IN DESPERATE STRAITS 263 



little. It was nearly one o'clock when the first man to 

 arrive called to us from the opposite bank. Maite and 

 Mateo paddled across to meet him. Within half an hour 

 all the men with the exception of Epifanio were in camp. 

 It appears that he would persist in wandering away from 

 the track the others were cutting in search of fruit. 

 They had to wait for him repeatedly, they said, but 

 eventually they had gone ahead and had not seen him 

 for about two hom'S. Only one curassow had been killed 

 and this was boiled in a good deal of water, so that there 

 might be enough soup for everyone. 



During the whole afternoon the men discussed our posi- 

 tion, which we all felt was growing more desperate every 

 day. I sent Pedro Asoque, Maite, and Freddy to look for 

 Epifanio. They were to ascend the Maivi for some dis- 

 tance, the chances being that the lost man had reached the 

 stream at some distance from the main river and was unable 

 to cross. I told them to try to catch some fish or shoot 

 something at the same time. When they returned it was 

 quite dark. They had met Epifanio at some distance from 

 the mouth of the stream, sitting in despair on a log of wood 

 utterly at fault as to where he was. He told me that 

 he thought he had been abandoned. As a matter of 

 fact, Maite and my Trinidad boys were the only ones who 

 were disposed to wait, even another day, if it had been 

 necessary to search for him. The others, rendered 

 unreasonable by hunger and anxious to be on the way, 

 were for leaving him to his fate. Pedro Asoque had shot 

 a duck in the Maivi. This was roasted and divided, each 

 of us getting a small piece. The men sat around the 

 camp-fire up to a late hour at night and held a consulta- 

 tion. They then came in a body to me with Ramon 

 Kamirez as spokesman. He said that it would be im- 



