ittle monkey. Quick as lightning he inserted another arrow and caught
one of the other monkeys as it was taking a tremendous leap through
the air to a lower branch. The arrow struck this one in the shoulder,
but it was a glancing shot and the shaft dropped to the ground. In the
meantime the Indian ran after the first monkey and carried it up to
me. It seemed fast asleep, suffering no agony whatever; and after five
or six minutes its heart ceased beating. The other monkey landed on the
branch it was aiming for in its leap, but after a short while it seemed
uneasy and sniffed at everything. Finally, its hold on the branch
relaxed, it dropped to the ground and was dead in a few minutes. It
was a marvellous thing to behold these animals wounded but slightly,
the last one only scratched, and yet dying after a few minutes as if
they were falling asleep. It was then explained to me that the meat
was still good to eat and that the presence of poison would not affect
the consumer's stomach in the least; in fact, most of the game these
Indians get is procured in this manner. I was lucky enough to secure
a snap-shot of this man in the act of using his blow-gun. It proved
to be the last photograph I took in the Brazilian jungles. Accidents
and sickness subsequently set in, and the fight for life became too
hard and all-absorbing even to think of photographing. He left us
after an hour's conversation, and we resumed our journey homewards.

We had a slight advantage in retracing our former path. Although the
reedy undergrowth had already choked it, we were travelling over
ground that we knew, and it was also no longer necessary to delay
for the building of _tambos_; we used the old ones again.

Jerome had complained for some time of a numbness in his fingers
and toes, and also of an increasing weakness of the heart that
made every step a torment. The Chief and I tried our best to cheer
him up, although I felt certain that the brave fellow himself knew
what dreadful disease had laid its spell upon him. However, we kept
on walking without any words that might tend to lower our already
depressed spirits.

But our march was no longer the animated travel it had been on the
way out; we talked like automatons rather than like human, thinking
beings. Suffering, hunger, and drugs had dulled our senses. Only the
will to escape somehow, the instinct of self-preservation, was fully
awake in us. A sweep of the machete to cut a barrier bushrope