ON the following day, and for many days thereafter, Jan met Ramona beneath the tree in the garden. As she had made it plain that she did not want these meetings known, he always came and went with the utmost caution. The hollow beneath the roots of the ceiba tree became his home. The fruit and game of the nearby jungle supplied him with ample food.
On the second day, Don Fernando, walking in the patio with his spotless white suit and smoking his long, slim cigar, had a narrow escape from death when Ramona stopped Jan just in time as he was preparing to launch an arrow. Gradually she was able to make him understand, how dear her father, mother and duenna were to her, and that her tutor and the servants were friends who must not be slain or injured.
Much of the time she spent in tutoring him. Jan was an eager pupil, and mastered the alphabet in a few days. Then he tackled an English reader. Ramona’s parents, having been educated in the United States, she was able to correct Jan’s accent.
He was particularly interested in her books on natural history. Many animals he recognized at once by their pictures, having seen them in the jungle. He marveled at the pictures of the mighty prehistoric monsters, saying he wished he could meet and overcome some of them in battle. He was quite disappointed when Ramona told him they were all dead.
Jan was greatly attracted, too, by Ramona’s writing and drawing materials. For many days, he watched her sketch. Then, one day, she gave him pencil, paper, and drawing board, and found that, without training, he could do almost as well as she. His greatest delight was to copy the pictures in the natural history books, labeling each sketch with its correct name which, having once learned, he never forgot.
Each day Jan brought some offering from the jungle for his little goddess. He sought out the rarest orchids and the most luscious fruits and berries. Once, after art encounter with a Carib native, he brought her a necklace of jaguar teeth. But she did not dare to keep it, much to his disappointment.
Jan noticed that she had in the palm of her right hand, a blue tracing of a many-petaled flower. One day, with pen and ink, he traced a similar flower in his own palm. But to his surprise, the ink soon rubbed off. He tried to find out what made hers stay, but she, didn’t know. The mark had been there always—as long as she could remember.
One afternoon Jan was drawing, using a sharp, flexible pen and India ink, when he accidentally pricked his finger. The next morning he noticed a little blue spot where the wound had been. When, after a lapse of several days, the spot remained, he began to trace a blue flower in his own palm in this manner. The work took some time, and cost him a sore hand for a while, but he ended by having a permanent tattoo mark almost identical with that of Ramona, and was delighted with the result.
As soon as he had learned sufficient English, Jan told Ramona about his early life in the menagerie, and of Dr. Bracken, whom he called “Cruel One.” He was amazed and deeply relieved when Ramona told him that it was impossible for Chicma to have been his mother. He often wondered after that what his real mother was like, and if he would ever see her.
For more than two months, Jan lived beneath the ceiba near the plantation, watching the rubber workers, the house servants, and Ramona’s parents and friends, and stealing in to see her at every opportunity.
To Ramona these secret meetings with her jungle hero were delightfully romantic. She felt a little remorseful about them at first, knowing that her parents would not approve. But she had only promised her father that she would not leave the house or the patio alone, and this promise was being carried out to the letter.
When she had progressed sufficiently with her studies, her parents planned to send her to the United States, then to Europe, to complete her education. At the end of the two-month period of Jan’s stay the time for her departure was near at hand. He noticed a change in her and asked what was wrong, but she would not tell him until the last day.
As she was helping him with his reading lesson, a tear suddenly splashed on the page. Jan looked at her in surprise.
“What is the matter?” he asked. “Why do you cry?”
“I’m going away for a long time,” she said. “I may never see you again.”
“If you go away I will follow,” he replied.
“You must not try to follow,” she said. “You could only go along for a little way, anyhow. First we will travel down the river in some of my father’s small boats. We will go around the rapids, several of them, the Indians carrying the boats and luggage. Then we will take a small steamer. This steamer will carry us to a seaport where we will take a bigger one that will take us across the ocean, far, far from here. Many thousands of miles.”
“But won’t you come back?”
“I hope to, some day. But it will be a long time.”
“I will wait and watch for you,” said Jan.
He stood up and slung his quiver over his shoulder. There was a heavy weight in his breast, and something was choking him.
Suddenly Ramona stood on tiptoes, threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
“Good-bye,” she whispered. “Wait for me, and I’ll wait for you.”
Then she darted off through the shrubbery, light-footed as a young deer.
To Jan, who had never before been kissed, who had not known there was such a thing, it was a most astounding and pleasant experience. For a moment he stood in a daze, gazing after the fleeing girl. Then he scampered up the tree, swung out on the limb, and dropped to the ground beyond the patio wall.
At last his preoccupied mind thought of Chicma, and he felt a twinge of remorse at having neglected her so long. No knowing what might have happened to her. Plunging into the jungle, he resolved to go straight to his tree-hut. Never before had he been separated from Chicma for so long, and though the old comradeship had dwindled, he could never forget the tender care she had given him, nor the many romps they had taken together. He was very sad and lonely, and his mind was filled with gloomy forebodings.
As fast as he had hurried away from the hut, he hurried back.
Late in the afternoon of the third day, he reached his objective. He peered into the hut and called softly in the language of the chimpanzees.
There was no answer. The hut was deserted.
Alarmed, he swung out on one of the upper limbs and called again, as loudly as he could shout.
He was surprised and delighted when the answer came back from almost directly beneath him. Chicma was waddling unconcernedly along the edge of the pool, eating a banana. Then Jan saw a sight that changed his cry of delight to a low, scarcely audible growl.
Swimming swiftly across the pool in the peculiar, zigzag manner of serpents was an immense anaconda. There was no mistaking its purpose. With its massive head swaying on its arched neck, and forked tongue darting from between its scaly lips, it swam straight for Chicma.
Jan shouted a warning, but too late.
For a moment the great head poised above the cringing ape. Then the jaws with their cruel, back-curved fangs, gaped wide and the serpent struck.