Arthur O. Friel

“ We know a prisoner was taken. And in spite of the word of Andirah and his pajé, we have every reason to suppose that the prisoner was our Lady Marion. She must have been somewhere in the maloca when we were there. She must have been there when you fellows returned this afternoon and found the tribe all inside. She may have been inside that bat-mask you saw going to the priest's house, or she may not. If she wasn't, she must have been tied up tight in the maloca when the gang went into the woods. In that case she certainly would be there when you, Pedro, spied into the maloca soon afterward. ”

“ For one thing, the coming of the dark would lessen the chance that the people of the Bat would discover the absence of their pajé and track us. Until morning, at least, they probably would think their medicine-man was staying in his den. And we wanted plenty of time in which to make our surly captive talk.
The second reason was that gloom would prevent the wizard from detecting the blindness of Senhor Tom. The dimness in the maloca and the bold acting of our stricken comrade had made it possible for him to deceive all the Tucunas ”

“ Remember that house belongs to the pajé, who is a wizard and so on. A house of that kind is likely to be full of tricks. I want to go over that house inch by inch, move everything around, poke into the walls and the roof and the ground and—I was going to say 'into the jars,' but you tell me you looked into all of them. ”

“ Then she must be in the hut of the pajé or——”
He hesitated and shut his teeth.
“—or dead,” he finished. “And I don't believe she's dead. I won't believe it until I have to. Tucunas aren't butchers. They're a good bunch, on the whole, and friendly to whites. Of course they differ among themselves, just as any people do—some good, some bad; and things are upset now because of the anti-white war that measly Black Hawk tried to start. But I'm betting our girl is alive and in that priest-house.” ”