CHAPTER X

HENRY TURNS SAVAGE

Late that night a tropical storm whirled down on the village from the mountains. Lightning that seemed more vivid than daylight flashed continuously; thunder that deafened shook and roared; trees thudded to the whipping lash of the lightning. Rain in literal sheets made a wall of water when Tom peered out from the door of their hut.

When the dull dawn came the rain had not subsided; thunder still growled and boomed. The river, rising swiftly, was a very torrent, its water racing toward the rapids below, whose roar could be heard like a growling undertone to the thrum of falling water.

A white rubber-trader, with his canoe full of paddlers, was glad to be able to nose in and ground his craft on the sandy beach and drag it to safety before the river rose any more dangerously.

Toosa knew him and took him at once to his own hut for a talk.

Henry was released from guard, but did not come near his companions; in fact, he stayed close to his hut, more safely guarded from violent action by the downpour than by any watchers.

About noon the rain slackened and the white trader, Buckley, a quiet and yet a pleasant man, bronzed and sturdy, came over and visited with the white pair. Tom found him eager to hear about the situation that had come about on the previous night.

“You needn’t have extracted those bullets, Toosa has told me,” he said with a smile. “Toosa is sure that he could have turned the bullets aside. He is very sure of his magic powers. But I like the old fellow and I am rather glad our young friend had so much foresight.”

He told them that, even without the rain, it would be unlikely that they could start down the river for some time. Yellow fever, that terror of the tropics, had broken out near the coast, and inland, and a “deadline” had been established near the costal villages by the Honduran government. That deadline was a real thing, not merely a place where officers stopped people and examined their health. When fever broke out, the trader explained, a line was drawn across the roads, and a patrol established on the rivers. If anyone passed through an infected area they would be turned back at the line, and if they tried to pass bullets would follow the act. The government meant its quarantine! And to get to the cruiser they must pass through the infected area!

“You came here to learn about a man,” the trader told them.

“Yes, we did,” answered Tom. “Do you know anything—”

He eagerly related the conditions of his sister’s disappearance. The white man listened gravely and then shook his head.

“Toosa will be here in a few minutes,” he stated. “He has asked me some curiously veiled questions. I wouldn’t be surprised if what I answered has something to do with the results he will get from his ‘magic’—but he is a fine old magician, and it helps his standing among the natives to let him keep them deceived—so I will let him reveal what his ‘magic calabash’ whispers to him.” He laughed as Toosa, grave and stately in spite of his deformed body, came in. Several other Indians were with him and quite a crowd assembled outside. These he dispersed, telling them something in their dialect which Bill guessed was to the effect that his magic was, this time, for the white ears alone.

Those who accompanied him hung heavy skins over the door, and took up positions outside, shooing away the straggling women who thirsted for every demonstration of their chief’s magical powers.

Toosa set on the trampled earth floor a calabash, and some other articles of his supposed craft; then he produced a skin bottle or flask and from it poured into the calabash a dark, rather evil smelling liquid, till the gourd container was level full.

Tom, watching closely, thought he detected a tiny wink pass between the solemn old fraud and his trade friend; however, Tom kept his own counsel and refrained from trying to catch Bill’s eye.

If they got the information he sought, it did not matter to him if Toosa liked to impart a touch of mystery to the telling!

“You good,” Toosa said to Tom. “I help. Tell what you not know!”

He built up a small fire of tiny twigs and let it burn until the sticks fell together, flared and then died down to a small flicker.

Onto that he threw some leaves and bits of dust or herbs finely powdered, and instantly a dense, whitish, and very pungent smoke rose.

“Now how do you suppose an Indian in Central America knows a trick that the African blacks use in their magic?” Tom said, out of the corner of his mouth, to Bill.

“They tell us in books that people came here from some old continent, ages ago—wasn’t it Atlantic——”

“Atlantis!” corrected Tom. “Cliff’s father told us about it—it was a great continent and it sank under the ocean.”

“Well, before it went down, history says, some wise people knew it was going to happen, and they came away and settled in safer places,” Bill stated.

“Do you suppose Toosa is one of their descendants?” Tom whispered. “He surely does seem to know a lot. And maybe some of the Atlantis people went to Africa, and that’s how the same customs spread.”

“Maybe,” agreed Bill. “Look, he’s swallowing the smoke. Don’t see how he stands it—just a sniff makes me sort of chokey.”

Toosa was drawing in great, sighing lungsful of the heavy and pungently acrid smoke. Then he settled back on his haunches, and to the amazement of even the trader, he spoke—in English![1]

“You—want—find—out—man called Mort Beech,” Toosa chanted in a halting, but deep, voice.

“Yes,” said Tom with a little shiver of inherited superstition, even though he knew there was more fuss than truth in the witchcraft part, even though the English was amazing. “Yes, sir!”

“Man is Colon—or Porto Bell’—look for in Porto Bell’——”

“Porto Bello, eh?” said Bill.

“Porto Bell’. Yes. Now——”

There was a commotion at the doorway. Henry Morgan had crept up to see what was so mysteriously transpiring in the hut, and as the two guards had no instructions concerning him and did not dare to interrupt their chief, Henry had listened, had caught the whole message.

While Bill leaped up and Tom caught his feet under him swiftly, Henry strode into the hut, kicking over the calabash, into which Toosa had been staring after he inhaled the smoke.

“Porto Bello!” he shouted. “Well, that’s where Henry Morgan will find him. As for you—” he swung on his white companions, “you can follow me if you dare—but if you do, I shoot!”

He snatched up Bill’s rifle, just before Tom anticipated his move.

“I take this,” he snapped, “’cause why? Toosa has mine. Now I go in canoe. I’ll tell your friends the yellow-jack got you. They can’t pass the deadlines to find out. We’ll take the cruiser and go on. When we find Mort Beecher I’ll let them come back and hunt you up if they want to. I’ll have what I want.”

“You swine!” cried Bill, halted by the rifle in the menacing hands. “That’s how you repay——”

“That’s how I repay that kid for what he did to my—stuff!” growled Henry. Toosa made an effort to stop him as he backed toward the door, but the smoke had really taken some of Toosa’s strength, or at least he was not swift enough in his move, for Henry sidestepped and sent a cruel kick at the dark face. Toosa fell back in time to avoid it, but Henry, thrusting the peering Indians to each side, backed out and turned as Bill tugged at a revolver.

Still striving to loosen the weapon, which his excitement made more of a task than it should have been, he raced to the door, Tom at his heels. They saw Henry Morgan running, rifle under his arm, for the sandy beach, where a rushing torrent worried at the sand and bore it away in great, swirling streaks.

“He’s after a canoe,” said Tom.

Bill raised a pistol. Toosa, with a quick grip, thrust back Bill’s arm, shaking his head violently and choking.

Running a light canoe out partly into the turbulent stream, Henry reached into the beached canoe of the trader, holding their menacing approach back by a threat with the rifle, and threw some of the trader’s goods into the small canoe.

“Give me the pistol if you’re afraid to fire!” cried Buckley, the trader; but again Toosa held his arm.

They watched the canoe skip away from the bank and whirl, end for end, in an eddy. Then Henry got his paddle to working and with a derisive shout, swung his blade and straightened away, flying down the stream.

“Why wouldn’t you let us stop him?” Tom cried, angry at Toosa. He saw their companions being urged to desert by a false story, saw themselves stranded in the Indian country.

“Toosa says, ‘Rapids get him,’” Buckley translated, for Toosa now spoke curtly in his own dialect, making swift gestures. “Toosa says if the rapids don’t drag him under, as is likely, the deadline will stop him. He’ll never get through. As for you fellows—if you can put up with privations and hard climbing, I can arrange with some of my Indians to escort you over the mountains—to the capital, and from there you can easily get down to the coast and your cruiser and your friends.”

“But if Henry should get through!” Tom objected. “We ought to try and catch him.”

“No!” the trader remonstrated. “Wait! He will either get out of control—he’s weakened from his heavy debauches—and go over the falls instead of down the side currents and rapids, or he will be caught by the Indians and the Honduran soldiers.”

“It’s too bad it had to happen right in the middle of the witchcraft,” mused Bill.

“Why?” asked the trader.

“Toosa failed to tell us about the Golden Sun,” Tom said, knowing what was in his comrade’s mind.

Mr. Buckley spoke swiftly to Toosa who responded with a shake of his head. Then he became very thoughtful. Suddenly he walked away into the hut and sat, staring into the calabash, with its remaining liquid, the rest having been spilled.

“There isn’t any Golden Sun mine, at all,” Mr. Buckley explained. “The gold in the Honduran mountains in this section would be commercially profitless if you tried to mine it and get it to the coast. Those days of prosperity for Honduras are far in the future.”

“But Henry told us that Mort Beecher kept talking about the Golden Sun,” Tom remonstrated. “There must be something behind it!”

With a long arm Toosa beckoned to them. They hurried into the hut and stood, respectful and curious. Toosa looked up. This is what Buckley repeated from his curious sing-song chant:

“There is a Golden Sun! The Golden Sun is not a mine! The Golden Sun is alive. Ask of the San Blas Indians—and say that Toosa of the Mosquito country sent you. You find!”

“Find what?” asked Tom; but Toosa was out of the hut—and gone!