The deadly fever came among us after a few days.  It struck a young man called Brabo first; the next day I fell sick with another serious attack of swamp-fever, and we both took to our hammocks.  For five days and nights I was delirious most of the time, listening to the mysterious noises of the forest and seeing in my dreams visions of juicy steaks, great loaves of bread, and cups of creamy coffee.  In those five days the only food in the camp was howling monkey, the jerked beef and the dried farinha having given out much to my satisfaction, as I became so heartily disgusted with this unpalatable food that I preferred to starve rather than eat it again.  At first I felt the lack of food keenly, but later the pain of hunger was dulled, and only a warm, drugged sensation pervaded my system.  Starvation has its small mercies.

I became almost childishly interested in small things.  There was a peculiar sound that came from the deep forest in the damp nights; I used to call it the “voice of the forest.”  To close one’s eyes and listen was almost to imagine oneself near the murmuring crowd of a large city.  It was the song of numerous frogs which inhabited a creek near our tambo.  Then I would hear four musical notes uttered in a major key from the tree-tops close by, soon answered by another four in a similar pitch, and this musical and cheerful(!) conversation was continued all night long.  The men told me that this was the note of a species of frog that lived in the trees.

One day the jungle took the first toll from us.  Young Brabo was very low; I managed to stagger out of my hammock to give him a hypodermic injection, but he was too far gone for it to do him any good.  He died in the early afternoon.  We dug a grave with our machetes right behind our tambo.  No stone marks this place; only a small wooden cross tied together with bark-strips shows where our comrade lies—­a son of the forest whom the forest claimed again.

The arrival of Death in our camp showed us all how far we were in the grasp of actual, threatening danger.  We stood about the grave in silence.  These men, these Indians of the Amazon, were very human; somehow, I always considered them equals and not of an inferior race.  We had worked together, eaten and slept and laughed together, and now together we faced the mystery of Death.  The tie between us became closer; the fraternity of common flesh and blood bound us.

The next day I arose and was able to walk around, having injected my left arm with copious doses of quinine and arsenical acid.  Borrowing thus false strength from drugs, I was able, to some extent, to roam around with my camera and secure photographs that I wanted to take home with me to the States.