“Once when I was going down this very river we heard a noise of wild laughter, intermingled with strange piercing cries. We knew at once that it was a traveller lost in the forest. It took us two hours to cut our way to the spot where we heard the sounds. We guessed who were the sufferers. Two Spaniards had hired a large canoe, and had taken with them six village boatmen. They had refused my offer to go with four men of my tribe who were accustomed to the river and its dangers, as we demanded a much higher sum than the villagers were ready to go for, and we said when we saw them put off that they would never get down to the mission. When we reached the spot one man was lying dead at the bottom of the canoe. One of the Spaniards and one of the villagers were missing, having no doubt leapt overboard in their madness. The others were all raving madmen, some with scarce strength to raise themselves in the boat, others making the dreadful laughing and screaming that we had heard. “When they saw us they took us, I believe, for devils, and it was not until we had lassoed the strongest that we were able to overpower them. We bound them and laid them at the bottom of our canoe and took them down to the mission, which was some fifty miles below us. I was told afterwards that only one of them ever recovered his senses; the others either died raving or were hopelessly mad. From the one who recovered it was learned that as soon as they came to the point where the stream became rapid they made for the edge of the forest. At night they tied up their canoe to a tree, but in the morning when they awoke they found that the line had become untied, and that they had drifted into the forest. There they had been three days when we found them. They had lost all idea of direction, and had we been a few hours later the last voice would have been silenced, and when the flood subsided the canoe and its occupants would have rotted away, and no one would ever have known the fate that had befallen them.” “How do you find your way through a flooded forest, Hurka?”