“Let us run—but as we do so we had better point our guns at the fellows; then they won’t follow.”
Awaiting a favorable moment, the young fellows started.
The dancing stopped, and the savages went in pursuit.
A shower of arrows fell round the explorers.
Max turned and raised his rifle.
What a change took place!
Instead of a hundred warriors pursuing two young men, a hundred backs could be seen, and every savage was trying to break the world’s record in running, not toward the explorers, but away from them.
Max laughed so heartily, that had the savages turned, the American would never have been able to point the gun at them.
“Come along, Max, or they may repent and follow.”
Max needed no second invitation, and had a balloon been above the forest, he would have seen a hundred savages fleeing in one direction, as though pursued by a regiment of well-trained soldiers, and the boys they were afraid of, running just as fast in an opposite one.