He sprang into visibility as a flashlight in Dalton's hand went on. A
squat, swarthy man with rugged features, a _caboclo_, of white and
Indian blood. He blinked expressionlessly at the light.

"Where is the American scientist?" demanded Dalton in Portuguese.

"_Quem sabe? Foi-se._"

"Which way did he go?"

"_Nao importa. O doutor e doido; nao ha-de-voltar_," said the man
suddenly. "It doesn't matter. The doctor is crazy--he won't come
back."

"Answer me, damn it! Which way?"

The _caboclo_ jerked his shoulders nervously and pointed.

"Come on!" said Dalton and scrambled ashore even as Joao was stopping
the motor and making the boat fast beside the other. "He's gone in
after it!"

The forest was a black labyrinth. Its tangled darkness seemed to drink
up the beam of the powerful flashlight Dalton had brought, its uneasy
rustlings and animal-noises pressed in to swallow the sound of human
movements for which he strained his ears, fearing to call out. He
pushed forward recklessly, carried on by a sort of inertia of
determination; behind him Joao followed, though he moved woodenly and
muttered prayers under his breath.

Then somewhere very near a great voice croaked briefly and was
silent--so close that it poured a wave of faintness over the hearer,
seemed to send numbing electricity tingling along his motor nerves.

Joao dropped to his knees and flung both arms about a tree-bole. His
brown face when the light fell on it was shiny with sweat, his eyes
dilated and blind-looking. Dalton slammed the heel of his hand against
the man's shoulder and got no response save for a tightening of the
grip on the treetrunk, and a pitiful whimper, "_Assombra-me_--it
overshadows me!"

Dalton swung the flashlight beam ahead and saw nothing. Then all at
once, not fifty yards away, a single glowing eye sprang out of the
darkness, arched through the air and hit the ground to blaze into
searing brilliance and white smoke. The clearing in which it burned
grew bright as day, and Dalton saw a silhouetted figure clutching a
rifle and turning its head from side to side.

He plunged headlong toward the light of the flare, shouting, "Thwaite,
you idiot! You can't--"

And then the _currupira_ spoke.

Its bellowing seemed to come from all around, from the ground, the
trees, the air. It smote like a blow in the stomach that drives out
wind and fight. And it roared on, lashing at the wills of those who
heard it, beating and stamping the