At this critical moment his eye lit on a tree overhanging the river, which had here narrowed to little more than a gorge between steep banks. It was light in the trunk, but very thick in foliage. A second glance showed him that the roots, protruding from loose red soil, were almost bare, and he instantly inferred that a recent storm, and probably the flooding of the river, had shaken their hold. A third glance as the canoe brought him nearer made it plain that, but for a rope-work of climbing plants which had woven itself about the trunk, the tree would have already fallen across the stream.
Tom saw here a bare chance of escape, and, with characteristic readiness to seize the merest semblance of an opportunity, he prepared to make the most of it. As the canoe shot along beneath the overhanging branches, he marked a small rivulet that cut a way through the bank just beyond the tree. In a ringing voice, careless now whether his pursuer heard him or not, he ordered the men to run the canoe ashore, then to follow him up the narrow watercourse with their axes. In half a minute he had swarmed up the bank; in another half the men's keen axes had torn away the climbing-plant supports. His men threw themselves _en masse_ upon the trunk, and just as the enemy's canoe came within two hundred paces, the tree fell with a loud crash, and lay across from bank to bank, completely blocking the waterway with its tangle of boughs and leaves. Springing down the bank again, Tom and his panting crew jumped into the canoe, and were three hundred yards up-stream and nearly out of sight before the Portuguese had realized the impossibility of continuing the chase on the water. He wasted some minutes in a vain attempt to drag his craft over the obstruction, and a few more in flinging curses after Tom and firing at random over the tree; then he landed with his crew, and began to chase his quarry along the shore. But before he had run a quarter of a mile he found himself up to his knees in ooze, and, after floundering helplessly about for a time, he fired one vindictive shot and relinquished the pursuit.
Not till then did Tom allow his crew to relax their efforts.
"Easy all; you have done well!" he cried.