The Inca Emerald

by Samuel Scoville

Pinto's prophecy was partly fulfilled with startling suddenness. The party had finished breakfast, and the montaria was anchored in a smooth, muddy lagoon which led from the river back some distance into the forest. While Will and Hen fished from the bow of the boat the rest of the party curled themselves up under the shade of the overhanging trees to make up their lost sleep. At first, the fish bit well and the two caught a number which looked much like the black bass of northern waters. A minute later, a school of fresh-water flying-fish broke water near them and flashed through the air for a full twenty yards, like a flight of gleaming birds.

As the sun burned up the morning mist, it changed from a sullen red to a dazzling gold and at last to a molten white, and the two fishermen nodded over their poles as little waves of heat ran across the still water and seemed to weigh down their eyelids like swathings of soft wool. The prow of the boat swung lazily back and forth in the slow current which set in from the main river. Suddenly the dark water around the boat was muddied and discolored, as if something had stirred up the bottom ten feet below. Then up through the clouded water drifted a vast, spectral, grayish-white shape. Nearer and nearer to the surface it came, while Hen and Will dozed over their poles. Will sat directly in the bow, and his body, sagging with sleep, leaned slightly over the gunwale.

Suddenly the surface of the water was broken by a tremendous splash, and out from its depth shot half the body of a fish nearly ten feet in length. Its color was the gray-white of the ooze at the bottom of the stream in which it had lain hidden until attracted to the surface by the shadow of the montaria drifting above him. Will awakened at the hoarse shout from Hen just in time to see yawning in front of him a mouth more enormous than he believed any created thing possessed outside of the whale family. It was a full five feet between the yawning jaws, which were circled by a set of small sharp teeth. Even as he sprang back, the monster lunged forward right across the edge of the boat and the jaws snapped shut.

Will rolled to one side in an effort to escape the menancing depths, and although he managed to save his head and body from the maw of the great fish, yet the jaws closed firmly on both his extended arms, engulfing them clear to the shoulder. The little teeth, tiny in comparison with the size of the jaws in which they were set, hardly more than penetrated the sleeves of his flannel shirt and pricked the skin below, but as the monster lurched backward toward the water its great weight drew the boy irresistibly toward the edge of the boat, although he dug his feet into the thwarts and twined them around the seat on which he had been sitting. Once in the river, the fatal jaws would open again, and he felt that he would be swallowed as easily as a pike would take in a minnow.

Even as he was dragged forward to what seemed certain death, Will did not fail to recognize a familiar outline in the vast fish-face against which he was held. The small, deep-set eyes, the skin like oiled leather, long filaments extending from the side of the jaw, and the enormous round head were nothing more than that of the catfish or bullhead which he used to catch at night behind the mill-dam in Cornwall, enlarged a thousand times.

Although the monster, in spite of its unwieldy size, had sprung forth, gripped its intended prey, and started back for the water in a flash, yet Hen Pine was even quicker. In spite of his size, there was no one in the party quicker in an emergency than the giant negro. Even as he sprang to his feet he disengaged the huge steel machete which always dangled from his belt. Hen's blade, which he used as a bush-hook and a weapon, was half again as heavy as the ordinary machete, and he always kept it ground to a razor edge. He reached the bow just as the great, gray, glistening body slipped back over the gunwale, dragging Will irresistibly with it. Swinging the broad heavy blade over his head, with every ounce of effort in his brawny body, Hen, brought the keen edge down slantwise across the gray back of the river-monster, which tapered absurdly small in comparison with the vast spread of the gaping jaws. It was such a blow as Richard the Lion-hearted might have struck; and just as his historic battle-sword would shear through triple steel plate and flesh and bone, so that day the machete of Hen Pine, unsung in song or story, cut through the smooth gray skin, the solid flesh beneath, and whizzed straight on through the cartilaginous joints of the great fish's spine, nor ever stopped until it had sunk deep into the wood of the high gunwale of the boat itself. With a gasping sigh, the monster's head rolled off the edge of the boat and slowly sank through the dark water, leaving the long, severed trunk floating on the surface. Reaching out, the negro caught the latter by one of the back fins and secured it with a quick twist of a near-by rope.

"That's the biggest piraiba I ever see," he announced. "They're fine to eat, an' turn about is fair play. Ol' piraiba try to eat you; now you eat him." And while Will sat back on the seat, sick and faint from his narrow escape, Hen proceeded to haul the black trunk aboard and carve steaks of the white, firm-set flesh from it.

"Every year along the Madeira River this fish tip over canoes and swallow Indians. They's more afraid of it," Hen said, "than they is of alligators or anacondas."

When Hen woke up the rest of the party and told them of the near-tragedy Pinto croaked like a raven.

"Sucuruju one, piraiba two; but three is yet to come," he finished despondingly. The next two days, however, seemed to indicate that the River had exhausted its malice against the travelers. The party paddled through a panorama of sights and sounds new to the Northerners, and at night camped safely on high, dry places on the banks. On the morning of the third day the whole party started down the river before daylight and watched the dawn of a tropical day, a miracle even more beautiful than the sunrises of the North. One moment there was perfect blackness; then a faint light showed in the east; and suddenly, without the slow changes of Northern skies, the whole east turned a lovely azure blue, against which showed a film and fretwork of white clouds, like wisps of snowy lace.