"Huh? Say, lookit here, ye long-legged gorilla--" Knowlton exploded. McKay and Lourenço snickered. "It's on you, Tim!" vociferated Knowlton. "You dug the hole yourself. Now crawl in and pull it in after you." Tim snorted wrathfully, but his eyes laughed. "Aw, what's the use o' trying to educate you guys?" "You swallowed a mosquito just now, but I cannot swallow that devil bug," Pedro grinned. Tim rumbled something, solaced himself with a cigarette, then squatted and joined the others in their frugal breakfast of coffee and _chibeh_--a handful of farinha mixed with water in a gourd. When it was finished McKay, who never smoked in the morning until he had eaten, filled a pipe and suggested: "Guess we'd better plan our campaign. We didn't take time yesterday. In case we find no trace of the Raposa at the place where you fellows saw him, what's your idea?" Lourenço, puffing thoughtfully, stared into the fire. "There will be time enough to decide that, Capitao, after we have visited that place," he said, slowly. "Still, perhaps it is best to make some plan; it can be changed at any time." For a moment longer he looked at the dying flame. Then, dropping his cigarette stub into it, he continued: "If I were going alone to find a man among the Red Bones, I should go first to the Mayorunas and work through them to make sure of a friendly reception by the other people. I would--" "Why, that's the very thing Schwandorf suggested!" "Yes? I have not heard what he said. Tell me." McKay did so. Lourenço smiled. "Sometimes, Capitao, the devil puts into the hands of men a weapon which is turned against himself. So it is now. That _Allemao_, Schwandorf, never expected you to reach the people you seek, but the plan is good. It would not be good if you followed it exactly as he laid it out, but things have changed; and what you could not do with Peruvian companions, or alone, you perhaps can do with us. I will show you. "It happens that I have been twice among the cannibals living in a certain _maloca_ which I can find again. Perhaps you know that those people live in scattered _malocas_, each ruled by its own chief--" "Yes, we know about that." "Good. Now if we went to any _maloca_ where we were not known we might be killed at once. But at that _maloca_ of which I speak I am known to the chief and all his fighting men, for I once led them on a raid into Peru. So they will remember me--" "What's that?" Knowlton interrupted, in amazement. "You led a cannibal tribe on the warpath?" "Just so, senhor. It is a long story, but these are the facts: "There was in Peru a gang of killers, robbers--and worse--who called themselves the Peccaries. They raided one of the coronel's camps where I was in charge, killed all my gang except myself and one other, and used us two as slaves and beasts of burden.