01 Amazon Adventure (7 page)

No wonder the Indians had not followed. Hal had read of streams that disappear underground to become subterranean rivers. He remembered a story under the title, The River of No Return. It was not a comforting thought.

‘Holy smokes! What’s that?’ cried Roger.

‘What?’

‘Something flying around us.’

The air was pulsating with the beat of wings. ‘Must be bats.’ Hal said. They were on every side. There must be hundreds of them. Hal pulled his head lower to avoid them although he knew that the radar-like equipment of the bat enables it to fly in pitch darkness without striking anything — unless it wants to.

Unless it wants to. Suppose these were some of the vampire bats that were so common in the American tropics and that liked nothing better than to pierce the skin of a warmblooded animal, such as man, and lap up blood. But he tried to tell himself that they would not attack anything in swift motion.

Now the cavern was filled with the fine squeaking of the bats. But under their high soprano there was developing a deep baritone.

That was the sound of water. It grew into a thunder, but it was still distant. Could there be an underground waterfall? Would they be carried blindly over it and dashed to pieces on unseen

rocks?

Hal had been taught to believe that he was master of his fate. But now he and his companions were being whirled along to an unknown destiny and there was not one thing he could do about it.

The river seemed to make a sudden turn and the canoe scraped against a wall. Hal clutched at the wall and his hand ploughed through bats clinging to its surface. The current pulled the boat away and it hurried on.

But now there was a faint gleam of light, enough to make out the wheeling and swooping of the bats. With the growing light, there grew also the thunder of water ahead.

Hal’s spirits leaped. ‘We’re getting out of it!’ He did not mind the increasing thunder. Anything was better than that black rat-trap.

There were some cracks in the ceiling now. It was good to get a glimpse of blue sky — it seemed an age since he had seen it last.

Another curve, and both boys whooped as the roof burst asunder and the cliffs fell away into rocky slopes. The light was blinding. The fresh air smacked them hard in the face and it was mil of a powdery spray. The river was churning up into white waves.

Roger peered ahead. ‘Where does it go?’ The river seemed to meet the sky and end right there. The boat was only a few dozen yards from this end and running like a racehorse. There was no chance of making the shore.

‘Waterfall!’ shouted Hal, but the din was so great that he could not be heard. Roger glanced back to see that his brother was paddling furiously, and he did the same. Their only chance was to shoot the canoe over the brink so fast that it would come down on its keel rather than on its nose. Even so, they were in for a smashed canoe if there happened to be rocks below.

Roger yelled like a demon. This was fun, as long as it lasted. Hal thought only of the sleeping or unconscious form in the bottom of the boat. This was a mean spot for a sick man.

The canoe shot out into space. Hal, at the last moment, reversed his stroke and backed water strongly to hold the bow up. Then came a falling sensation. They seemed to fall and fall, and could hardly believe it later when they saw that the drop was only about ten feet. But that much of a fall is plenty in a canoe!

The prayer that the canoe would not split on a rock was answered — it soused into deep water, still right side up. Hal relaxed, Roger relaxed. That was their mistake. A strong side eddy with choppy waves upset the boat in a twinkling.

Even as it went over Hal leaped to get hold of his father. Gripping him, he went down and then came up to battle with the current, which was making a determined effort to smash them on the rocks.

Roger, swimming like an eel, struggled to right the boat and bring it to shore. The white tops of waves tumbled down upon his head time and again but he always came up to give a yell of defiance and to yank the boat closer to shore.

When he reached it he found Hal and his father laid out on the bank like corpses awaiting burial. Hal was done in. The nervous reaction from the weird ride through the tunnel and the plunge over the fall had left him cold and shaking. The impact of the water had roused John Hunt and his eyes were open but he was too weak to move.

The kit, lashed into the canoe, had made the trip safely. Roger unlashed it and put it out on the rocks to dry.

Then he suddenly thought of Nosey. Where was the little tapir? The end of its leash was still tied to the thwart. Roger followed the leash down to the river’s edge and into a pool behind a big rock.

There was Nosey, having the time of his life. He rolled and dived and snorted like a baby sea lion. Roger let him enjoy himself.

Among the rocks were the battered hulks of two dugout canoe. There was nothing to show whether the canoeists had been Indians, or other adventurers whose attempt to explore the Pastaza had ended at this point.

John Hunt also saw the wrecks.

‘Hal,’ he said weakly, ‘you took that fall like a veteran. And incidentally, thanks for pulling me out.’

But Hal, in the warm comfort of the sun, was fast asleep.

There was not much sleep that night.

The camp had visitors. Not Jivaro Indians — though they were half expected. The visitors were of a much more strange and horrifying sort.

Roger, already covered with mementoes of his bout with the army ants, again proved to be an appetizing morsel. Some people are possessed of a chemical composition that attracts hungry creatures. Roger unfortunately belonged in this group.

They had not been in their hammocks more than an hour when Roger woke. He could not tell what had wakened him. There was a slight pain in the big toe of his right foot. He put his hand on it and felt something wet.

He turned on his flashlight. His hand was smeared with blood, and so was the toe. The blood continued to pour out of a hole about an eighth of an inch in diameter that was as neatly bored as if it had been made with a gimlet.

‘Hey! Ym being eaten alive,’ he yelled.

Hal woke from a dream that cannibals were making a meal of his younger brother. He was a little disgusted when he saw the hole.

‘You probably cut your foot on a thorn.’

‘Don’t be a dope. There are no thorns here. Besides, why does it keep on bleeding?’

Dad spoke from his hammock. ‘Listen!’

Somewhere above was a canopy of beating wings, hundreds of them.

Suddenly Hal remembered the bats of the caverns.

‘Oh, no!’ he exclaimed. ‘This is too good to be true.’

‘What’s good about it?’ retorted Roger, sopping blood with his handkerchief.

They must be vampire bats. The London Zoo will pay two thousand dollars for one.’

‘I must see that,’ said dad, struggling to get out of his hammock.

‘Stay where you are. I’ll bring it to you,’ and Hal took hold of the pedal specimen and nearly dragged Roger out of his hammock in order to show dad the punctured foot.

‘What am I, a guinea pig?’ wailed Roger, but no one was paying much attention to his complaints.

Think of it, dad,’ Hal cried. ‘If we could only get one! You remember what Dr Ditmars told us— the one he got was the first ever exhibited in the Bronx Zoo. And it died after only a few months. And the London Zoo has never had one.’

‘Bandage his toe until it stops bleeding,’ dad said, Then put on iodine. You’ll live,’ he assured Roger.

‘But how are we going to catch one?’ wondered Hal. ‘Of course we could wait until one bites Roger again and then grab it.’

Roger glared at his brother. ‘Be your own guinea pig,’ he snapped. And when his toe was bandaged he covered himself completely with his blanket, face and feet included. ‘Now let the ugly little beasts try to get at me.’

If it was a dare, it was soon taken up. The camp was quiet only a few minutes before there was another yelp from Roger.

The boy had forgotten to put the blanket under him as well as over. An exploring bat had discovered a slight rip in the seat of his trousers and had bitten him through the meshes of the hammock. But, again, the visitor had escaped.

Despairing of making a meal on Roger, the greedy little monsters were turning their attention to dad and Hal. Dad had already had a caller. Before it could make an incision he grabbed at it, but it was off and away before his fingers closed.

Hal got a small hand net from the kit.

‘Now I’m going to set a trap for them.’

‘What will you use for bait?’

‘Me,’ laughed Hal, a little uneasily. ‘If William Beebe could do it, I can.’

Beebe, the well-known naturalist, had deliberately exposed his arm and waited for a vampire to bite him. The creature landed lightly and began to make an opening. Beebe’s imagination played tricks with him and he thought he felt blood flowing. He tried to seize the bat but it eluded him. Examining the arm, he found that he had interrupted the bat too soon — only a slight scratch had been made and there was no blood.

Hal determined that he was going to stick it out, no matter how it felt. The methods of the vampire bat had always been a dark mystery that was only now beginning to be cleared up by such men as Ditmars and Beebe.

The vampire had always been called a ‘bloodsucking bat’. Ditmars had proved that it does not suck blood, but laps it up as a cat laps milk. There had been legends that the bat fans its victims to sleep with its wings. Others had it that the bat hovers over the body instead of alighting when it bites.

Hal would find out whether these stories were true. He stretched out his bare arm and lay very still. For a long time nothing happened.

Then the beat of wings seemed to come closer. Finally he felt a very light pressure on his chest, as if a bat had landed there. It was as light as a breath and if he had been asleep he would never have noticed it.

There was no sensation for a while. He could hardly bear the suspense. He wanted to leap up and beat the air to drive away the loathsome creature that wheeled around him.

Then he was aware of a slight tickling on his wrist. That was the only sign that a landing had been made there. He was not even sure he felt it.

But the tickling now seemed to be going up his

arm to the elbow. Or it might be just the night breeze blowing over his arm. He couldn’t be sure.

For a while there was nothing. Then his arm, near the elbow, had a slight tingling sensation as if it were going to sleep. This discovery excited Hal greatly. Scientists had often speculated as to how a bat could cut a hole without the victim feeling it. It was believed possible that the bat’s saliva contained a local anaesthetic which numbed the spot where the bite was to be made. What Hal felt seemed to bear out this idea.

Like Beebe, Hal imagined that the hole was cut and the blood was flowing. He resolutely lay still. There was one thing sure — the actual cutting of the hole could not be felt, nor the lapping up of the blood. Or else the bat had flown away. He couldn’t tell.

Perhaps he was just fancying the whole thing. But no, now he could really feel something — the very faint sensation of warm blood flowing down over the part of the arm that had not been drugged.

He felt he had learned enough for one lesson. He must capture the little blood drinker before it satisfied itself and flew away.

With all the force at his command he swung the net across his body and down upon his elbow, then twisted the handle smartly so that anything caught in the net could not escape.

He reached for his flashlight. Yes, he had not been just imagining things. His arm was a gory sight. He did not bother with it but looked at the net. A devilish-looking creature struggled in its meshes.

‘I’ve got it!’ he yelled. ‘I’ve got! Dad, look!’

An extraordinary face leered out of the net. Hal thought he had never seen a face more evil — except one, and his memory went back for an instant to the face of the man who had followed him that night in Quito.

The old legend that had given birth to the name of this creature came back to his mind. ‘Vampires’ were supposed to be ghosts that came out of their graves at night to suck the blood of human beings. This superstition had been the basis of that terrible play, Dracula.

Certainly this bat embodied all the horror of the old legend. It was a thing of the night, dark, sinister, with beady eyes full of hate peering out through overhanging fur. The ears were pointed like those generally pictured on Satan himself. The nose was flat and the under-jaw projected like a prize fighter’s.

‘Looks like a cross between the devil and a bulldog,’John Hunt whispered, for the face seemed too dreadful to be spoken of aloud.

But they were yet to see the worst. The bat opened its mouth in a vicious snarl. The long nimble tongue with which it had been lapping up its dinner was covered with blood. The beast seemed very short on teeth, but those it had were terribly efficient. There were two long canines, one on each side.

But the really amazing teeth, the ones that had given the vampire its fabulous reputation, were in the front of the upper jaw. They were twin incisors, slightly curved and as sharp as needles. It was with

these lances that the bat made its deep but painless incisions.

Besides blood, there was a sort of watery mucus in the mouth. If he ever got this bat to a laboratory he would have that secretion analysed to see if it contained any narcotic agent that puts the flesh to sleep, or anything that prevents blood from clotting.

He looked at his arm. The blood was still running from the hole. His father staunched it by tying a handkerchief tightly around it.

That was what often caused death, especially to small animals — not the bite of the vampire, but the continued flow of blood after the bat had finished feeding. Blood ordinarily clots in a short time. Did the saliva of the bat contain a chemical that prevented clotting?

That was something to find out.

The bat beat its wings, but the net was strong. While no stories could have overstated the ugliness of this creature, its size had been exaggerated. It had been confused with the great fruit bat which may measure two or three feet between wing tips. The span of this bat was only twelve inches and its body was about four inches long.