01 Amazon Adventure (18 page)

It was no use. The closer he came the louder the growls, but the beast did not stir.

Or was it stirring? Yes, the eyes moved now. They were moving towards Hal. This would not do. Hal shouted, but the eyes came on.

He fired into the wall to alarm the beast. He could have fired between those eyes but he was still resolved to get this one alive. He crowded against the wall. Why didn’t the animal run past him and out into the net?

The end of the pole struck something hard between the two eyes. Hal could see it now — it was the face of a black jaguar. His heart leaped. This was the greatest animal treasure of the Amazon jungle. Black jaguars were as rare as hen’s teeth. He could not think of a zoo that had one — or of a zoo that did not want one and would not pay handsomely for it.

No matter what happened he would not use his revolver. He slipped it into the holster. He put both hands to the pole and gave the tiger a manful jab on the left cheek, hoping to divert the beast to the other side of the cave and out into the net.

He might as well have jabbed a rock. The tiger took two more prods without seeming to notice them. Then he swiped the pole with one big paw. The pole was smashed into splinters against the wall and the light went out. A deafening roar filled the cave. Hal turned and fled.

Around the turn he went with the vengeful beast close behind. No Olympic runner could have beat Hal Hunt then. With a flying leap he plunged into the middle of the net. He prayed that he would hit it with enough force so that it would break loose and not bounce him back into the savage jaws.

The net did break loose. The men at the rope had heard the roar and they were ready. As something, they did not know what, struck the net they hauled.

Up went the net like a bag with Hal inside. The astonishment of the crew who had bagged a man

instead of a tiger can be imagined. They were speechless with surprise, and then they laughed. How they laughed! The tiger halted at the mouth of the cave and then retreated into the darkness.

Hal would have given anything to be on the other side of the globe at that moment. The men’s hilarious laughter made him feel pretty small. It didn’t help much that his own brother, Roger, laughed more loudly than anyone else. He rolled on the ground, kicking the dust, and screaming with joy. When he could speak again he said, ‘Oh boy! Won’t this be a good one to tell when we get home!’

Dangling from his branch, Hal said gruffly, ‘Let me down.’

The men were too merry to be careful. Paying out the rope, they neglected to hold tight — it slipped through their hands and down Hal came, in a heap. This did not help to soothe his pride. He pushed the net away from him and got up. He stepped out of the net with great dignity.

‘Ho, ho! The great tiger man!’ chortled Roger.

Hal looked about at the laughing faces. His nerves had been badly shaken but he was getting control of them now. After all, it must have been pretty funny. He grinned.

‘Too bad you didn’t have a camera, Roger,’ he said. ‘That was sure one for the book.’

But his thoughts were grimly fixed upon the magnificent creature in the cave. He was going to get that tiger!

It was a council of war.

Hal, Roger and Aqua were trying to decide how to capture the black beauty. They were not getting very far.

‘We’ve got to nab it,’ Hal said. ‘It’s the last word in tigers. Even a Bengal tiger isn’t worth as much. But the net idea won’t work with this big fellow. He’s too wise.’

Aqua was stirring up some bird-lime. He had made it from the juice of the breadfruit tree. It was more sticky than thick paste or flypaper.

The Indians used it to catch birds. They would smear some of it on the limb of a tree where birds were in the habit of alighting. A bird that came in contact with it could not get away. When it beat its wings, they too would be caught. It stayed there until the hunter came for it.

Aqua had been using the method to catch birds for some of the hungry animal passengers.

Suddenly he paused and stared at Hal. An idea was breaking in the Indian’s head. He pointed at the bird-lime.

‘This will catch the tiger,’ he said.

Hal laughed incredulously. ‘It’s good for birds — and perhaps monkeys — but you might as well try to stop a tiger with a bottle of mucilage.’

‘This will catch the tiger,’ Aqua repeated. ‘All our people use it.’

He called in some of the other Indians as witnesses. They nodded when he explained his idea and told stories of how they or their friends had captured the big cats with bird-lime.

Hal thought he was being kidded. Perhaps the men had not forgotten what a ridiculous figure he had cut hanging from a branch in a bag. They thought they could make a fool of him. And yet Aqua had always been respectful before this.

Well, if it was a bluff, he would call their bluff.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘You and the boys can go ahead and catch Black Beauty with bird-lime.’

Aqua leaped up and talked excitedly with the other Indians. They went to gather more of the sticky substance. They took it to the tiger trail at a point a few hundred feet from the cave.

They took the net that had trapped Hal and laid it on the trail. They covered it carefully with leaves so that it was not visible. They spread great quantities of bird-lime on the leaves. Then they scattered more leaves on top.

‘Now all we have to do is to wait,’ said Aqua.

Wait, wait! Animal collecting was nine-tenths waiting. Hal hung his hammock in the woods within easy earshot of the trail. Aqua slept nearby. They alternated watches through the night. They heard no tiger.

In the morning they crept to the trail and found an agouti caught in the lime. The agouti is a two-foot-long rodent.

Hal was disgusted. He was about to tear the animal loose when Aqua said, ‘Leave it there. It will draw el tigre.’

A low growl made them wheel about.

At the mouth of the cave stood the most splendid of jaguars. He was black as night, sleek, long and powerful. His yellow eyes blazed. His savage black face parted in a snarl that showed gleaming white teeth. He looked quite capable of carrying out the

reputation that the black jaguar has among the Indians of being the most ferocious of the cat tribe.

He had been cooped up in the cave long enough. He was about to go to the river for a drink of water and anyone who got in his way would be unlucky.

Hal was about to take to the woods, but Aqua said, ‘No. He might come after us. That would take him away from the lime.’

Instead of going into the woods, Aqua ran down the trail, Hal following. Now the snare was between them and the tiger. They were, like the agouti, tiger bait.

The huge black beast came padding down the trail. It was wonderful that an animal so heavy could move with such smooth grace. Within that glossy pelt there must be nearly thirty stone of bone and muscle.

Hal, remembering his encounter with the black monster in the cave, did not welcome another interview. He was distinctly uncomfortable. What if Aqua’s plan did not work? Suppose the beast merely walked through the bird-lime and came on?

Was this powerful brute going to be stopped by a little stickum?

The tiger’s pace quickened. He broke from a walk into a well-oiled run, his glossy shoulders moving like pistons. If Hal had not been scared to death he would have admitted that it was the loveliest movement of muscle he had ever seen.

Why didn’t the beast pay attention to the agouti? He seemed to look straight past it at the two men. Hal felt very foolish, standing in plain view, waiting for a tiger to pounce upon him. And he hated that low, vicious growl. He would rather hear the beast roar. But the tiger was not wasting his breath on roars.

He was now almost up to the snare. Suddenly the agouti caught his eye and he stopped dead. He crouched to the ground. For a full minute he lay there, little black ripples moving along his muscles as he tensed them.

Then he sprang.

What a leap it was, all of a dozen feet. In mid air he roared, and his roar shook the forest. He came down like a black avalanche upon the helpless agouti and seized it by the neck.

But instantly he let it go. His attention was attracted by the stuff under his feet.

Now, thought Hal, we shall see if bird-lime can hold a tiger. No, Aqua was wrong. The tiger was now lifting one foot. It was covered with white. Then he raised another paw and looked at it with surprise.

Hal had had enough of this. ‘See!’ he cried. ‘It isn’t holding him. Come on. Let’s get out of here.

But Aqua put a hand on his arm. ‘Wait. You do not understand. Watch.’

The tiger was trying to lick the stuff off his paw. It did not come off. He bit at it savagely. He got it smeared over his face. He tried to rub it from his face. He only succeeded in plastering it over his eyes. He lay down in order to get the use of his four paws. Now the strange stuff was all over one flank. He tried to get it off and only succeeded in making matters worse.

Now Hal understood. His grandmother had told him of the old custom of putting butter on a cat’s paws to keep it busy until it became used to a new home. The cat was so fully occupied that it had no time to worry about anything else.

And so the tiger was not worrying now about the agouti or the two men. He was a cat with only one idea — to get rid of that gum. Cats of all kinds like to be clean.

Roger and some of the Indians arrived in time to see the strange spectacle. The tiger saw them out of smeared eyes and gave them a few growls; then went back to licking and biting at his fur. He sat up on his haunches and began washing his face with his paws, exactly like a house cat.

‘I think we can take him now,’ Aqua said.

He had the Indians bring up the cage. He passed the net rope through the front door and out between the slats. Then he drew gently on the rope, making tension on the four lines that went to the four corners of the net. The other men laid hold to help him.

‘Slowly, slowly,’ he said.

The far edge of the net draped itself lightly over the tiger. The beast was drawn inch by inch into the cage. His own struggles helped. Every time he moved any part of his body in the right direction the net was tightened so that he could not move back. At last both the net and its sticky contents were inside the cage. The door was locked. The prisoner took his mind off his work long enough to make a few thrusts at the bars, and then went back to his task.

‘He’ll be doing that for a week,’ Aqua said. ‘He won’t stop until he gets every bit of it off his fur.’

The tiger paid no heed to anything but bird-lime as the cage, set on two long poles, was carried down to the river. The Ark was brought up and the cage was hoisted on the deck and set in the toldo. The agouti, which one of the Indians had cut loose from the net, was served for dinner.

Hal beamed with delight and went around congratulating everybody, even Banco. He owed a special debt of gratitude to Aqua. This exploit had crowned the expedition with success.

Well, almost. He still wanted an anaconda. And he still had to escape Croc, get the collection down river, and on board a steamer for home.

But he was so happy that nothing seemed very difficult now.

You can’t strike a match on an anaconda. It was Hal who made this remarkable scientific discovery.

He had voyaged two hundred miles further down the Amazon. His collection had been increased by one upside-down sloth, one well-plated armadillo, and one small, graceful Amazon deer.

They were moored in a little bay where they had spent the night. It was not a clean-cut bay with sand beaches, but marshy, the sort of place, Aqua said, where anacondas might abound.

In the morning Hal went aboard the Ark to see how the animals were faring.

He found the wood ibis gone. Only a few feathers remained. Its cage had been smashed. The bird could not have done that. Only something heavy and powerful could have accomplished it.

He looked about at his other animals to see if any of them had a guilty look in its eye. The giant iguana had its eyes closed and lay basking in the morning sun. It was quite capable of such a deed, but its leash was too short. The basilisk was a strict vegetarian. It was out at the end of its line for a morning run on the water. The great stork had only one eye open and it didn’t look guilty. The jabiru stork enjoys mice, frogs and fish, but is not enough of a cannibal to consume other birds and would certainly draw the line at eating its own cousin, the wood ibis.

The way the cage was smashed suggested that the boa constrictor had done it, but this was impossible since the boa was in the other boat, sound asleep, still digesting her pig.

Hal gave it up. The vampire bat was chirping her call for breakfast.

Hal set about preparing Vamp’s meal. He got out a bottle of defibrinated blood — that is, blood from which the fibrin had been removed by whipping. The fibrin is what makes the blood clot. Vamp would not accept clotted blood. But it was too much of a job to obtain a fresh animal for her daily. The blood of a single capyvara would feed her for three days — if it could be kept fresh. The blood in the bottle was three days old, but still liquid thin.

But it was cold. Hal poured a cupful of it into a pan which he placed in the fireplace in the corner of the toldo. He arranged some shavings and sticks under the pan. Now to start a fire.

He had the habit of striking his matches on a post of the toldo. But this time the first match failed to light. He tried it again and again, then threw it away. He tried more matches, but they did no better.

In the half-dark of the toldo he thought the post looked peculiar, but his eyes were still blinded by the outside sunlight and he could not see very well.

He tried another post. His match lit at once.

When the fire was blazing he looked up at the post that had failed him. Then he backed off from it, his nerves doing a dance. A huge snake was coiled around the post. He had been trying to light matches on its scales.

He thought at first that it was his boa, escaped from the montaria — but then he saw that it had none of the boa’s colour and grace, and it was three times as big.