But something was there. All saw it before they landed--the stern of a small, speedy canoe almost concealed in a narrow rift at the bottom of the bank. In the soil of the rising slope were the prints of bare feet. And Pedro, scanning the tracks narrowly after he and the others reached shore, asserted, "These were not made to-day." Up the bank they climbed, silent and watchful. At the top Lourenço took the lead. In under big trees the five passed in file. A short distance from the edge Lourenço stopped, looking at the ground. The others spread out and stared at the thing he had found. Between the buttress roots of a tall tree was a crude shelter of palm leaves. Before this lay the scattered bones of a man. The skull had been crushed by a mighty blow. The bones were picked clean--had been stripped and torn asunder days before, and the vulture which had just left had gotten nothing for its belated visit. Among them were remnants of cloth, a belt and a machete, and strands of coarse black hair. A few feet away lay a cheap "trade" gun. Lourenço inspected the weapon and laid it back. "Did he shoot before he was downed?" asked Knowlton. "No. The gun is loaded. His death came from above." The bushman ran his eye up the towering tree, then pointed to a large dark object on the ground near by. "Castanha--Brazil-nut tree," he explained. "That heavy nut fell and smashed the Indian's skull like an egg. Indian, yes. His gun, his shelter, and his hair show that. And"--stooping and pointing at one of the bones--"that bone shows who he was. See, Capitao." McKay looked down on a leg bone. At some time the leg had been broken and badly set, if set at all. The bone was crooked. "A short Indian with a crooked leg. Schwandorf's messenger!" "_Si._ No man will ever receive the message he bore. He camped here days ago. Now he camps here forever." CHAPTER XII. THE ARROW Slowly, silently, two canoes glided along the still, dark water of a gloomy creek over-arched by the interlaced limbs of lofty trees. The first, propelled by the slow-dipping blades of two Brazilian bushmen, seemed to be seeking something; for it nosed along with frequent pauses of the paddles, during which it drifted almost to a stop while its crew searched the solemn jungle depths reaching away from the right-hand shore. The second, carrying three bronzed and bearded men of another continent, was only trailing the leader. It moved and paused like the first, but the recurrent scrutiny of the farther gloom by its paddlers was that of men who saw only a meaningless, monotonous bulk of buttresses and trunks and tangle of looping lianas. In this dimness and bewildering chaos the trio might as well have been blind. The eyes of the tiny fleet were in the first boat.