UNBEARABLE PAIN 
before us. We grabbed handfuls of it, shoving them into 
our mouths as fast as we could. 
The sensation of eating normal food after such a long 
fast was a delightful one. But only for a few moments. 
Pedro Nunes was just handing me a cup of coffee when 
I dropped down unconscious, rejecting everything, with 
a quantity of blood besides. 
When I recovered consciousness, Pedro Nunes said I 
had been unconscious for a long time. They all thought 
I was dead. I felt almost unbearable pain in my inside, 
and a lassitude as if life were about to be extinguished 
altogether. 
It was evidently the reaction, after eating too quickly 
— and I should like to meet the healthy man who would 
not eat quickly under those circumstances — and also the 
relaxation from the inconceivable strain of so many weeks 
of mental worry. 
I well remember how Pedro Nunes and his men, when 
standing around us just as we began eating that first 
solid meal, had tears streaming down their cheeks, while 
watching us in our dreadful plight. Once more Pedro 
Nunes, one of the most kindly men I have ever met, 
sobbed bitterly when he asked me to take off my clothes 
and change them for the newer ones he had given me. 
I removed from my pocket the contents: my chronometer, 
a notebook, and a number of caju seeds which I had col¬ 
lected, and which, caustic or not caustic, would have been 
our only food until we certainly should have perished. 
We heard from Pedro Nunes that it would have taken 
us at least six or seven days of steady walking before 
we could get to the first house of rubber collectors. In 
our exhausted condition we never could have got there. 
As for the damaged raft, it could not have floated more 
than a few hours longer — perhaps not so long. 
From the spot where I met Pedro Nunes — quite 
close to the i unction of the Canuma River with the 
299 
