After a time, the castaways only bent their gaze upon the monster at intervals, when some new manoeuvre attracted their notice. There was no immediate danger to be dreaded from it; and although its proximity was anything but pleasant, there were other thoughts equally disagreeable, and more important, to occupy their time and attention. They could not remain all their lives in the sapucaya; and although they knew not what fortune awaited them in the forest, beyond, they were all anxious to get there.
Whether it was altogether a flooded forest, or whether there might not be some dry land in it, no one could tell. In the Mundurucús opinion it was the former: and in the face of this belief, there was not much hope of their finding a foot of dry land. In any case, the forest must be reached, and all were anxious to quit their quarters on the sapucaya, under the belief that they would find others more comfortable. At all events, a change could not well be for the worse.
Munday had promised them the means of transport, but how this was to be provided none of them as yet knew. The time, however, had arrived for him to declare his intentions, and this he proceeded to do; not in words, but by deeds that soon made manifest his design.
It will be remembered that, after killing the macaws, he had tapped the seringa, and drawn two cups full of the sap, that he had bottled it up in the pots, carefully closing the lids against leakage. It will also be remembered, that he had provided himself with a quantity of creepers, which he had folded into a portable bundle. These were of a peculiar sort, the true sipos of the South American forest, which serve for all purposes of cordage, ropes ready made by the hand of Nature. On parting from the seringa, he had brought these articles along with him, his companion carrying a share of the load. Though chased by the jacaré, and close run too, neither had abandoned his bundle, tied by sipos around the neck, and both the bottled caoutchouc and the cordage were now in the sapucaya. What they were intended for no one could guess, until it pleased the Indian to reveal his secret; and this he at length did, by collecting a large number of nuts from the sapucaya, Ralph and Richard acting as his aides, emptying them of their three-cornered kernels, restoring the lids, and then making them water-proof by a coating of the caoutchouc.
Soon all became acquainted with his plans, when they saw him bind the hollow shells into bunches, three or four in each, held together by sipos, and then with a stronger piece of the same parasite attach the bunches two and two together, leaving about three feet of the twisted sipos between.
Swimming-belts! cried Ralph, now for the first time comprehending the scheme. Ralph was right. That was just what the Mundurucú had manufactured, a set of swimming-belts .
Chapter Thirty Alligator Lore
vasante , till the flood fell, and that would not be for months. Long before that it must undoubtedly perish, either by drowning or starvation.
Whether or not these unpleasant forebodings passed through the monkeys wits, and whether they nerved it, may never be known. Certainly something seemed to stimulate the creature to determination; for instead of standing any longer shivering in the fork of the tree, it turned suddenly, and, darting up the trunk, ran out upon one of the horizontal branches. To go directly from the sapucaya to the forest, it was necessary to pass under this limb; and Tipperary Tom, following in the wake of the others, had taken this track. He was already far out from the stem of the tree, almost clear of the overhanging branches, and half oblivions of the painful parting, when a heavy body, pouncing upon his shoulders, caused both him and his empty shells to sink some feet under the water; for just like old Munday on the alligator had the monkey come down upon Tipperary Tom. The affrighted Irishman, on rising to the surface, sputtered forth a series of cries, at the same time endeavouring to rid himself of the unexpected rider on his back. It was just at this crisis, too, that the macaw had managed to make good its footing in the fleece of the negro. Mozey, however, was the first to get clear of his incubus; and then all eyes were directed towards Tipperary Tom and the clinging coaita, while peals of laughter resounded from every lip.
Mozey had enfranchised himself by sacrificing a few tufts of his woolly hair, but the task was not so easy for Tom. In fact, it proved altogether impracticable; for the coaita had curled its prehensile tail around his neck in a knot that would have made a hangman envious. The more he tugged at it, the more it tightened; and had the Irishman been left to himself, it would have no doubt ended in his being strangled outright, a fate he began to dread. At this crisis he heard the Mundurucú shout to him across the water to leave the coaita alone, as then it would relax its hold. Fortunately for himself, Tom had the prudence to obey this well-timed counsel; and although still half suffocated by the too cordial embrace of his pet, he permitted it to have its own way, until, having approached the forest, the monkey relaxed its hold, and sprang up among the branches.