The boy was a dark copper color; his hair grew straight down over his low forehead; he was pot-bellied and altogether ugly. The girl was younger, lighter in color, slim and graceful, and pretty in a wild way, like a bronze elf of the jungle. “What’ll I do with them?” repeated Manuel. “I can’t kill them, or leave them here to starve or be eaten by jaguars. I’ll take them down the Pachitea and turn them over to a Campas tribe.” Having decided, Manuel folded a palm leaf and used it to bail out the canoe. In the bottom he found a bunch of dwarfish bananas and some dried fish. Here was good fortune in the way of food. He arranged the palm leaves across the gunwales, making a sun, rain, and dew shield. Then, pushing off, he paddled into the swollen current. The blazing sun rose; the sand flies wheeled with the drifting canoe; the afternoon rain poured; night came, with its cloud of singing mosquitoes, its poison dews and fogs. That day passed, and another like it. Every hour the canoe drifted speedy as the current. The Cashibos children lost their fear of Manuel. The boy jabbered and played; the girl smiled at Manuel, which persuaded him not to give them to a Campas tribe, but to take them home and care for them himself. Three more days and nights the canoe drifted. Manuel’s strength had returned, but it troubled him to think. Something had happened up the river. He had for his pillow a ragged coat that fascinated him, and which he treasured. Early the next morning he turned the green bend at La Boca to come abruptly upon the _Amazonas_, lying at the dock. Men shouted from her decks; there was a thudding of bare feet. “Look! Look!” “Is it the outlaw?” “No--no!” “Yes--yes. Those shoulders and arms--it’s he!” Manuel’s blotched face, swollen out of all proportions, was unrecognizable. Captain Valdez leaned hard over the rail. “Manuel, is it you?” “Yes, captain.” “Where’s your cowcha?” “Lost, captain, lost! A great rubber forest, captain--I had tons of cowcha--it’s lost--all lost!” “I suppose so,” replied Valdez ironically. “That’s a fine cargo to pay you--two half-grown Indian kids. The nerve of you, Manuel, dropping into La Boca with slaves.” “Slaves!” echoed from Manuel. His gaze traveled from Valdez’s face to the little bronze Cashibos, once more huddling, frightened, in the bow. “Slaves? Ha! Ha! Ha!” “Manuel, you had your choice,” went on the captain, “and now you must abide by it. I’ve caught some of you slave hunters this trip. There’s Bustos in irons. Your choice Manuel--the chain gang, or the river?” “The river for me!” said Manuel. “Only up instead of down!” “Up! But, Manuel, there’s a chance down the Amazon. You--” The rubber hunter faced up the wide Pachitea. His stentorian cry froze the words upon Captain Valdez’s lips. It rolled out, a strange, trenchant call to something beyond the wild, silent river. “Fever,” whispered one of the fettered slave dealers. “Bitten crazy,” said another.