Barry suddenly renewed his interest in the Padang. Smothering a curse at Little's meddlesomeness, he snatched up his glasses and focussed them on the schooner. There was nothing to be seen out of the ordinary; but as he looked, that indescribable hum arose from her deck, and it intensified to a snarl. Then a flying figure appeared at the schooner's rail, and Little leaped over and into the yellow river with a yell.
As he struck the water, a shower of missiles followed him, and throwing clubs and short spears whizzed around his ears. He came up from his plunge into the midst of potent death, and with something like the cheery yell with which he had greeted the alligators, he took in a great breath and dived again, coming up the next time halfway to the Barang. So with successive plunges he approached, and after the second discharge of missiles from the schooner, he was permitted to reach his ship in peace. He clambered aboard, grinning sheepishly, and Barry met him with no word of praise, congratulation, or censure, but with a wide-open stare of fresh amazement.
"Who are they?" the skipper gasped.
"Cannibals, I think," grinned Little. "Am I all here?"
The schooner's rails were bare of heads again; but while Little was being bombarded, all eyes had stared wonderingly at a line of tufted headdresses surmounting faces belonging to inland savages.
"They're what I saw last night, going into the hold," said Barry. "But they didn't bother me, Little. How did you stir 'em up?"
"I don't know. I clambered aboard, thinking to find you there. I just took a peep down the hatchway and must have interrupted some ceremony. There was a white man powwowing to 'em—no, it wasn't Leyden—and one of 'em grunted when he saw me, and the white chap sicced 'em after me. Gosh! but I'm getting all the joy out o' life!"
"I've got all I want for the present," growled Barry sourly. "Perhaps I'll feel better out of sight of this post and that schooner."
"Not going to quit, are you?" Little gasped, staring at his friend with horror. "Is this the bold Jack Barry I picked out on the dock fer a partner?"
"Quit nothing! I'm going to see this thing through, but I'll follow Vandersee from now on. I wouldn't bother that schooner again on my own account for all the gold that ever came out of Celebes. If Leyden starts something, I'll meet him; but for my personal part he is welcome to keep what he's got aboard there."