f game. The women ground yuca roots for fresh cassava
bread. And the children, with tear-stained faces, gathered wood that had
been stranded along the edge of the sandbar. But the youth wandered
about listlessly, barely conscious of the activities that were going on
all around him.

Choflo had gone to the forest early in the forenoon. At mid-day he
returned, carrying a bundle of slender stems in his hand. Looking
neither to right nor to left, he entered his hut and drew a curtain
woven of rushes across the doorway so that none might behold him plying
his sacred calling.

Safe in the seclusion of his abode, he dug a hole in the sandy floor and
buried the stems he had brought so ostentatiously from the forest; then
he took down a bundle of arrows from under the thatched roof and
selected one after a good deal of scrutiny of the lot. It was long--six
feet or more, with a slender, reed shaft and a needle-like point of
tough palmwood fitted and glued into the stem. A short thorn, fastened
to the point with fine twine, formed a barb so that the arrow could not
be withdrawn once it had entered the flesh. On each side of the base was
a split eagle's feather attached with colored thread. The feathers were
not fastened in a line parallel with the shaft, but curved slightly;
this gave the arrow a rotary motion in flight like that imparted to the
bullet by a rifled gun barrel and made for accuracy in shooting. He now
took a lump of resinous gum from his charm-bag and rubbed it on the point
of the arrow until the latter was covered with a thick, black coat,
resembling old beeswax. A cap of a joint of slender bamboo was fitted
over the end of the missile to prevent the rain from washing away the
supposed poison, and it was ready to be delivered to Oomah.

Choflo had been guilty of treachery of the vilest kind. Instead of the
deadly _pua_ poison contained in the stems of the creepers he had
brought from the forest he had used the harmless gum which so closely
resembled it that the eye could not distinguish between them.

Oomah started on his perilous mission that night, after the feast had
been eaten and all the members of the tribe had bade him a solemn
farewell.

It was a silent group that watched him depart, for they felt that he
would not return; and in their grief they entirely forgot Choflo's dire
predictions for themselves in the event that Oomah was unsuccessful in
his quest. In their hearts they rebelled at the dictum of