Part 46 (1/2)

Then my thoughts reverted to home and those I had to meet there, with our accounts of how it was that poor Tom had met his death.

”All due to my miserable ambition,” I said to myself; ”all owing to my wretched thirst for gold. And what has it all come to?” I said bitterly. ”I had far better have settled down to honest, straightforward labour. I should have been better off.”

I gave the paddle a few dips here, and noted that the water was much purer and clearer than it had seemed yet. We were very close in to the sh.o.r.e, but we had floated down so far that we had ceased to fear the Indians, believing as we did that they were now far behind.

Then I began to think once more of how much better off I should have been if I had settled down to work on my uncle's plantation.

Not much, I was obliged to own, for my settling down would not have saved me from quarrelling with Garcia, neither would it have cleared my uncle from the inc.u.mbrance upon his home.

”Perhaps things are best as they are,” I said; and then I looked back to where Lilla was thoughtfully gazing down into the river from where she reclined upon the raft, and letting one of her hands hang down in the water, which she played with and splashed from time to time.

I was just going to warn her not to do so, for I remembered having read or heard tell that alligators would sometimes make a snap at a hand dragging in the water like that, when she uttered a sharp cry, s.n.a.t.c.hing her hand away; and as she did so I saw a little flash, as if a tiny, silvery fish, dropped back into the water.

”What is it?” I said.

”Something bit me--a little fish,” she said. ”It has nipped a morsel out of my finger.”

She held up her hand as she spoke before wrapping a sc.r.a.p of linen round it, and I could see that it was bleeding freely.

”Surely it could not have been that tiny fish,” I said, thrusting one hand into the water and s.n.a.t.c.hing it back again, for as it pa.s.sed beneath the surface it was as if it had been pinched in half a dozen places at once; and when I thrust it in again I could see that the water was alive with little fish apparently about a couple of inches long, and instantaneously they made a rush at my hand, fastening upon it everywhere, so that it needed a sharp shake to throw them off; and when I drew it out, hardened and tough as it was with my late rough work, it was bleeding in a dozen places.

”Why, the little wretches!” I exclaimed; and by way of experiment I held a piece of leather over the side, to find that it was attacked furiously; while even later on, when I had been fis.h.i.+ng and had caught a small kind of mud-carp, I hauled it behind the canoe, in a few minutes there was nothing left but the head--the little ravenous creatures having literally devoured it all but the stronger bones.

I remember thinking how unpleasant it would be to bathe there, and often and often afterwards we found that it would be absolutely impossible to dip our hands beneath the water unless we wished to withdraw them smarting and covered with blood.

What more these little creatures could effect we had yet to learn, but we owned that they were as powerful in the water as the fiercer kind of ants on land, where they were virulent enough in places to master even the larger kinds of snakes if they could find them in a semi-torpid state after a meal--biting with such virulence and in such myriads that the most powerful creatures at last succ.u.mbed.

At last, as the days glided on, we became more and more silent. Very little was said, and only once did my uncle talk to me quietly about our future, saying that we must get to one of the settlements on the Orinoco, low down near its mouth, and then see what could be done.

A deep, settled melancholy seemed to have affected us all; but the sight, after many days, of a small trading-boat seemed to inspire us with hopefulness; and having, in exchange for a gun, obtained a fair quant.i.ty of provisions, we continued our journey with lightened spirits.

In spite, though, of seeing now and then a trading-boat, we got at last into a very dull and dreamy state; while, as is usually the case, the weakest, and the one from whom you might expect the least, proved to have the stoutest heart. I allude, of course, to Lilla, who always tried to cheer us on.

But there was a change coming--one which we little expected--just as, after what seemed to be an endless journey, we came in sight of a town which afterwards proved to be Angostura.

CHAPTER FORTY NINE.

HOW TOM SAVED THE TREASURE.

It was the afternoon of a glorious day, and we were floating along in the broiling heat, now and then giving a dip with the paddles, so as to direct the canoe more towards the bank, where we could see houses.

There was a boat here and a boat there, moored in the current; and now and then we pa.s.sed a canoe, while others seemed to be going in the same direction as ourselves.

”Harry, look there!” cried my uncle.

I looked in the direction pointed-out ahead, shading my eyes with my hand, when I dropped my paddle, as I rose up, trembling, in the boat; for just at that moment, from a canoe being paddled towards us, there came a faint but unmistakable English cheer--one to which I could not respond for the choking feelings in my throat.

I rubbed my eyes, fancying that I must have been deceived, as the canoe came nearer and nearer, but still slowly, till it grated against ours, and my hands were held fast by those of honest old Tom, who was laughing, crying, and talking all in a breath.

”And I've been thinking I was left behind, Mas'r Harry, and working away to catch you; while all the time I've been paddling away.”