"_Corriente!_" replied the man; "my way of thinking, exactly! But if I had a good rifle now I'd put that little fellow out of his misery, for he's going down, sure!" It was not unkindly said; and Josè appreciated the man's rude sentiment. Minutes passed in strained silence. "_Hombre!_" cried the man. "He's going!" The lad was evidently weakening. The rapid, swirling current continually frustrated his efforts to reach the shore. Again the head went under. "_Dios!_" Josè exclaimed. "Is there no help?" Jesus had walked the waves. Yet here his earthly representative, trained in all the learning and culture of Holy Church to be an _Alter Christus_, stood helplessly by and watched a child drown! God above! what avail religious creed and churchly dogma? How impotent the beliefs of men in such an hour! Could the Holy Father himself, with all his assumptions, spiritual and temporal--with all his power to loose from sin and from the imaginary torments of purgatory--save this drowning boy? Josè turned away in bitterness of heart. As he did so a murmur of awe arose from the spectators. The priest looked again down the river. Impelled from below, the body of the boy was hurled out of the water. Then, as it fell, it disappeared. "_Cayman!_" gasped the horrified crew. Josè stood spellbound, as the ghastly truth dawned upon him. A crocodile, gliding beneath the struggling lad, had tossed him upward, and caught him in its loathsome jaws when he fell. Then it had dragged him beneath the yellow waters, where he was seen no more. Life is held cheaply by the Magdalena negro--excepting his own. Shiftless and improvident child of the tropics, his animal wants are readily satisfied by the fruits and fish which nature provides for him so bountifully. Spiritual wants he has none--until calamity touches him and he thinks he is about to die. Then witchcraft, charm, incantation, the priest--anything that promises help is hurriedly pressed into requisition to prolong his useless existence. If he recovers, he forgets it all as hurriedly. The tragedy which had just been enacted before the Honda's crew produced a ripple of excitement--a momentary stirring of emotion--and was then speedily forgotten, while the boat turned and drove its way up-stream against the muddy waters.