JAN OF THE JUNGLE & Its Sequel, Jan in India. Otis Adelbert Kline

JAN OF THE JUNGLE & Its Sequel, Jan in India - Otis Adelbert Kline


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slay them.

      But the jungle, his jungle, was calling. Already he was longing to swing through its sun-dappled branches and lianas again, and tread the soft leaf mold in its deeper shadows. And beyond the jungle was a beautiful being— Ramona.

      Jan groped his way back to the falls. Then he descended the notched cut in the cliff, dived through the curtain of water into the pool, and came up beneath his tree-hut. Shaking the water from his glistening body, he climbed up and found Chicma dozing peacefully in her compartment. She gave a little grunt of greeting as he looked in, then went to sleep once more.

      As time went on she had been paying less and less attention to his comings and goings. No longer did she romp with him in mimic combat, or play at tag with him through the tree tops. She liked her soft nest, and rarely left it except when urged by hunger or thirst. Chicma was getting very old.

      Jan took up his favorite bow and a well-filled quiver of arrows, and left. As he plunged into his jungle, it was good to feel the soft leaf mold under his bare feet, the cool leaves brushing against his face and body.

      He was meat-hungry, and his archery soon won him an unwary curassow. Having eaten, he hurried onward with a fixed purpose—to reach, as soon as possible, the place where he had found Ramona. With Borno gone and Chicma become grouchy and unsociable, he longed for the companionship of a friend. And Ramona was the only other living creature who had shown friendship for him.

      She attracted him, too, in a different way from the others. At thought of her his pulse would quicken in a manner quite impossible to explain.

      He shortened what had been a four-day journey to three. Arriving at the edge of Don Fernando’s grove of young rubber trees, he hurried to the place where he had last seen her. But he found only the gnawed bones of the puma.

      Recalling the direction in which she had gone when called, he went that way and eventually arrived at the patio gate. It was made from heavy planks which fitted a high-arched gateway. He looked through a crack between two planks and saw the object of his quest, seated beneath a tree and holding before her the basket of white leaves with little black tracks on them.

      Jan knew nothing of the mechanism of the gate, and the smooth, plastered surface of the high patio wall offered no opportunity for a finger hold, but he observed that a branch of the tree under which the girl was sitting overhung the wall near a branch of a rubber tree outside. This made a clear path for the jungle-trained Jan.

      Hearing a slight sound in the tree above her, Ramona was about to cry out in fear, but she stifled the sound when her knight-errant dropped softly beside her.

      “Jan!” she whispered. “You startled me!

      “Come see you,” he responded. “Jan like you.”

      “Shh! Not so loud. You will wake my duenna.”

      “Jan don’ understan’,” he said, imitating her low tones.

      She rose, and drew aside the branch of a bushy shrub, one of a clump. Just behind it he saw a short and very round woman in black, seated in a gaudily striped lawn chair with her hands folded in her lap, snoring quite audibly. The thought flashed to his mind that this must be some deadly enemy of Ramona’s. With a low growl he whipped his bow and arrow from the quiver, and took quick aim at the old lady.

      The horrified girl caught his hand.

      “No, no! You must not hurt her! She is my friend. She loves me. But she must not know that you are here with me.”

      Puzzled, the youth replaced bow and arrow in his quiver.

      “Jan try understan’,” he whispered.

      She laid a hand on his arm.

      “Sit here beside me,” she said, “so you will not be seen. Then, if we talk quietly, no one will know that you are here, and perhaps you may come again.”

      They talked for nearly half an hour, Jan asking questions in his limited broken English aided by the universal language of signs and Ramona trying to explain things to him. He asked her about the little basket of white leaves covered with many black tracks, and she told him the little tracks talked to her. She told him the basket was called a “book,” and that the tracks were called “letters,” while groups of tracks were called “words.”

      At the end of a half hour Ramona said:

      “You must go now, Jan. As soon as Señora Soledade finishes her siesta she will look for me and I don’t want her to see you. Come tomorrow at this time, and I will be here.”

      Jan left without protest, going over the wall as he had come. Once in the jungle, he shot a peccary, ate his fill, drank deeply at the river, and crept beneath the roots of a ceiba to dream of a pair of lustrous brown eyes.

      And Ramona, having sent him away, was thrilled by her power over ‘this handsome youth who, though he was a mighty slayer of fierce beasts and savage men, obeyed her, lightest request without question.

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