3.
They were waving short clubs or whips with stones tied to the ends. They charged up the slope, about sixty yards, swinging their weird clubs with a threat of death.
Wild disorder suddenly struck the audience. Campbell and I believed we were about to witness a massacre.
"Captain—Jim! You're not going to let this happen!"
Our sympathies had gone to the first groups, the peaceable ones. I had the same impulse as Campbell—to do something—anything! Yet here we sat in our ship, more than half a mile from our thirty-five or forty "friends" in danger.
Our friends were panicked. But they didn't take flight. They didn't duck for the holes in the rocky hilltop. Instead, they rallied and packed themselves around their tall leader. They stood, a defiant wall.
"Can we shoot a ray, Jim?"
I didn't answer. Later I would recall that Split could drop his dignity under excitement—his "Captain Linden" and "sir." Just now he wanted any sort of split-second order.
We saw the naked warriors run out in a wide circle. They spun and weaved, they twirled their deadly clubs, they danced grotesquely. They were closing in. Closer and closer. It was all their party.
"Jim, can we shoot?"