2.

CONTENTS
PAGE
When the Deluge Came 1
Oomah, the Story-teller 30
The Terror of Claws and Fangs 44
As It Was in the Beginning 82
The Struggle for Existence 114
The Cruelty of Tumwah 150
The White Feather 189

ILLUSTRATIONS

Here where he had rested before, he would sleep again Frontispiece

FACING PAGE
Suma waited with bated breath and blazing eyes 96

There was the twang of the bow and the deadly missile
whined through the air 208

"Tumwah, send the rain-clouds here" 222

THE BLACK PHANTOM

CHAPTER I

WHEN THE DELUGE CAME

With the coming of night, _Siluk_, the Storm-God, laid a heavy hand upon
the cowering jungle. Now, the coming of night in the Upper Amazon is in
itself an awe-inspiring event; but coupled with the furious onslaught of
_Siluk_, the Storm-God, it is terrible.

In the tropics there is not the lengthy twilight of a temperate clime;
nor the fearsome splendor of the Aurora Borealis with its million
streamers of ghastly light shooting into the heavens in a fan-shaped
flare of quivering color to lend mystery and enchantment to the long
months of the frigid, scintillating polar night.

One moment, the sun like a brassy ball of fire hangs low upon the
threatening horizon; the next, it has dropped into the belt of grayish
mist that marks the earth's end and darkness has spread its silent,
ominous mantle over the forest. Almost, as a room is plunged into
blackness upon the snuffing out of a candle at midnight, so the jungle
is flooded with gloom at the snap of the solar switch.

_Uru_, the great howling monkey, eyed with suspicion the bank of angry
clouds descending from the slopes of the dark mountain masses to the
west. Then he turned to his party, five in number, and from his throat
there emanated a few gruff barks followed by a long-drawn, rumbling
roar. The females hugged close the branches, gave one furtive look at
the thre