“The white god who put a spell on these one-time cannibals will bewitch us and make us wash and rejoice when it is time to die.”
He shuddered and spat at a cayman that was lumbering away from his batalõe.
Hale Oakham laughed, a hearty boyish laugh for a rather learned young professor.
“Is that all they do to you?” he asked.
“No. All who enter this magic matto die soon, rejoicing. Before the last breath comes, it is said their bodies turn into a handful of silver dust—poof!—like that.” He snapped his dirty fingers. “Then the life that leaves them goes into rocks that walk.”
Hale sighed resignedly. There wasn’t any use to argue.
“Unload your batalõe,” he ordered testily, “and get your filthy carcasses away.”
The half-breeds obeyed readily. As the departing batalõe turned from the igarapé into the open water of the river, the young man repressed a sudden lifting of his scalp. He was in for it now!
His long body sprawled out in the batalõe, he paddled about aimlessly for several minutes until he found an aisle through the jungle—the path that led to the jungle village which he was visiting in the name of science, and for a certain award.