"I went. There was nothing to see, except a slit-eyed tigress sitting up in a corner of her cage, blinking at the lantern, and looking rather spooky. A rather small creature, and prettily marked--one of the melantic variety.
"Well, the chap was buried after an inquest, and that inquest made me ask a lot of questions afterwards. It was a simple affair, the inquest. Death from natural causes. But there was something behind the evidence of the man's wife, and I wanted to find out about that.
"She told me she had a little girl, who got one night into the tent where the big cats were kept. Nobody was there at the time. Next morning she said to her mother, 'Mummie, who was the funny lady in Lucy's cage?'
"Lucy was the name of the tigress. The child said that there was only the lady in the cage, and the lady watched her. And that was all they could get out of the kiddie. The funny thing about it is that once before the child had come back with a yarn like that, after straying into the menagerie tent late at night. The wife's idea was her husband had died of fright.
"Don't ask me what I want to make out, boys. I'm only just telling you the yarn. There you are.
"Well, before the show left our village, I heard they'd got a nigger to look after the big cats. He was with the show two days. On the third day he was missing. He went without drawing his money, and he had left open the door of Lucy's cage. She hadn't attempted to get out. The nigger was found some days after, wandering about the country, and a little cracked, by all accounts. And that's all." The doctor struck a match, and then hoisted his legs into the hammock. Somewhere far in the forest the monkeys were howling.
"That doctor is a good body mender," said Hill to me. "He is the most entertaining liar on this job."
When in the neighbourhood of the Girau Falls we returned to a camp known as 22, which was merely a couple of huts, the station of two English surveyors, who had with them a small party of Bolivians. The Bolivian frontier was then but a little distance to the south-west. We rested for a day there, and planned to make a journey of ten miles across country, to the falls of the Caldeirao do Inferno. By doing so we should save the wearying return ride along the track to the Rio Jaci-Parana, for at the Caldeirao a launch was kept, and in that we could shoot the rapids and reach the camp on the Jaci two days earlier. Some haste was necessary now, for my steamer must be nearing her sailing time. And again, I agreed the more readily to the plan of making a traverse of the forest because it would give me the opportunity of seeing the interior of the virgin jungle away from any track. Though I had been so long in a land which all was forest I had not been within the universal growth except for little journeys on used trails. A journey across country in the Amazon country is never made by the Brazilians. The only roads are the rivers. It is a rare traveller who goes through those forests, guided only, by a compass and his lore of the wilderness. That for months I had never been out of sight of the jungle, and yet had rarely ventured to turn aside from a path for more than a few paces, is some indication of its character. At the camp where we were staying I was told that once a man had gone merely within the screen of leaves, and then no doubt had lost, for a few moments, his sense of direction of the camp, for he was never seen again.