spirits of my comrades. She had not appeased Matson.
But if I would forgive them, they would be my slaves, my wish would be law. And the old fellow even thought I had done his tribe a tremendous honor by permitting the bodies of the slain gods to rest in the caves with the defunct Xinguays. Still, some of the tribe must have had more sense, or else they were less superstitious than the others, for the fellow with the chief—who was the witch-doctor I found out later—wanted to know how it was possible for gods to have been killed. That started an argument between the two factions. The chief insisted that, as I was a god, as all admitted, then my friends must have been gods too. I could see a lot of trouble ahead if any doubts were left unsettled, so I told them that the reason my fellows had been killed was because they hadn’t had time to prepare themselves—which wasn’t far from the truth at that—and that I was the only one who had been able to do so. And to clinch the matter I gave both the chief and the medicine-man a machete. After that anyone who questioned my divinity would have signed his own death warrant.
There isn’t any use boring you with all the details of what happened after that. The Xinguays gave me a good house to myself—offered me the pick of the girls for my wives—which I didn’t accept—and supplied me with the best of food. But I wanted to get away, to get back to my fellow men, and I didn’t dare suggest that, nor could I sneak off by myself. In the first place I didn’t know how they would take the idea of losing their white god, and as there was a guard constantly watching over me I couldn’t run off. I wouldn’t have tried that anyway. Bad as it was to be a virtual prisoner among the Xinguays it was a lot better than wandering through the jungle alone. The fact that I had weapons and plenty of ammunition didn’t alter that. I knew a white man couldn’t live off the jungle. I didn’t even know which direction to follow, and I didn’t have equipment. Any accident, any illness would mean an awful lingering death alone in the bush. Perhaps I might have considered using the streams—drifting down to some place where there were white men—if I had had a canoe, and if there had been a river near. But the Xinguays didn’t have canoes and there wasn’t any river in the valley. In fact the valley was an extinct volcano crater, I discovered. And there wasn’t a member of the tribe who ever had ventured beyond the crater’s rim. Everything beyond the summit of the ridge was Tumai—Taboo—too them. Outside, they said, there were devils; terrible devils who sometimes came to the valley and attacked them. Only by the Death Drum could these devils be destroyed. And even with that means of defense the Xinguays lived in constant dread of these devils.
Learning the Xinguay Language
OF course I didn’t find out all this right away. Not until I had learned a bit of the Xinguay language. But that wasn’t hard. I always had a knack at learning Indian dialects, and my knowledge of Putamo was a big help. I couldn’t understand how the chief and some of others happened to understand Putamo, if they had never been beyond their valley. But after I could talk with them I found out. Years before, they had found a strange man—an Indian—wandering near the lake. He was a great medicine man they said, because he knew how to make fire by using a bow-drill and how to weave bark fibre into cloth and many other things. And with the idea that by so doing they might acquire merit and some of his superior knowledge, the chief and a few others had learned his language. That, they explained, was why my party had been received so well and had been welcomed. Because I spoke to them in Putamo they had at once decided we were great medicine-men or superior beings. But all this must bore you. I don’t know how long I had been with the Xinguays—it must have been months—when the “devils” appeared. The first warning I had was when a man came running into the village from the jungle shouting that the devils were coming.
Instantly everyone began yelling and running. The women and children scuttled off somewhere, the men, seizing their weapons, raced after them, and then from the Council House appeared a group wearing those fearsome wooden masks and bark robes. I knew what that meant. The Death Drum was about to be used. I didn’t lose any time. Grabbing two of my rifles and all the cartridges I could carry I rushed in the direction the women and armed men had taken. Whoever or whatever the “devils” might be, it was evident a battle was near, and I didn’t believe in devils who could resist steel-jacketed bullets. And I kept as far from the Death Drum as possible. But I didn’t get very far. Something whizzed past my head, and instinctively I dropped to the ground. I’ve found that’s the best way. If you duck behind a tree you can’t see your enemy without exposing yourself, and I knew by the sound of the thing what it was—a poisoned dart. But if you fall flat the Indian will think he’s got you and nine times out of ten will show himself. But of course you know all that. Anyhow it worked. Not fifty feet away an Indian stepped from a clump of palmettos. He carried a blow gun and I didn’t wonder the Xinguays thought his kind were devils. From head to foot he was painted black with white and scarlet stripes and figures. He wore a big bone skewer through his nose. There were feather ornaments in his cheeks, and he wore a headdress with horns that gave him the appearance of Satan himself. All this I saw in the fraction of a second that he stood there before he dropped with a bullet through his brain.
At the report of my rifle the jungle seemed suddenly to be alive with the “devils.” Yells, cries, came from every side. From clumps of bush, from behind trees, from thickets, painted, fantastically decorated Indians appeared as if by magic. But, instead of rushing me, they turned and ran. Evidently they hadn’t counted on being greeted with fire arms. Probably
