“What’s the good of that, messmate? They’d only spear you at last.”
“Well, I should have sarved some of them out for what they’ve done to the boss and the doctor, and what they are a-going to do to them two poor lads.”
Buck Denham ceased speaking, for a party of about sixty of the Illakas came rushing out, yelling, from the ruins, and brandishing their spears, joining the boys’ captors and beginning to indulge in a furious kind of war dance, a savage triumph, in which the prisoners were surrounded and hurried right in amongst the ruins to the opening of the kraal, and where the clearing had been made by the travellers and explorers of the wondrous ruins.
Mark and Dean allowed themselves to be forced unresistingly along, wild-eyed and staring, but not with fear, for self for the time being had no existence in their minds.
Their wildly staring eyes were searching here, there and everywhere for a glimpse of Sir James and the doctor. But they looked in vain.
It is, they say, the unexpected that occurs, for all at once as the prisoners were standing right in the middle of the kraal, surrounded by fully a hundred of the gesticulating, yelling and spear-waving blacks, there was the clattering of hoofs and a shrill and seemingly familiar ear-piercing whistle.
“Look, look!” cried Mark wildly, as a feeling of rage pierced his breast. “Look at him! The coward! He has come to join these wretches’ triumph!”
“Ah!” cried Dean excitedly.
“Then he arn’t going to stop,” growled Buck.
“No,” added Dan savagely. “He just ketched sight of me. Oh, if I—”