away from Macu.”

“What about you, Jacome?” inquired Mr. Brewster. “Do you want to go with them?”

“I want to go, yes,” admitted Jacome, “but I want more to stay with you. So I stay.”

Mr. Brewster turned to Kamuka. “And you, Kamuka?”

“I stay with Biff.”

“Good boy!” Biff clapped Kamuka on the shoulder. “I knew a couple of little shrunken heads wouldn’t scare you.”

“I have seen such heads before,” rejoined Kamuka calmly, “but always heads of men. Never any head of a boy. So why should heads scare me?”

Mr. Brewster paid off the bearers in Brazilian cruzeiro notes, saying he would give them double if they stayed with the safari, but there were no takers. In English, Mr. Whitman undertoned the suggestion:

“Keep talking to them. They still may stay.”

“No, it must be voluntary,” returned Mr. Brewster, “as with Jacome and Kamuka. Otherwise, they will desert us later.”

The bearers hastily packed their few belongings, took a supply of food, and started back along the trail. Mr. Brewster remarked to Joe Nara, “Now I suppose we shall have to go upriver in the Xanadu.”

“We can’t,” returned Nara. “We had to haul the cruiser up on shore below the big rapids. The friendly natives who helped were the ones who told us about the Macus and gave us the shrunken heads. We’ve come the rest of the way in a canoe.”

Nara paused and gestured down the riverbank.

“We hid it there,” he added, “so we could wait for you.”

“We have rubber boats in our equipment,” stated Mr. Brewster. “We can inflate them for the trip upriver.”

“But there are many more rapids,” objected Nara, “with no natives to help you carry the boats past them. You will have to go overland by a back trail.”

“Where will we find new bearers?”

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