CHAPTER XX

TRAILED BY A JAGUAR

“Look, Cliff,” whispered Nicky, directing his comrade’s attention toward a limb not far above their campfire. “See those two bright spots? Are they a jaguar’s eyes, do you think?”

Cliff moved his head upward very gently. Tom, likewise, stared.

“Don’t anybody move,” Tom whispered. “From where I am it looks too flat to be a cat. But it’s something.”

The tropical jungle was beginning to show its eyes: would it go further and show its teeth and claws? After three hours of darkness, with only the blazing fire for protection, the three chums were beginning to be a trifle nervous, and the eyes above them, discovered by Nicky, did not add to their ease.

“Listen!” Tom breathed, barely audibly. “Don’t shoot hastily, Cliff. Ease your rifle up till you can get a sight.”

“Try to make the first shot count!” begged Nicky softly.

“I will!” Cliff said; but his hands were trembling so much that he fumbled with the rifle and it clattered to the ground.

“I can’t—I—my muscles shake so!” Cliff said. “I’m not a coward, but the first shot is so important——”

“Tom,” Nicky breathed, “you’re closest. Can you reach the gun and steady yourself?”

Tom, rather shakily, answered. “Cliff can. Just wait, Cliff. He won’t jump straight down into the fire. He’ll wait till one of us goes off as far as the wood pile. There’s time to get steady. Wait a minute, Cliff, till you get set.”

“I don’t seem able to make my muscles stop quivering,” Cliff replied, as low as he could. “Here, Tom, you take the rifle.”

Tom extended a hand very slowly toward the weapon; Cliff pushed it slowly toward him. In spite of their inward fear they realized that the bright, tiny disks reflecting the firelight were noting every move; they forced themselves to be deliberate, lest a sudden move, startling that dusky figure above, might cause the animal—or whatever it was—to leap.

The rifle in his hand, Tom made a determined effort to hold his muscles steady. He did not think of his nerves as being unstrung, for he had been told often by Mr. Gray that nerves are only the messengers that take the messages from the mind to the muscles: when the mind sent the wrong messages or was unable to be steady, the muscles were shaken, but not the nerves.

He drew the rifle slowly to him, got his hand onto its stock, lifted it with a deliberate determination not to let the barrel waver.

Using every atom of his will-power to compel his mind to concentrate on what he was going to accomplish, instead of looking at his pictures of what might happen, he managed to gain control of himself.

Then he raised the barrel until its forward sight and its rear sight grew a fine line to the eyes so steadily glowing above, and a trifle to one side of their fire. Cliff, shaking with his disturbed mental condition, and Nicky, anxious and worried, fixed their eyes on those so high up above them and waited, tensely.

“Crack!” the rifle barked, a spurt of flame leaped from its barrel.

“Jump!” cried Tom, leaping away from the fire.

Cliff and Nicky threw themselves away from the fire, for there was a sliding, crackling, scraping sound above the fire, and down came a long, slender, weird looking form, to crash upon the ground just beside the fire.

“Good grief!” cried Nicky. “It isn’t a wildcat—what is it?”

“It’s a lizard—a big lizard!” answered Tom.

“It’s what they call an iguana—a huge lizard,” Cliff said. They approached the long reptile, which was about three feet from nose to tail.

“I think I startled it—maybe I hit it,” Tom gasped. “Anyhow, the fall has stunned it, I think.” He made sure by using the butt of the rifle as a club and striking the backbone just back of the skull: the lizard quivered, flailed its tail several times and then relaxed.

“Anyhow, it wasn’t a jaguar, I’m thankful to say!” Cliff commented.

“It’s much better than a jaguar, for these lizards are good to eat,” Tom responded. “Goodness knows we could all eat. How about cutting out some of the meat and roasting it on sticks?”

They did so, and as soon as they had cut away what seemed to be the most promising parts of the flesh, Tom had another idea.

“Just take what we can eat,” he suggested. “Then we’d better drag the rest out to the far edge of the glade and leave it. If any meat-eating animals are around we’d rather have them get it and go away than to invite them to risk a rush to grab it close to our fire—they might grab us on the way!”

Accordingly they took the carcass as far away as they dared, Cliff, now recovered from his attack of fear, watching with the rifle ready.

No beast approached while they worked, but they had hardly returned to put their choicer meat on spits made of twigs to roast it before the fierce blaze of their fire when they heard the unmistakable, blood-chilling wail of a jungle cat, not far away. From here, and then from there, first to the right, then to the left, but ever closer, the intermittent wail continued. Then, in the dull glow from their fire they saw fiery eyes at the edge of the glade. There was a rush, a swift retreat—and the remains of the iguana had disappeared.

“Did you see it?” Nicky gasped.

“Jaguar, for sure!” Tom replied shakily. “Mr. Jaguar, take your supper and don’t bother us any more. And, fellows, let’s hurry up and finish our own eating so we won’t tempt any of his cousins and brothers to come any closer.”

They gave the meat only time to cook, and then wasted no moments in tasting: the flesh proved to be quite palatable and it was consumed with the hearty avidity of appetites denied since noon. What they had left they flung far into the darkness: sudden, rushing sounds, several shrill squeals and one yelp very much like that of a startled dog, gave them the assurance that the jungle denizens were on hand.

The chums changed their plans about watching, two remaining awake and alert while one slept. Not that much sleep came to any of them.

From time to time, sometimes close, sometimes afar, they heard the weird, child-like cry of a jungle cat; the “teesh-teesh” of some other animal, a peccary, perhaps, and, once, the slithering progress of a large snake, apprised them that the jungle life was close around them.

But the bright fire served to restrain jungle curiosity and to hold the more fierce animals at bay, although during the night they saw eyes that glinted green, with a demon-like anger smouldering in them, and knew that the meat-eaters were abroad and watching their chance.

“Golly, I’m glad daylight’s coming,” yawned Nicky when the dim green tracery overhead began to let in the light which showed that the sun was getting higher. “I’ve got an idea, fellows. If I could ‘shin up’ that branchy tree yonder, and get to the top, I could see which is East and which is West, and we could judge which way to head for the river.”

Warning him about snakes and ants and poisonous insects he might meet and must avoid during his climb, Cliff and Tom agreed to his plan.

When, after an arduous climb, during which he disappeared from their sight in the heavy foliage, Nicky’s legs appeared again and finally he slid carefully to the ground.

“I brought you some breakfast,” he said, “eggs! If we can roast them in the coals they ought to be good. I know they are birds’ eggs and not poisonous—I took them out of a big nest.”

“That saves us having to shoot for our breakfast,” Tom said. “Now which way is East?”

“That way!” Nicky pointed down the trail at the closer end of the glade.

“Then the sea is in that direction,” Tom decided. “The river must be at our right hand when we face the East, and we can’t get lost if we are careful not to get turned around.”

“How can we avoid that?” asked Nicky.

“Well, suppose you were to stand with your arm extended toward the East—that trail and the big tree. Then I’d go just as far as I could and still see you plainly, and set myself exactly in the same position. Then Cliff would go on beyond me and get himself set, picking some marker to keep all three of us in a straight line. When Cliff gets set you, Nicky, can go on beyond him, then I go beyond you again, and so we’d be sure we still had our East direction right and were moving South, and so toward the river.”

“It ought not to be very far,” conceded Cliff.

“But it’s all swamp on the South side of this glade,” objected Nicky. “I looked, and we can’t get over it, and we daren’t wade it.”

“Well, we could go on East, down the trail, parallel with the river,” Tom suggested. “Only, when we tried, last night, it ended ‘blind’ and so I guess we would waste time going that way. Maybe we had better go West, that is, up the trail. There must be some place where it will take us to the river.”

“How did we ever get into this glade from the North, when we must have been South of it and of the swamp when we came into the jungle?”

“I guess we wandered in a sort of wide circle,” Cliff explained.

They ate the eggs, hot: they were not as palatable as had been the iguana meat, but it helped to stay their hunger. They were thirsty, and began looking for water to drink as soon as they set out on the upper trail.

They found a spring, in a little clearing, and since birds were bathing in the water Tom decided that it was safe for them to drink from it. They slaked their thirst and went on with a much better confidence. The jungle had yielded its food and drink to their confidence in themselves.

“I don’t want you to think I’m a ’fraid-cat,” Nicky said presently. “Do you fellows notice little cracklings off in the brush?”

“I’ve heard them, several times,” Tom agreed. “I wondered if some Indian might have seen our fire and was watching, going along some other trail, to see where we are bound for!”

“But it’s first on one side, then on the other,” Nicky protested. “Once I heard something, sort of ‘whoosh!’ away up ahead, and now—listen!”

They drew closer together on the trail, and Cliff took a tighter clutch of the rifle he carried. They kept still, and presently, from a point quite close, there came the crackle of a twig.

In an instant Cliff whirled to face the point, the rifle leveled.

But then, from far ahead, there came a queer noise as if something were breaking through brush. The sound close at hand became also more pronounced, like the passage of a body through lush grass.

“There’s two of—whatever it is!” whispered Nicky.

Spellbound they watched the scene that developed with the swiftness of a moving picture.

Into the path quite close to them, but ahead of their position, a dark, almost naked Indian sprang: he carried a bow and a quiver of arrows; his ragged trousers were torn and scratched. He glanced toward the chums only for an instant. Then, backing toward them, he pointed up the trail, saying no word.

Out from the brush, with a light bound, there came a dark shape, lithe and crouched as it landed, then swiftly assuming a posture that made it look like a great, blackish cat, squatting on its haunches, its long tail lashing to and fro, switching the grass at either side.

Although few have seen the “black panther,” or “black jaguar” of the Central Americas, and some deny its existence, the chums, backed by the authority of many books they had read, recognized the true nature of the animal. It was a black panther, or a dark specimen of the jaguar species. Which it was did not matter. That it was there, on the path before them, did matter.

The animal remained quiet, except for its swishing tail. The Indian, eyes fixed on the beast, slowly, gradually crept backward to be closer to them. Evidently he knew nothing of the use of the rifle that Cliff held ready. He paid no heed to it, but carefully selected an arrow, and very deliberately fitted it to his huge bowstring. Slowly he sighted, drew the string taut, and loosed the missile.

With a snarling cry the huge cat leaped into the air, coming down on all-fours. Swiftly, almost anxiously, the Indian drew out another arrow—his first had only pierced the outer coat of the beast.

Before he could draw his string, the jaguar—or panther—leaped!