Afloat in the Forest: or, A Voyage among the Tree-Tops

“Why didn’t you awake us? We must have drifted nearly across the lagoa. Those sounds, I should say, come out of the forest, and that, whatever it is, must be among the trees. Munday! Munday!”

“Hola!” answered the Indian, as he started up from his squatting attitude: “what is it, patron? Anything gone wrong?”

“No: on the contrary, we appear to have got very near to the other side of the lagoa.”

“Yes, yes!” interrupted the Indian as soon as the forest noises fell upon his ear; “that humming you hear must come thence. Pa terra! lights among the trees!”

“Yes, we have just discovered them. What can they be?”

“Fires,” answered the Indian.

“You think it is not fire-flies?”

“No; the loengos do not show that way. They are real fires. There must be people there.”

“Then there is land, and we have at last reached terra firma.”

“The Lord be praised for that,” reverently exclaimed the Irishman. “Our throubles will soon be over.”

“May be not, may be not,” answered the Mundurucú, in a voice that betrayed both doubt and apprehension.

“Why not, Munday?” asked Trevannion. “If it be fires we see, surely they are on the shore; and kindled by men. There should be some settlement where we can obtain assistance?”

“Ah, patron! nothing of all that need follow from their being fires; only that there must be men. The fires need only be on the shore, and as for the men who made them, instead of showing hospitality, just as like they make take a fancy to eat us.”

“Eat us! you mean that they may be cannibals?”

“Just so, patron. Likely as not. It’s good luck,” pursued the tapuyo, looking around, “the wind went down, else we might have been carried too close. I must swim towards yon lights, and see what they are, before we go any nearer. Will you go with me, young master?”

“O, certainly!” replied Richard, to whom the question was addressed.

“Well, then,” continued the tapuyo, speaking to the others, “you must not make any loud noise while we are gone. We are not so very distant from those fires, – a mile or thereabout; and the water carries the sound a long ways. If it be enemies, and they should hear us, there would be no chance of escaping from them. Come, young master, there’s not a minute to spare. It must be very near morning. If we discover danger, we shall have but little time to got out of its way in the darkness; and that would be our only hope. Come! follow me!”

As the Indian ceased speaking, he slipped gently down into the water, and swam off to the two lights whose gleam appeared every moment more conspicuous.

“Don’t be afraid, Rosetta,” said Richard, as he parted from his cousin. “I warrant it’ll turn out to be some plantation on the bank, with a house with lights shining through the windows, and white people inside, where we’ll all be kindly received, and get a new craft to carry us down to Pará. Good by for the present! We’ll soon be back again with good news.”

So saying, he leaped into the water and swam off in the wake of the tapuyo.

Chapter Eighty One

An Aerial Village

The swimmers had not made many hundred yards when they saw beyond doubt that the forest was not far off. It was even nearer than they had at first imagined, the darkness having deceived them; and perhaps the log may have drifted nearer while they were under the impression that they lay becalmed.

At all events, they were now scarcely a quarter of a mile from the forest, which they knew stretched along the horizon as far as they could have seen had it been daylight. They could only just distinguish a dark belt or line rising above the surface of the water before them; but that this extended right and left to a far distance could be told from the sounds that came from it. There was the hum of tree-crickets and cicadas, the gluck of toads and frogs, the screams of aquatic birds, the hooting of owls, and the strange plaintive calls of the goat-suckers, of which several species inhabit the Gapo forests; the whip-poor-will and the “willy-come-go” all the night long giving utterance to their monotonous melody. Harsher still were the cries proceeding from the throats of howling monkeys, with now and then the melancholy moaning of the aï, as it moved slowly through the branches of the embaüba (cecropia-tree). All these sounds, and a score of other kinds, – some produced by insects and reptiles of unknown species, – were blended in that great choir of nature which fills the tropical forest with its midnight music.

The two swimmers, however, paid no attention to this fact; their whole thoughts being occupied by the lights, that, as they advanced, grew every moment more conspicuous. There was no longer any doubt about these being the blaze of fires. It was simply a question of where the fires were burning, and who had kindled them.

The young Paraense supposed them to be upon the shore of the lagoa. About this, however, his companion expressed a doubt. They did not seem to burn steadily, their discs appearing now larger and now less. Sometimes one would go out altogether, then blaze up afresh, while another was as suddenly extinguished. The younger of the two swimmers expressed astonishment at this intermittence, which his companion easily explained. The fires, he said, were placed at some distance from the edge of the forest, among the trees, and it was by some tree-trunk now and then intervening that the illusion was caused.

Silently the swimmers approached, and in due time they glided in under the shadow of the thick foliage, and saw the fires more distinctly. To the astonishment of Richard – for the tapuyo did not seem at all astonished – they did not appear to be on the ground, but up in the air! The Paraense at first supposed them to have been kindled upon the top of some eminence; but, on scanning them more closely, he saw that this could not be the case. Their gleaming red light fell upon water shining beneath, over which, it was clear, they were in some way suspended.

As their eyes became accustomed to the glare, the swimmers could make out that the fires were upon a sort of scaffold raised several feet above the water, and supported by the trunks of the trees. Other similar scaffolds could be seen, on which no fires had been kindled, – from the fact, no doubt, that their occupants were not yet astir.

By the blaze human figures were moving to and fro, and others were on the platforms near by, which were more dimly illuminated; some entering, some coming forth from “toldos,” or sheds, that stood upon them. Hammocks could be seen suspended from free to tree, some empty, and some still holding a sleeper.

All this was seen at a single glance, while at the same time were heard voices, that had been hitherto drowned by the forest choir, but could now be distinguished as the voices of men, women, and children, – such as might be heard in some rural hamlet, whose inhabitants were about bestirring themselves for their daily avocations.

The tapuyo, gliding close up to the Paraense, whispered in his ear, “A malocca!”

“An Indian village!” Richard rejoined. “We’ve reached tierra firme, then?”

“Not a bit of it, young master. If the dry land had been near, those fires wouldn’t be burning among the tree-tops.”

“At all events, we are fortunate in falling in with this curious malocca, suspended between heaven and earth. Are we not so?”

“That depends on who they are that inhabit it. It may be that we’ve chanced upon a tribe of cannibals.”

“Cannibals! Do you think there are such in the Gapo?”

“There are savages in the Gapo who would torture before killing, – you, more especially, whose skins are white, remember, with bitterness, what first drove them to make their home in the midst of the water-forests, – the white slave-hunters. They have reason to remember it; for the cruel chase is still kept up. If this be a malocca of Muras, the sooner we get away, the safer. They would show you whites no mercy, and less than mercy to me, a red man like themselves. We Mundurucús are their deadliest enemies. Now, you lie still, and listen. Let me hear what they are saying. I know the Mura tongue. If I can catch a word it will be sufficient. Hush!”

Not long had they been listening, when the Indian started, an expression of anxiety suddenly overspreading his features, as his companion could perceive by the faint light of the distant fires.

“As I expected,” said he, “they are Muras. We must be gone, without a moment’s loss of time. It will be as much as we can do to paddle the log out of sight before day breaks. If we don’t succeed in doing so, we are all lost. Once seen, their canoes would be too quick for us. Back, back to the monguba!”

Chapter Eighty Two

A Slow Retreat: in the Arcade

Their report spread consternation among the crew. Trevannion, incredulous of the existence of such bloodthirsty savages as Munday represented the Muras to be, was disposed to treat it as an exaggeration. The young Paraense, who, when in his father’s house, had met many of the up-river traders, and heard them conversing on this very theme, was able to endorse what the Mundurucú said. It was well-known to the traders that there were tribes of wild Indians inhabiting the Gapo lands, who during the season of the inundation made their home among the tree-tops, – that some of these were cannibals, and all of them savages of a most ferocious type, with whom an encounter in their native wilds, by any party not strong enough to resist them, might prove both dangerous and deadly.

There was no time to argue; and without further opposition the ex-miner himself sprang to one of the paddles, the tapuyo taking the other. They had no idea of going back across the lagoa. To have proceeded in that direction would have been to court discovery. With such slow progress as theirs, a mile would be about all they could make before daybreak; and, out on the open water, their craft would be distinguishable at three times that distance. The course counselled by the tapuyo was to keep at first parallel to the line of the trees; and then enter among these as soon as the dawn began.

As the party retreated, not two, but ten fires were seen gleaming among the trees, filling the forest with their bright coruscation. The tapuyo explained that each new light denoted the uprising of a fresh family, until the whole malocca was astir. The fires were kindled to cook the breakfast of the Indians. Notwithstanding this domestic design, our adventurers looked back upon them with feelings of apprehension; for they were not without fears that, roasted over those very fires, they might furnish the savages with the material for a cannibal repast!

To all appearance never did the ceiba go slower, – never lie so dull upon the water. Despite the vigorous straining of strong arms, it scarcely seemed to move. The sail was of no service, as there was not a breath of air, but was rather an obstruction; and, seeing this, Mozey let loose the halyards and gently lowered it.

They had hardly made half a mile from the point of starting, when they saw the dawn just appearing above the tops of the trees. They were upon the equator itself, where between dawn and daylight there is but a short interval of time. Knowing this, the craft was turned half round, and pulled towards a place of concealment. As they moved on to make it, they could see the sunlight stealing over the surface of the water, and the fires becoming paler at its approach. In ten minutes more, daylight would be upon them!

It was now a struggle against time, – a trial of speed between the ceiba and the sun, – both slowly approaching a critical point in their course. Trevannion and the tapuyo plied the paddles as men rowing for their lives and the lives of others dear to them. They almost felt as if the sun favoured them; for he not only seemed to suspend his rising, but to sink back in his course. Perhaps it was only the shadow of the trees, under which they had now entered. At all events, they were in the midst of obscurity, propelling the dead-wood into the embouchure of an igarápe, overshadowed with drooping trees, that, like a dark cavern, promised them a hiding-place.

At the moment of entering, it was so dark they could not tell how far the opening extended. In this uncertainty they suspended the stroke of their paddles, and suffered the ceiba to come to a standstill. As yet they had no other light than that afforded by the fire-flies that flitted under about the trees. But these were of the large species, known as Cocuyos (Elater noctilucus), one of which, when held over the page of a printed book, enables a person to read; and as there were many of them wandering about, their united sparkle enabled our adventurers to make out that the creek was of very limited extent.

Gradually, as the sun rose higher, his light fell gently glimmering through the leaves, and showed that the arcade was a cul de sac, extending only about a hundred yards into the labyrinth of branches and parasitical plants. They had entered, so to speak, a court through which there was no thoroughfare; and there they must remain. They could only get out of it by taking to the tree-tops, or else by returning to the open lagoa. But they had had enough of travelling through the tree-tops, while to abandon the craft that had carried them so comfortably, and that might still avail them, was not to be thought of.

As to returning to the open water, that would be like delivering themselves into the very jaws of the danger they were desirous to avoid; for, once seen by the savages, there would not be the slightest chance of escape. They were provided with canoes moored among the tree-trunks that formed the supports of their aerial habitations. Clumsy structures enough; but, no matter how clumsy or slow, they were swifter than the dead-wood; and in the event of a chase the latter would be easily overhauled and captured. Only one course offered any prospect of safety, – to remain all day in the arcade, trusting that none of the savages might have any business near the place. At night they could steal out again, and by an industrious use of their paddles put a safer distance between themselves and the dangerous denizens of the malocca.