Shortly before noon, when they had covered some 40 miles, Connolly pointed to the remains of a bamboo landing stage elevated on high poles above the bank. A threadbare rope bridge trailed off among the mangroves, and through an embrasure in the forest they could see a small clearing where a clutter of abandoned adobe huts dissolved like refuse heaps in the sunlight.
‘Is this one of their camps?’
Pereira shook his head. ‘The Espirro tribe, closely related to the Nambikwaras. Three years ago one of them carried influenza back from the telegraph station, an epidemic broke out, turned into a form of pulmonary edema, within forty-eight hours three hundred Indians had died. The whole group disintegrated, only about fifteen of the men and their families are still alive. A great tragedy.’
They moved forward to the bridge and stood beside the tall Negro helmsman as the two other members of the crew began to shackle sections of fine wire mesh into a cage over the deck. Pereira raised his binoculars and scanned the river ahead.
‘Since the Espirros vacated the area the Nambas have begun to forage down this far. We won’t see any of them, but it’s as well to be on the safe side.’
‘Do you mean they’re hostile?’ Connolly asked.
‘Not in a conscious sense. But the various groups which comprise the Nambikwaras are permanently feuding with each other, and this far from the settlement we might easily be involved in an opportunist attack. Once we get to the settlement we’ll be all right — there’s a sort of precarious equilibrium there. But even so, have your wits about you. As you’ll see, they’re as nervous as birds.’
‘How does Ryker manage to keep out of their way? Hasn’t he been here for years?’
‘About twelve.’ Pereira sat down on the gunwale and eased his peaked cap off his forehead. ‘Ryker is something of a special case. Temperamentally he’s rather explosive — I meant to warn you to handle him carefully, he might easily whip up an incident — but he seems to have manoeuvred himself into a position of authority with the tribe. In some ways he’s become an umpire, arbitrating in their various feuds. How he does it I haven’t discovered yet; it’s quite uncharacteristic of the Indians to regard a white man in that way. However, he’s useful to us, we might eventually set up a mission here. Though that’s next to impossible — we tried it once and the Indians just moved 500 miles away.’
Connolly looked back at the derelict landing stage as it disappeared around a bend, barely distinguishable from the jungle, which was as dilapidated as this sole mournful artifact.
‘What on earth made Ryker come out here?’ He had heard something in Brasilia of this strange figure, sometime journalist and man of action, the self-proclaimed world citizen who at the age of forty-two, after a life spent venting his spleen on civilization and its gimcrack gods, had suddenly disappeared into the Amazonas and taken up residence with one of the aboriginal tribes. Most latter-day Gauguins were absconding confidence men or neurotics, but Ryker seemed to be a genuine character in his own right, the last of a race of true individualists retreating before the barbedwire fences and regimentation of 20th-century life. But his chosen paradise seemed pretty scruffy and degenerate, Connolly reflected, when one saw it at close quarters. However, as long as the man could organize the Indians into a few search parties he would serve his purpose. ‘I can’t understand why Ryker should pick the Amazon basin. The South Pacific yes, but from all I’ve heard — and you’ve confirmed just now — the Indians appear to be a pretty diseased and miserable lot, hardly the noble savage.’
Captain Pereira shrugged, looking away across the oily water, his plump sallow face mottled by the lace-like shadow of the wire netting. He belched discreetly to himself, and then adjusted his holster belt. ‘I don’t know the South Pacific, but I should guess it’s also been oversentimentalized. Ryker didn’t come here for a scenic tour. I suppose the Indians are diseased and, yes, reasonably miserable. Within fifty years they’ll probably have died out. But for the time being they do represent a certain form of untamed, natural existence, which after all made us what we are. The hazards facing them are immense, and they survive.’ He gave Connolly a sly smile. ‘But you must argue it out with Ryker.’
