On learning that the white men would pass that night in the village, everyone was resolved to make the stay an entertaining one. The visitors were shown the parish church, school, stores, etc., and eventually led to the older chief’s house for an elaborate meal of fish, turtle-eggs, mushrooms, venison, partridges, and stewed monkey, with fruit jellies, cakes, and native beer. The hut was neatly furnished with cane-seated benches or lounges; and—not always to the guests’ greater comfort—a puma, various snakes, a couple of monkeys, and three parrots, all very tame, wandered about the place at will.
Soon after supper, while Prince Adalbert smoked with the chiefs and the padre, he unconsciously committed a very serious breach of local etiquette. Attracted by the great size and artistic workmanship of two bows that stood against the wall close by him, he leant forward and took up one to examine it more closely. Immediately a heart-rending scream rose from the only woman present—the cacique’s widowed mother—who, springing forward, snatched the weapon from the stranger’s hand and replaced it with great care and reverence.
The courtier-instinct of the Prussian officers was naturally scandalised, the cacique remained perfectly still, though he looked very uncomfortable, and said something in dialect to his mother that appeared to be a gentle reproach; while the Indian padre, whose education had brought him more in touch with white men and their notions of hospitality, hastened politely 146 to explain and apologise. The bows, he said, were the last weapons used by the woman’s late husband, and it was the custom of the tribe to regard such things as extremely sacred; no one but the deceased’s widow or eldest son might so much as touch them or stand within a pace of them. The Prince was, of course, too much a man of the world to feel any annoyance, and quickly put his entertainers at their ease again by expressing keen interest in the customs peculiar to the Caribs; and this led to the cacique’s inviting him to witness a dance which was being arranged in his honour. He led the way to the public square or plaza, which was now illuminated by a symmetrical arrangement of torches and a huge bonfire. As soon as all were seated under a canopy, the cacique struck a gong, and, from every corner of the square, the young men of the tribe appeared, each armed with a blunted spear and a round wooden shield; and, at a second beat of the gong, all these began an awkward, waddling march round and round the fire. This had gone on for some minutes when, with a roar that was a splendid imitation of a bull’s bellowing, a man sprang up from the ground and, with head down, pretended to run at full charge through the procession. The march stopped instantly, every man turned his spear on the disturber, and then followed a really admirable pantomime of a bull-fight, which ended in the vanquishing and pretended death of the “bull.”
In the morning the Prussians sought to press various gifts on the hospitable Indians; but they were only received under protest and on condition of the visitors accepting others in return; moreover, the 147 cacique appointed five mounted men to act as guides as far as the river; and these, he said, were on no account to accept any payment beyond their daily rations.
A march of something like four hundred miles now lay before the travellers, and this was accomplished, by easy stages, within about a fortnight. When once the river was in sight the Indians did not, as the Prince had expected, promptly desert; nevertheless, they reground their knives and the points of their spears and arrows as though they anticipated an attack at any moment. But no other Indians were sighted for a while; the ford of the Madeira marked on the chart was found, and the explorers crossed the river in comfort and bade good-bye to the honest fellows who had guided them so far and so faithfully.
Now came a temporary break in the forest land; and for several miles the road was a mere sand-strip, like a towpath, running between the Amazon and some low, marshy ground. No one was sorry to escape from this district to the higher and more wooded lands again, for not only do such marshes breed all kinds of fever, but they are the chosen lurking-places of crocodiles, water-serpents, and other abominations.
On the third afternoon of the new march, Count Oriolla noticed, as they entered upon more forest land, that dark-skinned figures continually flitted among the trees, as though someone were spying on or keeping up with the horsemen. He reported this, and the Prince gave orders for all to draw more together and to have their weapons ready to hand. At every step, too, the track betrayed more and more signs of recent use by 148 horses and cattle; and, from the top of the next hill, a haze like the smoke from dozens of houses was visible.
“What are those?” asked the Prince as he pointed to some dark objects moving on the surface of the water a long way ahead.
“Canoes, Hoheit; and Indians in them,” promptly answered the naval captain, more accustomed than the rest to long-distance gazing.
“Well, well; let us ride on. They probably intend us no harm.”