The steersman no longer thought of continuing his course, which he was now convinced must be the wrong one. Bearing with all his strength upon the steering oar, he endeavoured to direct the galatea back into the channel through which he had come; but partly from the drifting of the current, and partly owing to the deceptive light of the moon, he could no longer recognise the latter, and, dropping the rudder in despair, he permitted the vessel to drift whichever way the current might carry her!
Before Tipperary Tom could summon courage to make known to his companions the dilemma into which he had conducted them, the galatea had drifted among the tree-tops of the flooded forest, where she was instantly brought to anchor.
The crashing of broken boughs roused her crew from their slumbers. The ex-miner, followed by his children, rushed forth from the toldo. He was not only alarmed, but perplexed, by the unaccountable occurrence. Mozey was equally in a muddle. The only one who appeared to comprehend the situation was the old Indian, who showed sufficient uneasiness as to its consequences by the terrified manner in which he called out: The Gapo! The Gapo!
Chapter Six The Monkey-Pots
The Gapo? repeated Tipperary Tom, fancying by the troubled expression on the face of the Indian that he had conducted his companions toward some terrible disaster. Phwat is it, Manday?
Da Gapoo? simultaneously interrogated the negro, the whites of his eyeballs shining in the moonlight. What be dat?
The Mundurucú made reply only by a wave of his hand, and a glance around him, as if to say, Yes, the Gapo; you see were in it.
The three interrogators were as much in the dark as ever. Whether the Gapo was fish, flesh, or fowl, air, fire, or water, they could not even guess. There was but one upon the galatea besides the Indian himself who knew the signification of the word which had created such a sensation among the crew, and this was young Richard Trevannion.
Its nothing, uncle,
would appear as so many fabulous inventions, set forth to stimulate and gratify a taste for the merely marvellous. Young reader, this is not the aim of your author, nor does he desire it to be the end. On the contrary, he claims to draw Nature with a verisimilitude that will challenge the criticism of the naturalist; though he acknowledges a predilection for Nature in her wildest aspects, for scenes least exposed to the eye of civilisation, and yet most exposed to its doubting incredulity.
There are few country people who have not witnessed the spectacle of a piece of woodland inundated by the overflow of a neighbouring stream. This flood is temporary; the waters soon subside into their ordinary channel, and the trees once more appear growing out of terra firma , with the green mead spreading on all sides around them. But a flooded forest is a very different affair; somewhat similar in character indeed, but far grander. Not a mere spinney of trees along the bank of a small stream; but a region extending beyond the reach of vision, a vast tract of primeval woods, the tall trees submerged to their very tops, not for days, nor weeks, but for months, ay, some of them forever! Picture to your mind an inundation of this kind, and you will have some idea of the Gapo.
Extending for seventeen hundred miles along the banks of the Solimoës, now wider on the northern, now stretching farther back from the southern side, this semi-submerged forest is found, its interior almost as unknown as the crater-like caverns of the moon, or the icy oceans that storm or slumber round the Poles, unknown to civilised man, but not altogether to the savage. The aboriginal of Amazonia, crouching in his canoe, has pierced this water-land of wonders. He could tell you much about it that is real, and much that is marvellous, the latter too often pronounced fanciful by lettered savans . He could tell you of strange trees that grow there, bearing strange fruits, not to be found elsewhere, of wonderful quadrupeds, and quadrumana , that exist only in the Gapo, of birds brilliantly beautiful, and reptiles hideously ugly; among the last the dreaded dragon serpent, Sucuruju. He could tell you, moreover, of creatures of his own kind, if they deserve the name of man, who dwell continuously in the flooded forest, making their home on scaffolds among the tree-tops, passing from place to place in floating rafts or canoes, finding their subsistence on fish, on the flesh of the manatee , on birds, beasts, reptiles, and insects, on the stalks of huge water-plants and the fruits of undescribed trees, on monkeys, and sometimes upon man ! Such Indians as have penetrated the vast water-land have brought strange tales out of it. We may give credence to them or refuse it; but they, at least, are firm believers in most of the accounts which they have collected.
It is not to be supposed that the Gapo is impenetrable. On the contrary, there are several well-known waterways leading through it, well-known, I mean, to the Indians dwelling upon its borders, to the tapuyos , whose business it is to supply crews for the galateas of the Portuguese traders, and to many of these traders themselves. These waterways are often indicated by blazings on the trees, or broken branches, just as the roads are laid out by pioneer settlers in a North American forest; and but for these marks, they could not be followed. Sometimes, however, large spaces occur in which no trees are to be seen, where, indeed, none grow. There are extensive lakes, always under water, even at the lowest ebb of the inundation. They are of all sizes and every possible configuration, from the complete circle through all the degrees of the ellipse, and not unfrequently in the form of a belt, like the channel of a river running for scores of miles between what might readily be mistaken for banks covered with a continuous thicket of low bushes, which are nothing more than the spray of evergreen trees, whose roots lie forty feet under water!