I thought of him sadly, with the feeling
that he had learned how to live, and that he would die by applying his
knowledge. I wondered how he would die. He would be alone there, in
the tangle, stumbling across creepers. The poisoned blow-pipe, from
the long, polished blow-pipe, such as I had seen in the museums. He
would fall on his face, among the jungle. Then the silent Indian would
hack off his head with a flint, and pickle it for the Lima markets. He
would never get to the Caqueta. Or perhaps he would be caught in an
electric storm, an aire, as they call them, and be stricken down among
the hills on his way to Chito. More probably he would die of hunger or
thirst, as so many had died before him. I remembered a cowboy whom I
had found under a thorn bush in the Argentine. Paul Bac would be like
that cowboy; he would run short of water, and kill his horse for the
blood, and then go mad and die.
I was in my bunk when he went ashore at Payta, but a fellow in the
other watch told me how he left the ship. There was a discussion in
the forecastle that night as to the way the heads were prepared. Some
said it was sand; some said it was the leaf of the puro bush; one or
two held out for a mixture of pepper and nitrate.
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