The second day he walked still farther, and the third day, accompanied by the faithful Hen, who followed him like a shadow, he covered several miles, exploring a path that ran through the jungle parallel with the trail.
"Some one's been along here lately, Boss," said Hen, pointing out freshly broken twigs and marks in the earth.
"Probably the same hunting-party that we met before," returned the professor, indifferently. "They won't—" He broke off his sentence at the sound of a little sick, wailing cry, which seemed to come from the thick jungle close at hand.
"What's that?" said Hen, sharply, raising his heavy machete.
Without answering, the scientist turned off the trail and, raising the bushes, exposed the emaciated body of a little Indian girl about four years old. A tiny slit in the side of each nostril showed her to be a member of the Araras, a friendly tribe of forest Indians akin to the Mundurucus, to whom Pinto belonged. As she looked up at Professor Ditson, her sunken face broke into a smile.
"White man!" she whispered, in the Arara dialect which both Professor Ditson and Pinto understood. Then, pointing to herself with fingers so wasted that they looked like birds' claws, she whispered her own name, "Ala," the Indian name for those gentle, beautiful little birds which Europeans have christened "wood-stars."
The stern face of the scientist softened to an expression that even Hen had never seen there before. In spite of his injured arm, it was Professor Ditson who lifted up the little girl and carried her back to the camp. There the rest of the party found them when they returned with one of the plump curassows which Pinto generally managed to bring back from every hunt. From this, Hen Pine hurriedly made hot, nourishing broth, with which the professor slowly fed the starved child until she dropped off to sleep, holding tightly to one of his long gaunt fingers. Several hours later the little girl woke up, seeming at first much stronger, and at once began to talk in a little voice faint as the chirp of a distant cricket. From her half-whispered sentences the professor learned that her father and mother had both been killed in a foray of the Muras. Not many months after their death, Ala herself had fallen sick of one of the forest fevers so fatal to Indian children, and had been abandoned by the tribe.
In spite of her starved condition, Ala was an attractive child. Instead of the usual shallow, shiny black eyes of Indian children, hers were big and brown and fringed with long lashes, and when she smiled it was as if an inner light shone through her wan, pinched little face.
At once she became the pet of the whole party, and although she, in turn, liked them all, it was Professor Ditson who always held first place in her heart. If he were long away from her, she would call plaintively, "Cariwa! Cariwa!" the Arara word for white man. Sometimes she would sing, in her tiny voice, folk-songs which she had learned from her mother, all about the wonderful deeds and doings of armadillos, agoutis, and other South American animals.
Before long, however, in spite of careful nursing, she began to sink rapidly. Then came days when she sang no more, but lay too weak even to taste the fruits which the boys were always bringing in to her from the forest. At last one night Professor Ditson, who always slept close beside her, heard a little far-away voice whisper in his ear, "White man, dear, dear white man!" and felt the touch of her hand against his cheek. A moment later, under the light of the setting moon, he saw that Ala had gone where there is no more sickness nor pain and where little children are safe forever.