Bomba the jungle boy

by Roy Rockwood

With a feeling of great excitement he struck one upon a stone near by. This had been, while in the white men’s camp, an ever recurrent miracle, the quick spurt of flame that followed the scratching of this strange little stick along a rough surface.

But to his astonishment and utter chagrin the fire stick failed him. There was no response to his quick stroke upon the rock.

Bomba sat back upon his heels and regarded the match with frowning attention. Here was something he could not understand. Under the direction of the rubber-hunters, he had struck fire from the stick as easily as they had themselves. What then was the matter now?

He tried another match and then another, but when they still failed to give forth their magic fire, Bomba threw them from him with angry violence.

With a grunt of disgust he had recourse to his old standbys of bowl and stick, and soon had the fire going merrily.

Bomba was disturbed and worried by the incident. He could not know that the matches had been ruined for the time during his swim in the rushing waters of the river. Neither Gillis nor Dorn had thought to tell him that water was bad for these queer fire sticks.

So Bomba reasoned that the fault must lie with him. He must have lost his cunning since he had left the white man’s camp. In a vague way he felt that he was sinking back again, back into that morass of ignorance and loneliness from which his brief acquaintance with the white men had inspired him with the wish to raise himself.

Was he white after all, except in the color of his skin? Had he not lived in the jungle too long to hope to escape to that other and mysterious one, so utterly different from the one in which he had been brought up? He was sure that Gillis or Dorn could have struck that match. How far he was below them! Would he ever be able to stand on a plane with them?

But he dismissed these gloomy forebodings and turned to the work at hand. The boiling herbs in the pot sent up a stifling, aromatic odor. Bomba had learned the secret of herb medicine from Candido, a poor half-witted caboclo who traveled from place to place living on turtles’ eggs and fish and such game as he could manage to bring down with his arrows.

Candido was the only native who had ever shown any friendliness toward Bomba. He had told the boy the secret of the herb medicine, and had taught him where to search for the spindly little plant along the river’s edge.