In the Amazon Jungle Part 9

Here I gave Coronel da Silva an account of the death of Chief Marques, and the brave Jerome, which made a deep impression upon this n.o.ble man.

The three men, Magellaes, Anisette, and Freitas, had returned in safety after they separated from us.

I met the wife of Chief Marques. She was the woman whose arm I had amputated. When I saw her she was carrying, with the arm left to her, a pail of water from the little creek behind headquarters. She was a different woman, and I was pleased to know that my desperate surgical operation had resulted so well. Her cheeks were full and almost rosy. Her health, I was told, excepting for occasional attacks of ague, was very good.

Soon after, the launch arrived from Remate de Males and I put my baggage on board. The Coronel accompanied me down river for about forty-eight hours and then, reaching the northern extremity of his estate, he bade me a fond good-bye with the words: "_Sempre, ill.u.s.trissimo Senhor, minha casa e a suas ordenes_," "My house, most ill.u.s.trious Sir, is always at your disposal."

When I arrived at Remate de Males I had another attack of malaria, which almost severed the slender thread by which my life hung; my physical resistance was gone. But I managed to develop my plates before breaking down completely, and after having disposed of my small quant.i.ty of gold dust, for which I realised some three hundred and forty dollars, I was taken down to the mouth of the Javary River, where I had landed almost a year previous, now a physical and, I might almost say, mental wreck. I stayed in the house of Coronel Monteiro, the frontier official at Esperanca, for five long days, fighting with death, until one afternoon I saw the white hull of the R.M.S. _Napo_ appear at a bend of the Amazon, only five hundred yards away.

Closer she came--this rescuing instrument of Providence. She was none too soon, for I had now reached the last notch of human endurance. She dropped anchor; a small gasoline launch was lowered into the water; three white-coated officers stepped into it--they came ash.o.r.e--they climbed the stairs. The captain, a stout, kind-looking Englishman, approached my hammock and found therein a very sick white man. I was carried aboard and placed in the hands of the ship's physician. At last those black forests of the Amazon were left behind. After twenty-two days' sail, Sandy Hook lighthouse loomed on our port side, and soon after, I could rest--rest, and _live_ again!