Looking back up the river, we saw Gleazen and Abe Guptil, whom we had outdistanced by our short cut, now rowing madly downstream. Big and heavy though the boat was, they rowed with the strength that precedes despair, and sent her ploughing through the river with a wake such as a cutter might have left. In the stern beside the trader lay Matterson; and though his face, we could see, was streaked with blood, he menaced the negroes upstream with a loaded pistol. Arrows flew, and then a long spear hurtled through the air and struck the bow of the boat. But for all that, they bade fair to get clean away, and none of them appeared aware that we had slipped ahead of them in the race for life.
Now we in the canoe had come to the very edge of the surf, where the surge of the breakers swept past us in waves of foam. Beyond that surf was the open sea, the brig and safety. Behind it were more terrors than we had yet endured. For a moment the canoe hung motionless in the boiling surge; then, taking advantage of the outward flow and guided and driven by the hands of the great negro and the white, slender girl, she shot forward like a living creature, rose on the moving wall of an incoming wave, yielded and for a brief space drew back, then shot ahead once more and passed over the crest just before the wave curled and broke.
I heard a cry from behind us and knew that the others had discovered us ahead of them.
Turning, as we pitched on the heavy seas at a safe distance from the breakers, I watched them, too, row into the surf. I faintly heard Matterson's pistol spit, then I saw Gleazen drive the boat forward, saw her hesitate and swing round, lose way and go over as the next wave broke.
Then we saw them swimming and heard their cries.
As a mere matter of cold justice we should, I am convinced, have left that villainous pair, Matterson and Gleazen, to their fate. They had been ready enough to leave us to ours. Their whole career was sown with fraud, cruelty, brazen effrontery, and downright dishonesty. But even Arnold and I could scarcely have borne to do that, for the trader was guiltless enough according to his lights, and Abe Guptil was struggling with them in the water.
The girl, turning and looking back when she heard their shouts, spoke to the great negro in his own language. The canoe came about. Again we paused, waiting for a lull. Then we shot back on the crest of a wave, back down upon the overturned boat, and within gunshot of the flotilla of canoes that were spreading to receive us.
As we passed the wallowing boat I leaned out and caught Gleazen's hands and drew him up to the canoe. The negro cried a hoarse warning, and the canoe herself almost went over; but by as clever use of paddles as ever man achieved, the girl and the negro brought us up on an even keel, and Arnold and I lifted Gleazen aboard, half drowned, and gave a hand to Abe Guptil, who had made out to swim to the canoe. Of Matterson and the trader we saw no sign.
Then Abe, himself but newly rescued, gave a lurch to starboard, and with a clutch at something just under water, was whipped, fiercely struggling to prevent it, clean overboard.
We could neither stop nor turn; either would have been suicide. Would we or would we not, we went past him and left him, and drove on in the wash of the breaking waves down upon the grim line of canoes.