med to it and did not notice its
existence. But the chamber in the giant tree trunk remained dry and
comfortable, a little world apart from its mournful surroundings. And
scarcely had she entered upon her voluntary retirement when a swarm of
craneflies took up its station at the entrance. These latter were
slender, almost wasplike insects with lacy wings and long, thread-like
legs, that whirled and danced with the mad joyousness of life, the mass
of swirling creatures seemingly spinning a net of sheerest gossamer that
curtained the interior from the prying eyes of the wrens and ant birds
hopping inquisitively through the crevices of the windfall.

CHAPTER II

OOMAH, THE STORY-TELLER

The approach of Siluk, the Storm-God, brought terror not only to the
animals of the boundless wilderness. Besides the creatures that lived in
the treetops, in the air, on the floor of the forest and under the
rubbish that littered the ground were other living beings, no less wild,
no less savage than the ones that shared their jungle homes.

They were the Indians, living in scattered tribes, some numerous, others
so few in numbers that they verged on extinction. They roamed the vast
hinterland in bands, subsisting on the bounty of the land when food was
plentiful, suffering hunger in less propitious seasons, and sleeping on
the ground where night overtook them.

The dry season was their time of harvest, of care-free existence and of
abundance. No sooner had the heavens ceased to drench the long-enduring
earth with its tears than they followed the receding floods to the lower
regions where the forest ended.

Then came long days of brilliant sunshine, of balmy breezes, and of
feasting beside the great rivers that were the very arteries of life of
the great Amazon country.

Well-filled stomachs were conducive to friendlier dispositions. Old
enmities were forgotten or at least held in abeyance. Each tribe was too
busily engaged in the enjoyment of life to spend precious days in
warfare on its neighbors with all the attendant hardships and suffering.

It was only after the skies had been leaden for days at a time; when
rain in torrents beat unceasingly upon the hastily erected shelters and
found its way in rivulets through the palm-leaf roofs so that the
earthen floors were converted into basins of mud; when game retreated to
unknown or inaccessible places so that the procuring of food became an
increasingly difficult problem; i