead. He must get hold of that raft. It spelled safety, deliverance from a horrible fate. Extinction threatened him, and like any other creature of the wild he fought madly for his life.
Another moment and those hungry jaws would fasten on him, tear his straining soul from his mangled body.
Now the raft was only an inch from his frantic fingers—half an inch! He touched it! He grasped it, lifted himself, slipped back, made one last effort, pulled himself out and sprawled at full length upon the raft!
He was not a second too soon. Even as he fell prone, two vicious jaws snapped savagely. The cayman lurched against the raft, tipping it to such an angle that Bomba was almost thrown into the water.