"What is it?" asked Jack.
"Dynamite!" was the cool reply.
"That ought to induce them to go on about their business—if properly administered," Jack said. "I didn't know we had any on board."
"I didn't know what we might come across up here," Harry replied. "Shall we light a fuse and give one of these persuaders a toss over into that mess?"
"It would amount to wholesale murder," Frank replied.
Harry's face hardened as he held up a hand for silence. The howling on the banks of the little stream was now almost deafening, and every second there came the thunk of arrows against the boat.
"You see what they would do to us," he said.
"Yes, I know," Jack said, "but we are supposed to be civilized! It would be a wicked thing to do, to murder fifty or a hundred of those savages. Suppose we toss a stick where it will do little damage and still attract their attention from the boat? Then we might get that log out of the way."
"We'll see what show we have for getting it out of the way-the log,
I mean," Jack replied.
He cautiously opened one of the lower panels at the rear and looked out. The log which blocked the narrow channel was afloat, for it was the trunk of a dry tree, and the water was deep. What held it in place was the end which lay on the shore. It had been rolled in at a point where the bank was low, and at least two-thirds of it lay on the ground.