Just as I reached up and released him a piece of wood was slipped into my mouth by some one from behind making it impossible for me to utter a sound and before I could take my revolver from its holster my hands were pinioned back of me and my feet were bound so that I couldn’t kick, much less run. Although I kept my eyes open I couldn’t see a man-jack of my captors nor did they make the slightest noise. They lifted me up bodily and after a few manœuvers in penetrating the jungle we finally reached a pretty well trodden trail and then they set me down and took the gag out of my mouth. Four strapping big, copper colored bucks with splashes of red paint on their stark naked bodies were the imps of Satan who had so unceremoniously abducted me. I would have given just $7.00 in American gold to have gotten each one of them to hold on to the spark-gap of a 10-inch induction coil for just one second. They were a quartet of jim-dandies and all they needed was a stove-pipe hat apiece to complete their outfits. Again they boosted me into the air and with a savage at each corner of me they started off on a dog-trot, whither I knew not but what I did know was that I was a goner. After a march, or a trot, of two days and nights we came to an Indian village. There were several hundred men, women and children savages about but they were dressed better than the hunters who had brought me in for each one wore a string around his or her waist and a rattle-box on her or his ankle. If any one thinks that cannibalism has been wiped out in the Amazon jungles he has another think coming for I saw with these--my own eyes--the whole horrible ceremony gone through with of eating human flesh. After I had been there a few days a couple of savages, one with brown hair and beard and the other with red hair and beard, began talking to me in Spanish after trying Portuguese on me. I was quite surprised when they told me they were rubber men from Señor Castro’s _fezenda_ whom the cannibals had captured nearly a year before. We planned escape by the hour, though one of them said that was just what these man eaters wanted us to do and that when a fellow tried to escape they would recapture him, bring him back, put him in the proverbial pot and let him stew in his own juice. We were of a mind that it would be better to be live men turned savages than to be cooked men eaten by cannibals. His most high worshipful King Oopla relieved me of my revolver, and came nearly shooting up the village,--which I heartily wished he had done,--also my watch, knife, compass and other trinkets which four former articles he generously kept for himself and the latter he gave to a wench whom I afterwards learned was his daughter, the Princess Jaci--which is as near as I could come to pronouncing her name. I called her _Princess Mabel_, the latter name being that of a _shine kitchen-mechanic_ we once had.