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“They’re here!” Karúku cried, and the way in which he uttered the words betrayed not joy in finding that other humans were on the island, but grim satisfaction that his group would soon once more be in combat with a new foe for the possession of a new land.
    For the rest of the day the spies moved cautiously, always westward, until they reached a high spot from which they could look down upon the village they had been seeking. There it lay in the sunlight of late afternoon, a collection of well-made huts to be occupied when the present owners were dispossessed, canoes already built, fields close at hand in which foodstuffs could be grown. But there was also the placid sea, so much gentler than the wild ocean to the east, and as the sun set on that first evening, the Caribs were convinced that they had come upon a paradise much more desirable than any they had known along the Orinoco or elsewhere on their journey north.
    “We shall go back,” Karúku said, “collect our men and return to take this village.” As he uttered these commands he was looking down at the hut surrounded by varicolored croton, and to himself he said: That one for me, and with purposeful strides, as if he could hardly wait to assault the sleeping village, he led his men back to their dark side of the island.
    Bakámu and his wife, because of the valuable skills they possessed, enjoyed special positions in their village, he as an athlete of unusual ability and strength, she as the keeper of a secret that accounted for much of the tribe’s good fortune.
    Tiwánee understood the ways of manioc, source of four-fifths of the stuff her people ate, and one of the world’s most remarkable good-evil foods. Like potatoes, yams and beets, manioc produced under the surface of the earth a bulbous growth which when rooted out and shredded yielded a potatolike food that looked and smelled most inviting. However, in this stage of its existence, it contained among its fibers a thick, deadly poisonous juice, and manioc culture required that this juice be extracted, and totally, before the residue could be processed into an excellent flour from which a nutritious and highly satisfying bread could be baked.
    Long before Tiwánee was born the ancient ones sought a solution to the problem: How can the poisonous juices of the manioc beremoved and their deadly power exorcised? The answer came from a clever Arawak woman, who while huddling in the jungle had seen a boa constrictor grasp a shrieking rodent in its cavernous jaws and slowly swallow it, still kicking. She then saw the great snake digest its heavy burden by tightening and relaxing its powerful belly muscles until all bones were broken and absorption could begin. Cried she: “If I had the help of that powerful snake, I could squeeze the poison from my manioc,” and this idea so possessed her that she brooded for weeks and months as to how she might make herself a snake, and finally she found the solution: I’ll gather the best and strongest palm fronds and the thinnest vines and weave me a long, thin, narrow snake whose sides will compress and relax like his, and by that means I’ll expel the poisons.
    She did this, fabricating an imitation snake called a matapi, some ten feet long, very narrow, very strong, and into its insatiable maw she crammed all the manioc she and her neighbors had grated that day. And now her genius manifested itself, for after she had squeezed the snake by hand for some time she discovered two facts: the plan worked, for the poisonous juice did spew forth; but it was murderously difficult work: I’d go mad squeezing like this all day!
    So she constructed a device which enabled her to apply such extreme pressure on the snake that she could extract the poisonous juice with relative ease. First she attached the top of her ten-foot snake to a rafter some dozen feet above her. Then, using a pile of rocks for a fulcrum, she converted a long plank into a child’s seesaw, with two