“I don’t know!” replied Jimmie, and there was almost a sob in his voice as he spoke. “I presume I have only one.”
“Perhaps the electric light may keep the brutes away,” said Carl hopefully. “You know wild animals are afraid of fire.”
“Yes, it may,” replied Jimmie, “but it strikes me that our little torches will soon become insufficient protectors. Those are jaguars out there, I suppose you know. And they creep up to camp-fires and steal savage children almost out of their mothers’ arms!”
“Where do you suppose Sam is by this time?” asked Carl, in a moment, as the cat-like head appeared for the fourth or fifth time at the opening.
“I’m afraid Sam couldn’t get in here in time to do us any good even if he stood in the corridor outside!” was the reply. “Whatever is done, we’ve got to do ourselves.”
“And that brings us down to a case of shooting!” Carl declared.
“It’s only a question of time,” Jimmie went on, “when the jaguars will become hungry enough to attack us. When they get into the opening, full under the light of the electric, we’ll shoot.”
“I’ll hold the light,” Carl argued, “and you do the shooting. You’re a better marksman than I am, you know! When your last cartridge is gone, I’ll hand you my gun and you can empty that. If there’s only two animals and you are lucky with your aim, we may escape with our lives so far as this one danger is concerned. How we are to make our escape after that is another matter.”
“If there are more than two jaguars,” Jimmie answered, “or if I’m unlucky enough to injure one without inflicting a fatal wound, it will be good-bye to the good old flying machines.”
“That’s about the size of it!” Carl agreed.