"And go to kingdom come with her?" laughed Jack. "Not any of that for me. I'm headed, eventually, for little old N.Y."
"I'm tired of fooling with these cannibals," Frank explained. "We haven't molested them, and yet they are after our scalps. They'll get them, too, if something isn't done—and done right away, at that."
"I'm with you!" Jack exclaimed. "I'm willing to try anything once.
Only let me in on the secret!" he added, chuckling.
"You had it right," Frank said. "What I propose is to blow the Black Bear into smithereens, and about a thousand of those bloodthirsty natives with it. The world will be all the better for their being out of it. They are worse than the savage beasts in the forests."
"But what is to become of us?" asked Harry.
Frank pointed to the Wolf, tugging at the cable which held her nose to the stem of the Black Bear.
"We'll be safe in there when the explosion takes place," he said.
Jack clapped the speaker on the shoulder.
"You're all right!" he cried.
Harry looked mystified for a moment, and then said, speaking loudly in order that his voice might be heard above the shouts of the savages and the beating of arrows against the panels of the boat: