When Will approached them, the stranded fish tried to spring at him, clicking their jaws with impotent, savage fury. A moment later, as he tried to hold one of them down with a stick, it drove its keen wedge-shaped teeth clear through the hard wood. When the rest of the party came back, they found Jud and Will staring as if fascinated at the desperate, raging dwellers of the pool.
"I told you strange water not safe," said Pinto, as Professor Ditson skilfully bandaged Jud's legs with a dressing of sphagnum moss and the thick red sap of the dragon's-blood tree. "Look," and he showed Will that a joint of one of his fingers was missing. "Cannibal-fish more dangerous than anaconda or piraiba. They kill tiger and eat up alligator if it get wounded. Once," he went on, "white man ride a mule across river where these fish live. They bit mule and he threw man off into the river. When I got there an hour later only skeleton left of mule. Man's clothes lie at bottom of river, but only bones inside. You wait a little. I pay them well." And he disappeared into the woods.
Professor Ditson corroborated the Indian.
"They are undoubtedly the fiercest and most dangerous fish that swim," he said. "If the water is disturbed, it arouses them, and the taste or smell of blood seems to drive them mad."
By the time Jud was patched up, Pinto came back trailing behind him a long length of liana, from either end of which oozed a white liquid. This vine he pounded between two stones and threw into the pool. A minute later the water was milky from the flowing juice, and before long was filled with floating, motionless piranhas stupefied by the poisonous sap. Pinto fished out several with a long stick, and breaking their necks, wrapped them in balls of blue clay which he found along the shore, and, first making air-holes, set them to bake in the hot coals of the fire. When at last a smell of roast fish went up from the midst of the fire, Pinto pulled each ball out and broke the hard surface with light taps of a stick. The skin and scales came off with the clay. Opening the fish carefully, he cleaned it, leaving nothing but the savory white baked meat, which tasted and looked almost exactly like black bass. Jud avenged himself by eating seven.
Toward the end of the afternoon, Professor Amandus Ditson left the rest of the party reclining in that state of comfort and satisfaction which comes after a good meal. Each day the professor devoted all of his spare time toward realizing the greatest ambition of his life, to wit, the acquirement of one full-grown, able-bodied bushmaster. To-day armed with nothing more dangerous than a long crotched stick, he strolled along the trail, leaving it occasionally to search every mound or hillock which showed above the flat level of the jungle, since in such places this king of the pit-vipers is most apt to be found. Two hundred yards away from the camp, the trail took a turn, following the curved shore of the great lake, and in a few minutes the scientist was entirely out of sight or sound of the rest of the party. At last, finding nothing inland he turned his steps toward the lake itself. On some bare spaces showing between the trail and the edge of the water, he saw more of the puma-tracks like those which Pinto had pointed out earlier in the day. Remembering the Indian's fear the scientist smiled as he examined the fresh prints of big pads and long claws.
"Harmless as tomcats," he muttered to himself.
A moment later something happened which upset both the professor and his theories. As he straightened up, a hundred pounds of puma landed upon him. The legend of the lake, as far as pumas were concerned, was evidently correct. Harmless to man in other places, here, it seemed, the great cat stalked men as if they were deer. This one intended to sink the curved claws of her forepaws in the professor's shoulders, and, with her teeth at his throat, to rake his body with the terrible downward, slashing strokes of the catamount clan. Fortunately for himself, he had half-turned at the sound which her sudden spring made among the bushes. Instead of catching his throat, the panther's fanged jaws closed on the upper part of his left arm, while her forepaws gripped his shoulders, which were protected by a khaki coat and flannel shirt. Professor Ditson promptly caught the animal's throat with his sinewy right hand and held the great beast off at arm's length, thus keeping his body beyond the range of the deadly sickle-like hind claws. For a moment the puma's luminous gooseberry green eyes stared into his, and he could see the soft white of her under parts and the long, tawny tail which is the hall-mark of her family. As he sank his steel-strong fingers deeper into the great brute's throat, Professor Ditson abandoned all hope of life, for no unarmed man can hope to cope successfully with any of the great carnivora.
"A dozen zoölogists have lied in print!" he murmured to himself, indignantly.
Even as he spoke, he tried to wrench his left arm free. He immediately found, however, that it was impossible to pull it straight out from between the keen teeth. Sinking his fingers deeper into the puma's throat, he squeezed it suddenly with all of his strength. Involuntarily, as the wind was shut off from her lungs, the gripping jaws relaxed enough to allow the scientist to pull his arm through them for a few inches sidewise. Again the puma caught the moving arm, a few inches lower down. Again, as the man gripped her throat afresh, she relaxed her hold, and he gained an inch or so before the sharp teeth clamped tight again. Inch by inch, the professor worked the full length of his arm through the fierce jaws which, in spite of the khaki sleeve and thick shirt beneath, pierced and crushed terribly the tense muscles of his arm.