“Hark! what’s all that row back there?” exclaimed Thad, just then.
A pretty lively chorus of shouts had broken out. This gave the boys a feeling of uneasiness, because their comrade had vanished in that quarter only a few minutes before.
“It’s around the bend, Thad!” cried Bumpus, standing up on the seat the better to see; “and they’re coming this way too, in a big hurry! Oh! my stars! just hear how they whoop it up, men, women and children all shouting and shrieking. Whatever could poor Giraffe have done to get them so crazy mad?”
“I don’t know,” snapped Thad, “but we’ll soon glimpse what’s going on. There he is just around the curve of the road, and running like a deer at that!”
“And he hasn’t got a bit of grub with him, either,” added Bumpus, quick to discover this fact. “See him gallop, will you? Giraffe can cover the ground like a rabbit, once he starts out to try.”
“Well, he’s got good reason for wanting to hit the pace up this time, it seems,” Allan hastened to remark.
They all realized that he spoke the truth, for just then in the rear of the wildly fleeing Giraffe appeared a band of natives in full chase. There were a couple of pretty agile old men in blue blouses, and wooden sabots that clattered as they came on at headlong speed. Then there were at least five women, furiously angry in the bargain, for they waved their hands, and shrieked all sorts of things, in French, of course, so the boys failed to grasp their meaning. Besides, a number of partly-grown boys and girls tried to outstrip the older ones.
It was a small edition of a mob, such as the boys had often seen portrayed on the screen at a motion picture show. Giraffe evidently had no intention of allowing them to overtake him, for he was doing his prettiest to keep his lead.
Some of the pursuers waved hoes, while others had clubs, or possibly another type of native garden tool, showing that they had been at work in the fields when this sudden fit of anger seized hold of them.
Thad hastened to get the engine started. Had that failed just at this critical time it must have gone hard with them, for those peasants would not listen to reason.