"You have it right, senhor," Lourenco affirmed. "I have heard this sort
of thing used, though I never before saw the instrument itself. Those
notes will carry at least five miles, and the cannibals send messages by
striking the bars in different order. This run which we have just heard
is always used first, and no message is sent until a reply is received."

"Bush telegraph," nodded McKay. "First call your operator and then shoot
the message in code. Pretty ingenious for a bunch of absolute savages."

Lourenco turned to Yuara and asked a question. Yuara curtly replied.

"He says, Capitao, that this is to tell Monitaya we come. But we now are
too far off for Monitaya's men to hear. The bars are made ready before
starting so that they can be used as soon as we are within hearing. He
says also that we start now."

The Mayorunas already were entering their canoes. With cool deliberation
the whites gathered up their equipment and settled themselves for the
journey at whose end lay either life or death. The boat of Yuara
started, and once more the flotilla was on its way.

For an hour or more it swung on among the forested hills before the
telegraph instrument was put to use. Then it paused, and the sonorous
voice of the xylophone spoke to the jungle. A period of waiting brought
no reply.

The canoe moved on for a mile. Again the mallets beat the wood in the
ascending scale of the call. And then, faint, mellow, far off, sounded
the answer.

While every man sat silent the bars boomed out their fateful news. Slow,
brief, deep as a bell tolling a dirge, a reply rolled back. And with the
solemnity of a funeral cortege the canoes once more moved on, unhurried,
inexorable, the measured swing of the paddles beating like a pulse of
doom.

At length the crew of Yuara held their paddles. Yuara himself turned
toward the second canoe and talked a minute. A signal to his men, and
his boat proceeded. All the others remained where they were.

"He goes to Monitaya to speak of us," said Lourenco. "He will return. We
have only to wait."

"Yeah," grunted Tim, disgustedly. "We'll wait till night if he takes as
long to go through his rigmarole as he done yesterday. If I got to fight
I want to hop to it, not set round in the shade o' the shelterin' palm
while them guys are heatin' up the stewpot. This waitin' stuff gits my
goat."

"You might sing us a song, senhor, to pass the time," Pedro suggested,
with a tight-lipped smile.

"