Disposing themselves comfortably, they sat watching the lights of the town and the jungle--the first pouring from windows and open doors, the latter streaking across the darkness where the big fire beetles of the tropics winged their way. As Knowlton had predicted, the night noise of forest and stream had diminished; but now from the village itself rose a new discord--a babel of vocal and instrumental efforts at music emanating from the badly worn records of dozens of cheap phonographs grinding away in the stilt-poled huts. "Good Lord!" groaned McKay. "Even here at the end of the world one can't get away from those beastly instruments." A throaty chuckle from the doorway followed the words. Schwandorf emerged, carrying a big bottle. "Yet there is one thing to be thankful for, gentlemen," he said. "In all this town there is not one man who attempts to play a trombone." The others laughed. Thomaz appeared with bottles and thick cups. Corks were drawn, liquids gurgled, matches flared, cigars glowed. Without warning Schwandorf shot a question through the gloom: "Have you seen Cabral--the superintendent?" "Yes." "Ask him about the wild man?" "Yes." "Get any information?" "Nothing definite. He suggested that we see you." "So." A pause, while Schwandorf's cigar end glowed like a flaming eye. "The Red Bones live well up the river," he began, abruptly. "Twenty-four days by canoe, five days through the bush on the east shore. That would bring you to their main settlement--if you were not wiped out before then. They're a big tribe, as tribes go. Ever been here before?" "No. Not here," Knowlton told him. "I've been in Rio, and McKay here has knocked around in--" A stealthy kick from McKay halted him an instant. Then, deftly shifting the sentence, he concluded, "--in a number of places." "So." Another pause. "Then I should explain about tribes. Tribes here generally consist of from fifty to five hundred or more persons living in big houses called '_malocas_.' Unless the tribe is very big, one house holds them all. There may be any number of _malocas_, the inhabitants of which are all of the same racial stock; yet each _maloca_ is, as far as government is concerned, a tribe to itself, controlled by a chief. No _maloca_ owes any duty to any other _maloca_. There is no supreme ruler over all, nor even a federation among them. They live merely as neighbors--distant neighbors. At times they fight like neighbors. You understand." "'When Greek meets Greek--'" quoted McKay. "Just so. When I say, then, that the Red Bones are a big tribe, I mean that there are about five hundred--maybe more--individuals in their main settlement. They live in huts, not in one big tribe-house like the Mayorunas. They are not Mayorunas, in fact; they paint differently, are darker of skin, and more cruel.