So lightly did these words come tripping from her lips, so rippling was the laughter following, that for a moment Johnny was deceived.
“She means it, too,” he told himself. “So this is the way of the tropics.”
The deception lasted for but one moment. The wrinkle across her brow, the far away look in her eyes, the irregular dip of her paddle, all told plainer than words that she had been playing a part; that she was concealing homesickness and hunger for friends; that they might be days, even weeks, finding their way back, and that in the meantime all her father’s men would be searching the streams and bush for her and her brother.
In the midst of all this fresh revelation, their boat suddenly shot from the creek into a mighty stream of black and sullen waters.
“And down this river is your camp,” the girl said quietly. “We will take you there at once.”
For a moment Johnny was tempted. He had been away for more than two weeks. What had happened in that time? What of Pant? What of his Caribs? What of Daego and his men? Had there been a battle? If so, who had won? Whose camp fires gleamed there in the heart of that magic mahogany forest, his own or Daego’s? He did so want to know the answer to all these questions.
But suddenly there flashed through his mind the worried face of the girl.
“Brave girl!” he breathed as a lump in his throat all but choked him. “She saved my life. It cost her many days. She must go home. She’s a girl. I’m a boy. I can’t let them take me first.”
“No,” he exclaimed, snatching the paddle from her hands, “there is time enough for me.”
With the paddle he deftly turned the boat about. Then, nothing loath, Roderick and the black woman joined him in the stroke that sent it speeding upstream. So, once more, Johnny’s back was turned on the red lure.
That night Johnny dreamed once more of little golden brown women grinding and spinning, of hunters returning with deer and wild pigs slung across their backs, and of the three gods,—one black, one green and one of pure gold.
Strangely enough, when he awoke from this dream he felt nearer the fabled Indian village; the dream seemed more real than ever before.
Once more it was morning on the upper reaches of Rio Hondo. The dugout was tied to the bared roots of a gnarled old mangrove. The camp of Jean and Johnny, of Rod and the Carib woman, was on the crest of a high bank that overlooked the black waters.