Bomba could never remember a time when he had not lived in the jungle. His only companion and guardian was Cody Casson, an aged naturalist, who had withdrawn from civilization and the life of white people to settle in one of the remotest recesses of the Amazonian jungle. Whether he was related to him, Bomba did not know and had never wondered. He would not have known the meaning of relative. He only knew that he loved Casson and that Casson loved him, although the latter seldom demonstrated any affection in words, spending days at a time in moody abstraction.