Questioned now by Casson, he could give only the bare facts concerning his encounter with the rubber hunters, how he had made his way to them following the report of the iron stick, how he had helped them fight off the hungry jaguars, and how subsequently they had presented him with the harmonica, the matches, and the revolver.
He exhibited these treasures with great pride, and even played a few weird and mournful notes on the harmonica.
“This,” he lifted the revolver carefully in one brown hand, “they said you would show me how to use. They told me something about it. It is like your iron stick. It shoots blue fire and a thing they call a cartridge. See, they gave me some of them,” and with face eager and eyes glowing he brought forth the boxes of ammunition.
Casson was staring at the jungle boy in a queer, half-fascinated way. Bomba was frightened. He broke off in the midst of what he was saying and timidly touched the arm of the old man.
“You are sick?” he asked anxiously. “I will go to the ygapo and bring back herbs.”
He was half-way to his feet when Casson’s nervous grip on his arm halted him.
“No, no! I am not sick!” he cried. “You are a white boy, as white as those men are. You should not be living here, buried in the jungle. All right for an old man, all right for—old—Casson.” The disjointed sentence wavered into silence.
Bomba regarded the old man eagerly, anxiously. In his heart a strange excitement was throbbing. Was the door that at times had been partly opened to be swung wide at last? Was he to learn something about—what strange words had the white men used?—“folks,” “relations”?
That he was white he had known for a long time and secretly exulted in it. But what did it mean to be white?
Primarily he knew that it referred to the color of the skin. His was different from that of the caboclos that ranged the rivers, different from that of the Indians who lived in the heart of the jungle.