Bomba had not gone far before he began to see among the trees and in the branches the faces of his wild friends peering at him with their bright eyes.
He called to them softly, and they came to him. Kiki and Woowoo, the parrots, perched on his shoulders and pecked affectionately at his face.
Doto, the great monkey, swung from branch to branch close above his head, now and again playfully dropping a bunch of leaves upon him. Bomba felt soothed and comforted.
These wild folk loved and trusted him. He was one of them. He belonged here in the heart of the jungle. It must be so.
Yet all the time some mysterious voice within him whispered that it was not so. He did not belong here. He was no caboclo, no Indian. What was he then? Where did he belong?
Bartow! Laura! He felt that in these words must lie the solution of the enigma. Over and over the words ran through his mind, until it seemed that even the chattering monkeys overhead must hear them.
Feeling the loneliness again creeping over him, Bomba sat down on a log and took out his mouth organ. He would gather his friends around him. They would help him to fight off the sickness that came from nowhere and did not hurt his body—hurt only that mysterious part of him that he did not understand.
But the first weird notes on the harmonica had a queer effect upon the jungle denizens. They had begun to cluster about the boy, as they always did when he appeared among them. But at the wail of the curious thing that Bomba held to his mouth they disappeared. If they had suddenly been sucked down to the muddy bottom of the ygapo, the place could not have seemed more utterly deserted.
Bomba looked surprised for a moment. Then he smiled, his teeth showing dazzling white against his brown skin.
He whistled softly and called: