And now, after a year of solitary confinement, came a third diversion,
in the form of Uhha, the daughter of Khamis the witch doctor. Uhha was
fourteen, comely and curious. For a year now she had watched the
mysterious prisoner from a distance until, at last, familiarity had
overcome her fears and one day she approached him as he lay in the sun
outside his hut. Esteban, who had been watching her half-timorous
advance, smiled encouragingly. He had not a friend among the villagers.
If he could make but one his lot would be much the easier and freedom a
step nearer. At last Uhha came to a halt a few steps from him. She was a
child, ignorant and a savage; but she was a woman-child and Esteban
Miranda knew women.
“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 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 ulterior. 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 suddenly erect, galvanized
into statuesque rigidity by a thought engendered by the recollection of
one of the river devil’s remarks. Why had it not occurred to her before?
Very plainly he had said, and he had repeated it, that if he were
released he would know that he had at least one friend in the village of
Obebe, and that whoever released him would live to a great age and have
every thing he wished for; but after a few minutes of thought Uhha
drooped again. How was she, a little girl, to compass the liberation of
the river devil alone?
“How, _baba_,” she asked her father, when he had returned to the hut,
later in the day, “does the river devil destroy those who harm him?”
“As the fish in the river, so are the ways of the river devil—without
number,” replied Khamis. “He might send the fish from the river and the
game from the jungle and cause our crops to die. Then we should starve.
He might bring the fire out of the sky at night and strike dead all the
people of Obebe.”
“And you think he may do these things to us, _baba_?”
“He will not harm Khamis, who saved him from the death that Obebe would
have inflicted,” replied the witch doctor.
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