“No,” she said, and pointed to the river. “Look!”

In the light of the torches they carried, dozens of blue-faced men could be seen swarming ashore from large canoes.

The woman tugged at Gamay's arm. “This way is safer.”

She led the Trouts out of the clearing, and they plunged into the dark forest. Bushes and thorns whipped at their legs and faces. The ululation grew fainter. They could have been at the center of the earth as far as they knew. It was just as hot and dark.

“Where are you taking us?” Gamay said, stopping to catch her breath.

“Can't stop now. Chulo come soon.”

Sure enough, the strange war cry began to increase in strength. They kept moving until Dieter's wife stopped after several minutes. They were in a grove of trees, dwarfed by the huge, misshapen trunks that soared for more than a hundred feet. Tessa was barely visible in the moonlight streaming down from openings in the tree canopy. She had raised her hand. The Trouts lifted their eyes to the treetops. They saw only darkness broken here and there by the silver-gray night sky.

The woman detected their confusion, and like a teacher working with blind children, she opened their hands and placed something in them that felt like dead snakes. Thick nylon ropes. Paul remembered the belts Arnaud and his pal wore and Dieter's comment about the zeppelin. He quickly fashioned a loop around Gamay's thin waist. She hauled on the other end of the line and began to rise above the ground. Paul looked around. Dieter's wife had vanished. They were on their own.

“Keep going,” he said. “I'm right behind you.” He rigged another rope around his own waist and with several strong pulls was yards off the ground. By the hard sound of breathing, Gamay was just ahead.

From below came a burst of the strange warbling cry. The torches of the Chulos appeared. The Indians threw the torches into the air, where they arced and fell like exhausted comets. Gamay and Paul expected to be skewered by oversized arrows that could easily reach them, but they kept pulling.

Just as they thought they were out of range they looked down and saw two of the Indians lift off the ground. Of course, Paul thought. If there were two hauling ropes, there would be others as well.

Gamay yelled from above his head. “I'm at the top!”

Paul kept climbing and felt his wife's hand reach down to help him clamber onto a branch thicker than a man's waist. Grunting with effort, he pulled himself onto the limb and reached for another branch. His hand touched a smooth, rubbery surface. The pewter light from a half moon was diffused by a mist that hung over the trees, but he could see a large plat form of mesh and tubing draped like a giant spider's web over the canopy. It was an ingenious working platform, Trout thought, but he would have to save his admiration for later. Heavy breathing was coming from under their feet. Paul grabbed for his hunting knife and remembered that one of the Indians had taken it from him at the same time he was relieved of the Colt.