The Trumpeter

By Arthur O. Friel

This is a short adventure story set in the Amazon jungle that follows Pedro Andrada and Lourenço Moraes as they face perilous situations in the impenetrable jungle surrounding the Javary River, an Amazon tributary that forms part of the border between Brazil and Peru.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Dec 8, 2020
• ISBN: 4064066434144

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Arthur O. Friel

The Trumpeter

Published by Good Press, 2020

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EAN 4064066434144

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DEOS Padre! Hear that war-horn! Hand me your field-glasses quickly, senhor! Something is happening over there on the southern bank of the river, and I can not see it plainly. If it is an attack there will be rifle-shots, unless the settlers are overpowered at once. Listen!

Ah, it is nothing. Only a celebration. I can see Indians with great false heads doing a devil-dance before the house of some planter, who stands there with his woman and laughs. Probably he is their patrao, and has given them a holiday to keep them in good humor.

If the harsh blast of that turé had not struck my ear so suddenly I might have realized that it was blown only in merry-making, for the days when hordes of bloody barbaros attacked settlers here on the Amazon are long past. Past, I mean, on the Amazon itself. Up the great wild rivers which flow in from the south there are still plenty of savage killers, and we Brazilians who rove the unknown jungle know well what the turé means. It is the voice of death.

You can not blame me, then, for leaping up so suddenly just now. That jarring note made me forget for an instant that I was safe on the deck of a steamer instead of back in the wilderness of the Javary. More over, it is not many months since I heard the turé blown in deadly earnest, and I have not forgotten what followed.

Certainly, senhor, I will tell you the story if you care to hear it. Wait a moment until I make another cigaret. The one which I was smoking must have dropped overboard when I sprang up.

NOW this thing of which I speak came about while the waters of the great yearly flood were sweeping over the lowlands of the Javary region, where I was a rubber-worker for Coronel

Nunes. As you know, there are really two floods each year here on the upper Amazon, but only one of these is the great rise. Then the water overwhelms all except the highest places, and our work in the swampy forests must stop until it drains away to the far-off ocean. And it was at this time that I met the Trumpeter.

With my comrade, Pedro Andrada, I had paddled southward through flooded channels to the upper reaches of the river Jurua. There, after escaping from a band of fighting women who had no men and were determined to make us husbands to all their tribe, we found a furo, or natural canal, opening out of the river toward the north. On this we started back to our own section, moving at our usual cruising speed. We were in no hurry, for we thought there would be nothing to do when we should reach our journey’s end. But two days after leaving the river, as we were looking about among the half-drowned trees for a solid spot fit to sleep on that night, Pedro spoke in a tone of concern.

"Lourenço, we had best paddle a little harder tomorrow. The enchente has ended and the vasante has set in."

As he said, the great rise had reached its height. On the trees around us were wet stains showing that it was beginning to ebb. From now on the waters would drop steadily until they were fifty feet or more below their present level. We had never traveled on this furo before, knew nothing of its depth ahead of us, and were not even sure that it ran all the way to the Javary region. So, though we did not