“Of course there’s a risk,” I laughed. “That’s what makes it so attractive. I’m not worried over the Kunas though. They’re not half as bad as painted. I spent three weeks among them two years ago and had no trouble. They may drive me back, but they don’t kill people offhand. Getting out will be the trouble as you say. But I’ve first got to get in and I’m not making plans to get out until then.” “Lord, but I wish I were going too!” cried Hazen. “Say, I tell you what I’m going to do. I’ll borrow that old Curtiss practice boat and fly over there once in a while. If you’re there, just wave a white rag for a signal. Maybe the people’ll be so darned scared if they see the plane that they’ll not trouble you. Might make a good play of it—let ’em think you’re responsible for it you know.” “I don’t know but that’s a mighty good scheme, Hazen,” I replied, after a moment’s thought. “Let’s see. If I get off day after tomorrow I should be in the Kuna country in a week. You might take your first flight ten days from now. But if things go wrong I don’t see as you can help me much if you can’t land.” “We’ll worry over that when the time comes,” he said cheerfully. A few days later I was being paddled and poled up the Cañazas River with the last outposts of civilization many miles behind and the unknown jungles and the forbidden country of the wild Kunas ahead. It was with the greatest difficulty that I had been able to secure men to accompany me, for the natives looked with the utmost dread upon the Kuna country and only two, out of the scores I had asked, were willing to tempt fate and risk their lives in the expedition into the unknown. For two days now we had been within the forbidden district—the area guarded and held by the Kunas and into which no outsider is permitted to enter—and yet we had seen or heard no signs of Indians. But I was too old a hand and too familiar with the ways of South American Indians to delude myself with the idea that we had not been seen or our presence known. I well knew that, in every likelihood, we had been watched and our every movement known since the moment we entered the territory. No doubt, sharp black eyes were constantly peering at us from the jungle, while bows and blowguns were ever ready to discharge their missiles of death at any instant. As long as we were not molested or interfered with, however, I gave little heed to this. Moreover, I believed, from my brief acquaintance with the Kunas of two years previously, that they seldom killed a white man until after he had been warned out of their country and tried to return to it.