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Komatzi ordered four Indians to dig. They turned up first a skull with a few teeth well preserved, then thigh bones, followed by some ribs and a machete of European manufacture.
Orlando and his superiors, who plan to send the jawbone to a London dentist for definite identification, are convinced that the bones are Fawcett's. The Kalapalos have told him that the explorers were massacred because they had not given promised presents, and because Fawcett struck one Indian. They threw the bodies of the two young men into the lake, they said, but decided to bury Colonel Fawcett and the machete with which he tried to defend himself.
Brazil's No. 1 Indian pacifier, old General Candido Rondon, thinks that the tribesmen may have murdered the explorers partly out of fear, because Fawcett was demanding that they guide him through the adjoining territory of their dread foes, the savage Chavantes. Orlando is far too tactful to press them further now. At week's end he delivered to his friends $75 worth of red and blue beads and fishing lines—their reward for answering the question that had remained unanswered for 26 years.