Across the waters drifted a word.
“Go on, you! Row!” cried Stern. “Land the machine, I tell you! Say, father, what's the matter now? What are my men on strike for all of a sudden? Why don't they finish the job?”
The old man, perplexed, listened intently.
Between the group of canoes and the shore the single boat had stopped. A man was standing upright in it. Now came a clear hail, and now two or three sentences, peremptory, angry, harsh.
At sound of them consternation seized certain of the men. A number dropped the ropes, while others reached for the slings and spears that always lay in the bottoms of the canoes.
“What the devil now?” shouted Stern. “You all gone crazy, or what?”
He turned appealingly to the old man.
“For Heaven's sake, what's up?” he cried. “Tell me, can't you, before the idiots drop my machine and ruin the whole thing? What--”
“Misfortune, O my son!” cried the patriarch in a strange, trembling voice. “The worst that could befall! In our absence he has come back--he, Kamrou! And under pain of death he bids all men abandon every task and haste to homage. Kamrou the Terrible is here!”