Free 01 Amazon Adventure by Willard Price Page A

hours.
    After a time Hal peeked in but the cautious Vamp was still hanging upside down at the top of her cage.
    The three explorers had their own breakfast. Then Hal took another look. The bat was poised like a great spider over the rodent and was feeding greedily but, disturbed by the light, immediately retreated again to the top of the cage.
    In that flash, Hal had seen enough. It was true. The vampire was not a bloodsucker as most scientists supposed it to be. Its mouth had not touched the wound. He had seen its long, bluish-pink tongue darting out and in at the rate of about four times a second. The movement was so rapid that a continuous column of fluid spanned the gap from wound to mouth. It was the technique of a cat or dog, but at high speed.
    And to think that this operation could be carried on so gently that a sleeping victim was not wakened, and one wide awake scarcely knew what was going on!
    Late in that day’s journey another prize was added to the animal-collector’s bag. Like the vampire, it was small in size but large in value. But it was quite unlike the bat in appearance. It was as lovely as the other creature was ugly.
    Camp was being made for the night when Hal spied the little creature in a branch of a tree. It was only two or three inches long, except for the tail, and could not weigh more than four ounces. It was covered with soft, golden hair except around the eyes and mouth. There the skin was white and the little fellow looked as if he had kissed a flour barrel and were wearing a large pair of white spectacles. ‘It’s a pigmy marmoset,’ Hal called to his father. John Hunt had already been made comfortable in his hammock. He was gradually recovering from the effect of the curare.
    ‘Get it with the blowpipe,’ he advised Hal. Roger ran to the boat and got a blowgun that had been presented to them by the Jivaro chief. He
    brought also a quiver full of darts and a small bottle of curare.
    Hal dipped the point of a dart into the curare so that it picked up only the slightest touch of the poison. Then he fitted the dart in the near end of the seven-foot-long bamboo tube. The butt end of the dart was wrapped in the cotton from the kapok tree, making a ball just the right size to fit snugly in the bore of the gun.
    Hal raised the blowpipe, put his lips to the mouthpiece, and blew hard.
    Fortunately the pigmy, as curious as most monkeys, was sitting very still, taking a keen interest in the proceedings. It made a perfect target. Even so, Hal expected to miss, for he was not adept with the blowpipe — but the dart struck the little fellow in the side.
    He chattered excitedly, pulled it out, and threw it away. He started to climb through the tree. But the poison acted fast. He paused, tottered a little, and then fell. He did not check himself with his tail, for the marmoset is not prehensile.
    Hal picked him out of the grass. Roger knew his role in this little drama and had the salt ready. Some of it was rubbed into the wound.
    ‘He’s just numbed a little,’ Hal said.
    The marmoset began to stir in Hal’s hands. Its eyes opened. At first dull, they gradually brightened. The golden plume of a tail began to switch about and some tentative remarks came from the funny white lips under the white-ringed eyes.
    Roger was delighted. ‘Feeling better, Specs?’ And it was so that the little fellow got his name.
    ‘I think we’ll find Specs a very interesting companion,’ John Hunt said. ‘Perhaps sometimes a little too interesting. The marmoset is one of the liveliest, most alert, and most curious of all the monkeys. Of course most of the varieties are larger than this one. The pigmy marmoset is the smallest monkey in the world. That’s a point of distinction that should make it interesting to any collector. Do you know, Hal, I wouldn’t be surprised if this is a new variety of the pigmy. If he is, they may give him your name, added to his own. Then he’ll be Hapale pygmaeus hunti.’
    ‘Well,