01 Amazon Adventure (2 page)

‘All aboard for Green Hell!’ cried Terry, revving up the motor of his tricky little four-seater Bonanza plane.

The Hunts climbed in with him. Their equipment and guns were stored in the baggage compartment. The Bonanza ambled bumpily down the grass airfield, gradually gaining speed.

When she was rolling at about seventy-five miles per hour a cross wind caught the plane and turned her directly towards a fire engine.

Terry could have angled her to one side or the other of the engine if his brakes had been good. They weren’t. And without brakes, he couldn’t stop. The airfield’s crash sirens began to wail. The boys in the fire engine spilled out like popcorn.

But Terry, with a crazy Irishman’s nerve, did the right thing, the desperate thing. He gave her the full gun. The plane roared across the field with the fire engine full ahead.

Would she rise enough to clear the great, red, metal monster that barred her path?

The nose wheel began to lift. The other two wheels bounded softly a few times, then rose. The plane was in the air. She cleared the fire engine by inches.

It’s the people who know little about flying who don’t realize its dangers. Hal and his father had both piloted planes but Roger was air green.

He looked up from the map he had been studying and, seeing the white faces of his brother and father, asked calmly, ‘Something wrong?’

Hal could have flayed him alive. And he could have administered a little flaying to the carefree pilot as well. Lady Luck must love this man!

The plane climbed a bit sluggishly. That was the fault not of the sturdy little Bonanza but of the altitude.

‘What’s your rate of climb?’ asked Hal.

‘About nine hundred feet a minute at sea level,’ Terry said. ‘But up there it’s less than five hundred feet a minute.’

‘What’s your service ceiling?’ Hal was looking apprehensively at the towering, icy wall of mountains that they must cross before they could descend.

This little tub,’ said Terry proudly, ‘will go up to seventeen thousand feet.’

‘But that will never get you over those peaks.’

Hal was looking at his map. Ecuador bristled with thirty tremendous volcanoes. Around Quito was a ring of giants. He looked out the window. There was Cotopaxi, the world’s highest active volcano, cutting the sky at more than nineteen thousand feet. Cayambe and Antisana were almost as high.

‘We’ll slip through a pass,’ Terry assured Hal.

‘But why are you going north now?’

‘Just thought you’d like to have a look at the equator. And there it is. See that monument? It was put there in 1936 by a French survey mission to mark the exact equatorial line so that they could figure out the precise dimensions of this old planet. And now we’re in the northern hemisphere.’ He banked the plane and sped back over the monument. At one instant they were in the northern hemisphere, at the next in the southern.

Roger was blowing on his chilled hands. ‘Pretty frosty equator,’ he commented.

‘Is that road beneath us the Pan-American Highway?’ asked John Hunt.

‘Right,’ said Terry.

There it was, the wonder road, that had now been practically completed all the way from Alaska to Patagonia.

‘I’m going to make that trip sometime,’ vowed Roger.

‘A good many people are making it right now,’ Terry said. ‘Yesterday I met a Scotsman who has a sheep ranch away down near Cape Horn. He had driven up all the way to Chicago, and was on his way back.’

‘But how about those breaks in the road?’

There are three breaks in Central America. But you can put your car on a train or ship and get around them.’

The world’s longest road,’ said John Hunt, looking down at the magic ribbon. ‘It will do a lot to tie the Americas together.’

‘But not so much as the aeroplane,’ said Terry, fondling the controls. For five years the flying Irishman had had his own plane. He had paid for it twice over by carrying passengers between Quito and Guayaquil on the coast, and Quito over the Andes to the jungle posts where rubber and quinine were gathered.

Hal wondered that he had never had an accident — and, as they raced towards the forbidding wall of rock and snow, hoped that he would not break his record now.

Presently the rampart ahead seemed to dissolve and a pass was visible. But what a pass! Great precipices frowned on either side of it. Couldn’t the plane go higher and clear all this danger? Hal looked at the altimeter. It registered almost seventeen thousand feet. That meant that they were jammed up against the ceiling.

Suddenly even the ceiling failed them. The needle on the altimeter began to spin.

‘Hey! That won’t do,’ exclaimed Terry, trying to nose up the dropping plane.

They got out of the dangerous downdraught, but it left them only six hundred feet above the rocky bottom of the pass. In vain Terry tried to bring the plane up. So much banking and wheeling was necessary to avoid the cliffs that the little plane had no energy left for climbing. There was nothing to do but to follow all the twists and turns of the canyon and trust to luck that there would not be another downdraught. S turns and angles continually appeared ahead. Nobody was studying a map now. Roger’s eyes popped as crag after crag rushed up to the windows and skimmed by with little to spare.

But a polo player would have been proud to manage his horse as Terry rode his plane. Hal thought of Ben Hur and his chariot race. Terry did not look like Ben Hur and he was not standing on a careering chariot but sitting quietly in the pilot’s seat. But there was something of the heroic of all ages in the way he steered his irresistible motor around immovable objects. They melted away at his command. The impossible became possible.

Now, thank heaven, the floor of the canyon was falling a little. The savage walls were dropping back, beaten. With a final triumphant burst of speed the Bonanza swept out into a new world.

Gone were the arid, sandy wastes of the Pacific coast where rain almost never falls. Below stretched brilliant green forests that never lacked for water. Winding streams made silver alleys through the green.

‘Look at the pink cloud,’ exclaimed Roger, hardly believing his own eyes.

Sure enough, a coloured cloud drifted over the forest.

‘Butterflies,’ said Terry. ‘Just a few billion of them. And there’s another cloud — parakeets. You get your clouds in all colours in this country — green, yellow, red, and mixed. Wait till you see the parrots and toucans. You’ll think you’re looking at a picture in technicolour.’

‘What’s this stream beneath us?’ That, my dear sir, is the Amazon. Or at least it’s the Patate which becomes the Pastaza which becomes the Maranon which becomes the Amazon.’

‘And to think,’ said John Hunt, ‘that here within a hundred miles or so of the Pacific Ocean, the water turns its back on the Pacific and starts on a three-thousand-mile hike to the Atlantic’

‘And we’re starting on the same hike,’ said Hal. There was a thrill in that thought but a certain amount of fear too. The mystery of the unknown lay ahead. No other region on earth had so many secrets locked in its heart.

Presently the Patate joined hands with the Chambo to form the Pastaza, river of the Jivaro headhunters. A little frontier post called Topo passed beneath, then Mera, then Terry prepared to come down at a jungle village called Puyo.

Hal was referring to his guidebook: ‘Here the known world ends and the Amazonian wilderness begins. Penetration beyond Puyo is not possible even on horseback… .’

It would have been possible by plane, but the plane was going back to Quito. The only other way was by boat. No westerner had ever gone down the Pastaza, and on John Hunt’s American Geographical Society map it was marked with a dotted line, meaning unexplored.

If this expedition were successful, that dotted line would be made solid. More than that, the animal life of a new region would be revealed. That was what most interested the three wild-animal collectors. A waterfall appeared below, a hanging bridge across the river, then a clearing. Terry was nosing down into it.

‘What’s your stalling speed?’ asked Hal.

‘Sixty-five.’

It seemed a very small field to strike at a speed of more than a mile a minute. And no brakes!

At the far end of the field were a number of thatched huts. The plane plunged across the field, crushed the straw wall of a large hut, and came to a halt in the living-room-dining-room-bedroom among the members of a very startled household.

That was the introduction of the Hunts to the headhunters. Luckily none of the Indians was hurt, or four new heads might have been added speedily to the brown ones on the shelves.

Even so, for a moment it looked like rough going. The Indians snatched up spears and knives. Others came running into the hut and everyone was armed. The place resounded with the screams of women, the cries of children, and the menacing shouts of the warriors.

Then the smiling Irishman stuck his head out of the cockpit door. He called a merry greeting to an old man who turned out to be the chief. The angry chatter turned into a noisy welcome. These people knew Terry. This had been an outpost for the gatherers of cinchona, source of quinine, and Terry had been there many times.

Terry introduced his friends. The Indians conducted their guests in a triumphant procession through the village to the chiefs house. The Hunts were astonished at the fine appearance of the village.

‘Lucky we struck a straw hut instead of one of these,’ said Hal. Most of the houses in the village were well-built of solid timbers. There were plots of corn, beans and bananas. Inside the houses could be seen looms on which cotton cloth was woven. On the shore of the swift Pastaza River were boats skillfully hollowed out of logs.

‘They’re a very clever people,’ said Terry, noting the surprise of his guests. ‘And very brave. The Incas never conquered them. The Spaniards ruled them for only a short time — then the Indians rebelled and threw the Spaniards out. The government of Ecuador gets along with them by leaving them alone.’

‘Where do they get these skirts and shorts they are wearing?’ asked Hal.

‘They make them. But when they go to war they strip off their clothes and paint their bodies in bright colours.’

Even in shirts and shorts, some of the men looked a bit wild. ‘They need haircuts,’ remarked Roger. Their hair was black, long and flowing, and decorated with toucan feathers.

‘In every Jivaro there are two persons,’ said Terry, ‘one civilized and the other a savage. And you never know which one you are going to meet. That’s what makes them interesting.’

In the chiefs house, the walls of which were hung with blowguns, spears, bows and arrows, and the skins of magnificent tigres and panthers, they were served a strange lunch.

‘I never saw such large eggs,’ said Roger. ‘The chickens here must be giants.’

‘The chicken that laid those eggs,’ Terry told him, ‘was ten feet long and had teeth like a sausage grinder. You’re eating alligator’s eggs. How do you like them?’

Roger made a wry face. ‘I liked them until you told me that.’

‘And what’s this steak?’ asked Hal. ‘Surely they don’t have cattle down here.’

‘That’s from the tail of an iguana. It’s an enormous lizard, five or six feet long, that is plentiful in these woods. You’ll probably want one of them for your collection. And that other meat that tastes like veal — it’s a slice of mountain lion. But never mind, you’ll eat stranger things than these before you get done with the Amazon.’

‘You’re right,’ said John Hunt who knew from former trips to the lower river what experiences the boys were in for. He ate heartily, but the boys were very easily satisfied. It would take them a little time to get used to Amazonian cookery. Their appetites were not improved by a glance at a grim row of heads on a high shelf. One head was perched alone over the door.

‘That one seems to have the place of honour,’ said John Hunt.

The old chief did not understand the English words but he saw that his guest was talking about the head over the door. He spoke to Terry and Terry translated.

‘He says that’s his grandfather. You see, this preservation of heads isn’t quite as barbarous as most people suppose. Didn’t the Egyptians use to keep not only the heads but the entire bodies of their kings, mummified so that they would last? This is more or less the same idea. The chief says he was very fond of his grandfather and wants to keep him nearby always. It’s the Jivaro way of showing respect.’

Hal objected, That’s all right for friends and relatives, but why do they preserve the heads of enemies? Surely that’s not to show respect.’

‘Yes it is,’ Terry insisted. ‘They believe that by keeping the head of a strong man they get his strength. They don’t bother to shrink the heads of weaklings — it’s a long, hard job and they don’t consider it worth while.’

‘Unless they are making them for sale as curiosities to tourists,’ put in John Hunt.

‘Yes. But it they are making them to keep in their own huts, they preserve only the heads of fine warriors.’

Then we ought to feel honoured if they decide to tan and pickle us,’ said Roger.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Hal. They won’t mistake your bean for something wise and powerful.’

‘Oh, is that so?’ fumed Roger. ‘I bet they’ll take mine first.’

‘Have it that way if you prefer,’ said Hal.

‘I wonder if the chief would explain how they shrink these heads,’ John Hunt suggested. ‘It must be quite an art.’

Terry passed on the question to the chief who nodded gravely and began to explain, Terry translating.

‘Everything must be done according to ceremony,’ said the chief, ‘otherwise the virtue of the hero is lost. The medicine man performs certain religious rites. That is to comfort the spirit of the dead man so that it will not be disturbed by

what follows. We sew the lips together so that the spirit may not escape. Then we make a slit in the back of the scalp and take out the skull. Of course we could not shrink the head if the skull remained in it. The shrinking is done by filling the head with hot sand. When it cools it is taken out and more hot sand put in. Night and day for three days — sometimes for a week if we wish the head to be very small. That is all. It is simple.’