“I have been in the village of the chief Obebe for a year,” he said haltingly, in the laboriously acquired language of his captors, “but never before did I guess that its walls held one so beautiful as you. What is your name?”
Uhha was pleased. She smiled broadly. “I am Uhha,” she told him. “My father is Khamis the witch doctor.”
It was Esteban who was pleased now. Fate, after rebuffing him for long, was at last kind. She had sent to him one who, with cultivation, might prove a flower of hope indeed.
“Why have you never come to see me before?” asked Esteban.
“I was afraid,” replied Uhha simply.
“Why?”
“I was afraid—” she hesitated.
“Afraid that I was the river devil and would harm you?” demanded the Spaniard, smiling.
“Yes,” she said.
“Listen!” whispered Esteban; “but tell no one. I am the river devil, but I shall not harm you.”
“If you are the river devil why then do you remain chained to a stake?” inquired Uhha. “Why do you not change yourself to something else and return to the river?”
“You wonder about that, do you?” asked Miranda, sparring for time that he might concoct a plausible answer.
“It is not only Uhha who wonders,” said the girl. “Many others have asked the same question of late. Obebe asked it first and there was none to explain. Obebe says that you are Tarzan, the enemy of Obebe and his people; but my father Khamis says that you are the river devil, and that if you wanted to get away you would change yourself into a snake and crawl through the iron collar that is about your neck. And the people wonder why you do not, and many of them are commencing to believe that you are not the river devil at all.”
“Come closer, beautiful Uhha,” whispered Miranda, “that no other ears than yours may hear what I am about to tell you.”
The girl came a little closer and leaned toward him where he squatted upon the ground.
“I am indeed the river devil,” said Esteban, “and I come and go as I wish. At night, when the village sleeps, I am wandering through the waters of the Ugogo, but always I come back again. I am waiting, Uhha, to try the people of the village of Obebe that I may know which are my friends and which my enemies. Already have I learned that Obebe is no friend of mine, and I am not sure of Khamis. Had Khamis been a good friend he would have brought me fine food and beer to drink. I could go when I pleased, but I wait to see if there be one in the village of Obebe who will set me free. Thus may I learn which is my best friend. Should there be such a one, Uhha, fortune would smile upon him always, his every wish would be granted and he would live to a great age, for he would have nothing to fear from the river devil, who would help him in all his undertakings. But listen, Uhha, tell no one what I have told you! I shall wait a little longer, and then if there be no such friend in the village of Obebe I shall return to my father and mother, the Ugogo, and destroy the people of Obebe. Not one shall remain alive.”
The girl drew away, terrified. It was evident that she was much impressed.
“Do not be afraid,” he reassured her. “I shall not harm you.”
“But if you destroy all the people?” she demanded.
“Then, of course,” he said, “I cannot help you; but let us hope that someone comes and sets me free so that I shall know that I have at least one good friend here. Now run along, Uhha, and remember that you must tell no one what I have told you.”
She moved off a short distance and then returned.
“When will you destroy the village?” she asked.
“In a few days,” he said.
Uhha, trembling with terror, ran quickly away in the direction of the hut of her father, Khamis, the witch doctor. Esteban Miranda smiled a satisfied smile and crawled back into his hole to play with his diamonds.
Khamis the witch doctor was not in his hut when Uhha his daughter, faint from fright, crawled into the dim interior. Nor were his wives. With their children, the latter were in the fields beyond the palisade, where Uhha should have been. And so it was that the girl had time for thought before she saw any of them again, with the result that she recalled distinctly, what she had almost forgotten in the first frenzy of fear, that the river devil had impressed upon her that she must reveal to no one the thing that he had told her.
And she had been upon the point of telling her father all! What dire calamity then would have befallen her? She trembled at the very suggestion of a fate so awful that she could not even imagine it. How close a call she had had! But what was she to do?
She lay huddled upon a mat of woven grasses, racking her poor, savage little brain for a solution of the immense problem that confronted her—the first problem that had ever entered her young life other than the constantly recurring one of how most easily to evade her share of the drudgery of the fields. Presently she sat
