No one spoke. But the Indians looked heavenward with terror in their
eyes and trembled more violently than before.

"We must try to ward off the catastrophe; and failing in that, we must
prepare for the worst. Let the corrals be well stocked with turtles and
fill the calabashes with the oil of their eggs. A sacrifice must be made
to Tumwah. Tonight, a crocodile shall be killed and eaten in his honor.
Everyone must partake of it. And if the God of Drought be pleased with
the offering a sign from heaven will show itself. If it displeases
him--woe to all living things that walk the earth."

The group dissolved itself. The people silently went to their shelters
of palm-leaves dotting the sandbar that extended far out into the river.

* * * * *

Warruk, the Jaguar, was no longer a cub. Four seasons of rain had come
and gone since his advent into the world in the hollow cottonwood in the
windfall. The erstwhile kitten, playing in the entrance to the cavity
that had proved an irresistible attraction to Myla, the monkey, and to
her sorrow, had grown into a creature of great size and powerful build,
capable of more than holding his own with any other denizen of the
jungle. Seen from a distance his coat was of a glossy, jet black color;
but a close inspection would have revealed a regular pattern of rosettes
similar to that marking the coats of his tawny brethren. The spots were
very faint, however, like the watermarks on paper.

In the forest he reigned supreme, fearing nothing but feared by all; the
same was true in the pantenales. Where the interlocking branches of the
trees formed a canopy that shut out the moonlight he moved like a
specter in the blackness. In the open country his shadowy form was
equally inconspicuous. Quick and terrible were his attacks. Like an
avalanche he descended upon his victims, seemingly from nowhere, but
with a violence and ferocity that bore down and crushed and rent all at
the same time, and with a suddenness that prevented escape or
resistance.

So far Warruk had not ventured into the lower regions of the pantenal
country--that vast world of marshlands, swampy forest islands and pampas
bordering the great river compared to which the streams he had been
accustomed to frequent in the upper reaches were but rippling brooks.

Suma, his mother, had warned him against the region below her own
well-defined hunting grounds. Once, exactly seven years bef