On the fifth day, so I learned later, I began to feel my senses return, my fever commenced to abate, and I was able to grasp the fact that I had crawled into the maloca, or communal village, of the Mangeromas.  I was as weak as a kitten, and, indeed, it has been a marvel to me ever since that I succeeded at all in coming out of the Shadow.  The savages, by tender care, with strengthening drinks prepared in their own primitive method, wrought the miracle, and returned to life a man who was as near death as any one could be, and not complete the transition.  They fed me at regular intervals, thus checking my sickness, and when I could make out their meaning, I understood that I could stay with them as long as I desired.

Luckily I had kept my spectacles on my nose (they were the kind that fasten back of the ears) during the previous hardships, and I found these sticking in their position when I awoke.  My khaki coat was on the ground under my hammock, and the first thing was to ascertain if the precious contents of its large pockets had been disturbed, but I found everything safe.  The exposed plates were there in their closed boxes, the gold dust was also there and mocked me with its yellow glare, and my hypodermic outfit was intact and was used without delay, much to the astonishment of some of the men, standing around my hammock.

When my head was clear and strong enough to raise, I turned and began my first visual exploration of my immediate surroundings.  The big room I found to be a colossal house, forty feet high and one hundred and fifty feet in diameter, thatched with palm-leaves and with sides formed of the stems of the pachiuba tree.  It was the communal residence of this entire tribe, consisting, as I learned later, of two hundred and fifty-eight souls.  A single door and a circular opening in the roof were the only apertures of this enormous structure.  The door was very low, not more than four feet, so that it was necessary to creep on one’s knees to enter the place, and this opening was closed at night, that is to say, about six o’clock, by a sliding door which fitted so snugly that I never noticed any mosquitoes or piums in the dark, cool room.

The next day I could get out of my hammock, though I could not stand or walk without the aid of two women, who took me over to a man I later found to be the chief of the tribe.  He was well-fed, and by his elaborate dress was distinguished from the rest of the men.  He had a very pleasant, good-natured smile, and almost constantly displayed a row of white, sharp-filed teeth.  This smile gave me some confidence, but I very well knew that I was now living among cannibal Indians, whose reputation in this part of the Amazon is anything but flattering.  I prepared for the new ordeal without any special fear—­my feelings seemed by this time to have been pretty well exhausted and any appreciation of actual danger was considerably reduced as a result of the gamut of the terrors which I had run.