"That is it, sure enough. Now, run ashore and dash up the bank."
As soon as the canoe touched the shore they leapt out and ran up the bank. Not twenty yards away were the Samoyedes. Godfrey uttered a shout and raised his gun to his shoulder, and the natives with a yell ran off at full speed.
"Now, Luka, do you go and get the canoe in the water. Be careful; if you find it heavy for you with the stores on board, take them out; there is no occasion for hurry. Those fellows won't venture within range of my gun again; they will keep at a distance, and send up word to the tents that we have landed. So take your time over it; if you were to make a slip and damage the canoe it would be fatal to us."
The natives stopped at a distance of a quarter of a mile, and then, as Godfrey expected, one of them started at a run back towards the village. In ten minutes Godfrey heard a shout from below, and looking round saw the canoe safely by the side of the boat. He ran down and took his place in her, and they paddled out towing the boat behind them.
CHAPTER XVII.
A SEA FIGHT
As soon as they had reached a distance of two or three hundred yards from the shore Godfrey ceased paddling. "Now we can talk matters over, Luka. There is no occasion for hurry now. If these fellows in the canoes are disposed to fight we can't prevent them. They will certainly be out of the river before we could get back there; and even if we did pass first they could easily overtake us, for those light craft of theirs would go two feet to our one unless we had wind for our sail. So we may as well take things easy, and decidedly the first thing to do is to wash and dress Jack's wound, and then to get some tea and something to eat. We have had nothing since we were caught yesterday between twelve and one o'clock.
"What a lucky thing it was we hid the canoe, Luka!" he went on, as the Tartar pulled the boat up alongside the canoe and began to prepare to light a fire. "The chances are we should not have been able to get her off as well as the boat, and even if we had they would have taken out all our stores. The meat we might replace, but the loss of the tea and tobacco, and above all of the matches, would have been terrible; besides, they would have got our spare hatchets and knives, the fish-hooks and lines, and all our furs. We don't want the furs for warmth now, but it would make a deal of difference to our comfort if we had to sleep on hard boards. I do not know how to feel thankful enough that we hid the canoe away."
"We could not have gone without our things," Luka said. "We would have fought them all and killed them rather than lose our tea and tobacco."