I thought of Uncle Seth dead in the grass by the spring down to which he had gone so bravely. I thought of the hut in which, so far as we knew, still lay the skeleton and the bag of pebbles. And while I was thinking thus, I heard to the southeast the sound of gunshots.
First came several almost together like a volley, then another and another, then two or three more, and after that, at intervals, still others.
O'Hara looked first at the sky and then in the direction of the shooting. "They're attacking a trader's caravan," he said. "There'll be white men in it, surely. The thing for us to do, my lads, is to join up with them. They'll have food."
"Aye, but how?" asked Gleazen.
As if in answer to his question,—a terribly discouraging answer!—we heard, when we stopped to listen, coming up to us out of the night from every side, near and far, the throbbing of drums.
"Aye, 'how?'" O'Hara repeated.
"Can we not," I asked, "work down toward them and break through the blacks?"
"The war has gone to the coast by now, and they are attacking all comers. But it's us they're keen on the trail of, all because Bull built his house on a king's grave and a blithering idiot killed a devil. 'Tis true, Joe. If we could work down toward them, come three o'clock in the morning, it might happen even as you say."
There were no torches, now, to be seen; no voices were to be heard. There were only the fixed lights shining like stars and the steadily throbbing drums. Whether or not, back on our trail, the blacks were still hunting for us, we did not know; but by all signs that we could see, they were settling quietly down for the remainder of the night.
"And if it don't happen like you say," O'Hara added as an afterthought, "we'll be nearer the river surely, and there may be hope for us yet."