But the turtles and the crocodiles were not the only delicacies the sandbars provided. There were iguanas two yards long, and on the knolls where the wind had blown the sand into heaps fat young skimmers and terns were testing their wings for the new life that lay before them in the air.
The shallow inlets were full of fish. They came out of the deeper water at night to spawn, and could be dragged ashore with little effort.
From such a well-stocked hunting ground Suma was not eager to depart. Day after day the journey was postponed, and the procrastination, as usual, brought evil consequences.
It was night, but a full moon, and the myriads of stars, beaming and twinkling in the glorious tropical sky, shed a mellow light on the sandbar where the last of the turtles were escaping from their prison shells. Suma feasted leisurely, then drank from the lazy stream, and sat straight upright like a huge cat and began unconcernedly to tidy up by licking her huge paws with her pink tongue and then applying them to her face.
A dull roar pierced the silence with a suddenness that was ominous. The Jaguar sprang to her feet and uneasily tested the air, first in one direction, then another. There was not a stir of wind. The sky was cloudless--the growing rumble was not thunder.
Onward came the mysterious sound with a terrifying swiftness, and Suma knew it must be the river. The abrupt bank was fully half a mile distant but toward it the startled creature bounded in gigantic leaps that took her over the sand with the speed of the wind. The goal had all but been attained when the cataclysm struck. A wall of water, four feet high and crested with foam came rushing down the river bed with incredible swiftness, engulfing everything within its reach. The sandbar with its varied population was submerged in a flash and as the air imprisoned in the wide cracks and crevices of the sun-baked surface rushed up toward freedom, the water seethed and boiled like the contents of a gigantic cauldron.
Completely overwhelmed by the first wave, Suma struggled frantically to regain her foothold and finding this impossible followed the path of least resistance and struck out boldly with the current until the water drained from her eyes and she could discern the bank which had been her objective. By varying her course slightly toward that side nearest the land she made fair progress and soon reached a point where the water was shallow and wearily dragged herself ashore. Pausing only long enough to shake the glistening drops from her shivering body she began the long journey westward for at last Suma was forced, reluctantly, to admit the truth. Days before, she had sensed the coming of the melancholy weeks of endless downpours with the attendant saturated earth; but the warning had gone unheeded. Now, when it was all but too late it served as a stimulus to redoubled effort; for the rains had started in the foothills and would soon extend their sway to the lower country.