While every man sat silent the bars boomed out their fateful news. Slow, brief, deep as a bell tolling a dirge, a reply rolled back. And with the solemnity of a funeral cortége the canoes once more moved on, unhurried, inexorable, the measured swing of the paddles beating like a pulse of doom.
At length the crew of Yuara held their paddles. Yuara himself turned toward the second canoe and talked a minute. A signal to his men, and his boat proceeded. All the others remained where they were.
"He goes to Monitaya to speak of us," said Lourenço. "He will return. We have only to wait."
"Yeah," grunted Tim, disgustedly. "We'll wait till night if he takes as long to go through his rigmarole as he done yesterday. If I got to fight I want to hop to it, not set round in the shade o' the shelterin' palm while them guys are heatin' up the stewpot. This waitin' stuff gits my goat."
"You might sing us a song, senhor, to pass the time," Pedro suggested, with a tight-lipped smile.
"Say, I'll do that, jest to show these guys I don't give a rip. And while their ears are dazzled by me melody I'm goin' to git me holster unbottoned and me masheet kinder limbered up. Git set. Here it comes:
"Ol' Hindyburg thought he was swell,
Pa-a-arley-voo!
He made the kids in Belgium yell,
Pa-a-arley-voo!
But the Yanks come over with shot and shell
And Hindyburg he run like hell,
Rinkydinky-parley-voo!"
Under cover of his outbreak, which made the savages clutch their weapons and glare at him in mingled suspicion and amazement, there proceeded a furtive loosening of pistols and machetes.
"A noble sentiment, and more or less appropriate," grinned Knowlton. "But don't give them another spasm for a few minutes, or they may rise up and kill us all in self-defense. They're on the ragged edge now."
"Aw, them guys dunno how to appreciate good singin'. But I should worry; I got me gat fixed now like I want it."