Of all the sticky, funny messes I ever saw it was the packs of these Indians. The rain had soaked through the palm leaves on top and through the meshes of the baskets at the sides. The cassava cakes had dissolved into a soft, semi-liquid dough. This had run down through the contents of the baskets. Nearly every one contained bits of red cloth—an Indian’s choice possession. The colors had run and there were pink dough and dough-covered arrows and pink smoked meat and sticky, cassava dough enameled shirts. It was a great mess, but the Indians scraped the dough together to dry out in the sun the next day and worried not at all, for the cassava dough would all dry and be rubbed off their belongings.
While the Indians like the white men, they do not like the blacks. They get along with them all right because they have nothing whatever to do with the “Me-go-ro-man” as they call them. Our blacks, as usual, had their three shelters a distance from ours. The Indians built a hasty shelter alongside our canvas one, slung their hammocks, now daubed with dough, and climbed in. Jimmy started the victrola, the camp fires burned brightly despite the rain, and the Indians sat up and stared open-eyed, at the “hoodoo” box from which came the, to them, weird sounds. They believed that the spirits of the dead were inside that victrola, but when they saw Jimmy putting on the records and saw that no ghosts came out to kill them, they lost their fear of it.
MY JUNGLE FRIENDS
The plaintive Southern melodies seemed to please them most. Next in their favor was a weird jazz number. From the wet jungle came the peculiar roar of red baboons. We would have fresh baboon steak next day, if we could spare an hour for hunting.
And then from the black, dismal depths of that dripping jungle came the most pitiful sobbing that I ever heard. Whether a child or a woman, or a number of them, I could not make out. I leaped from my hammock, wondering what was happening to them, if they were lost, and trying to guess how far into the jungle we would have to travel to rescue them.
Never had I heard such distress as that weeping and wailing and heartbreaking sobbing.
I pictured some helpless women there, perhaps being attacked by wild animals. Even if they were Indian women, still they were humans, I thought—
“Black night monkey,” said Jimmy.
I looked at Lewis. He smiled and nodded.