Several times he was on the point of asking Casson for an explanation. But he remembered the terrible paroxysm into which Casson had been thrown the last time he had uttered those words. Bomba was afraid to precipitate another such scene. It might kill Casson. He loved the old man, clung to him. He would not endanger his life by probing him with any further questions.
In a few days the work on the hut was finished. Bomba was proud of his craftsmanship, and even Casson roused himself from his apathy far enough to bestow some words of praise.
But now that his task was done and his strength fully recovered, a great restlessness took possession of Bomba. Casson, a mere shadow of a man, going for hours without speaking a word, responding to questions only in monosyllables, was no companion for the lad.
Bomba longed to be off to the shadowy depths of the jungle. He had enemies there, but he also had friends. He would call these friends to him, Kiki and Woowoo, Doto, the giant monkey, and Tatuc, head of the monkey tribe.
They were the warmest friends he had in that vast tangled wilderness besides Casson. He understood them, and they loved and trusted him. He was scarcely ever lonesome when with them.
It was very bad to be lonesome. That ache was more terrible to Bomba than any tearing of his flesh. He shrank from it as he did from no physical pain. It was really the poignant longing in him for his own kind, but Bomba knew it only as a strange illness, an ache not of his body but of some mysterious part of him of which he had no knowledge.
So now, feeling this sickness creeping over him, he felt irresistibly the impulse to fly from it, to seek forgetfulness among the only friends he knew.
The jungle boy determined to take his harmonica, too. His eyes brightened at the thought. He had now learned to make the instrument emit the sounds he, Bomba, wished. Perhaps the monkeys and parrots would like it. At least they would be surprised and inquisitive.
Bomba had two good reasons to give Casson for his trip. They needed game. They had been living almost altogether upon the eggs of the jaboties, or forest turtles, and even to a jungle palate, easily satisfied, such a limited diet becomes monotonous, if too long continued. Then, too, he wanted to get in contact with some of the more friendly natives and secure from them a couple of hammocks to replace those that had been destroyed in the fire.
When he announced his intention to Casson, the old man merely nodded in an absent manner and went on with what he was doing. So Bomba took his machete, his bow and arrows, his precious fire stick and his harmonica, and plunged into the jungle, not without repeated injunctions to Casson to be on the alert if the head-hunters should come, and, if he had time, to try to escape down the river.