"Rush! How can I rush? I'm pretty well blown already. But I could fetch wind enough to shout. We'll shout, Jack. Nando, you'll bawl your loudest, and the boy too. If I know these niggers they'll bolt. And look here, Jack, fire in the air: we don't want to hit 'em. If they stand their ground and resist, we can fire in good earnest; but they won't."
They took a few cautious steps forward, then Samba ran back, clutched Nando by the arm and whispered—
"Boat dah, sah," said the negro, under his breath. "Oh! me feel plenty sick inside!"
"Hush! Howl, then, when we fire. Now, Jack, ready? I'll let off my two barrels first."
Next moment there was a flash and a crack, followed immediately by a second. Nando and Samba had begun to yell at the top of their voices. Mr. Martindale bellowed in one continuous roll, and Pat added to the din by a furious barking. The noise, even to those who made it, was sufficiently startling in the deep silence of the night. Jack fired his two shots, but before his uncle had reloaded there was a yell from the direction of the canoes, then the sound of men leaping on shore and crashing through the bushes. Immediately afterwards faint shouts came from the forest at the rear of the bluff.
"We've done the trick," said Mr. Martindale with a chuckle. "Now we'll get back. They've had a scare. Let's hope we shall have no more trouble to-night."
He flashed his electric torch on the river bank below, and revealed five large canoes drawn up side by side.
"There must be more than a hundred of them," he added. "Each of those canoes can carry thirty men."
On the way back to the camp, they heard renewed shouts as the men who had marched into the forest broke out again in a wild dash for the threatened canoes. The camp was in commotion. Barney was volubly adjuring the startled natives to be aisy; but they were yelling, running this way and that, tumbling over one another in the darkness. The sight of Mr. Martindale's round red face behind his electric torch reassured them; and when Nando, who had now quite recovered his spirits, told them that he, with the white men's assistance, had put to flight twenty thousand bad men and Boloko, they laughed and slapped their thighs, and settled down in groups to discuss the event and make much of Nando during the rest of the night.
There was no more sleep for any of the party except Samba. He, satisfied that his new friends were safe, curled himself up on his mat with the inseparable terrier, and slept until the dawn. But Mr. Martindale sat smoking in his tent, discussing the events of the night with his nephew.