“Back!” was Jack's prompt rejoinder. “Once prevent the niggers in our rear from crossing the pit, and we're all right. We'll have more fighting room there, anyhow.”
Back they ran, hustling the blacks before them. At the pit matters were even worse than they had feared. Half-a-dozen planks already spanned the chasm, each of them black with natives, who jostled each other in their eagerness to cross, supremely indifferent to the reptilian horrors that awaited them should they lose their balance.
“Hurrah!” shouted Jack, pouncing upon the 'bobbing end of the nearest plank. “Tumble 'em in! To the crocodiles with the beggars!”
Though the occupants of the plank could understand not a syllable of Jack's speech, they readily understood his intention; and crowding back upon each other with warning cries, by their combined weight they hastened the very catastrophe they desired to avert. The plank bent like a bow, snapped in twain, and launched its shrieking burden into the abyss. In their frantic efforts to escape, a number of the doomed wretches clutched at a second plank that happened to lie within reach. Already heavily overloaded, this also gave way, and added its quota to the horrible commotion of the pool. Two planks were thus accounted for.
Meanwhile Don and the blacks had not been slow to second Jack's efforts. By their united strength a third plank was dislodged, and they were in the act of attacking the fourth when their energies were diverted into another channel.
For at this juncture the detachment of natives who had cut off the retreat to the creek suddenly appeared upon the scene. The remaining planks, too, now began to pour the enemy upon the hither side of the pit in steady streams.
The rocky shelf' that here flanked the chasm had, perhaps, a width of three yards, and that portion of it to the left of the creek-tunnel's mouth, where the unmolested planks lay, was speedily packed with natives, armed with formidable pikes and knives, who bore down upon the little group with furious outcries and all the weight of superior numbers. Jack was the first to perceive the danger.
“To the right! It's all up with us if we're surrounded.”
Suiting the action to the words, he darted to the right, closely followed by Don and the blacks. Here they stationed themselves side by side, the timid blacks in the rear, and prepared to meet their assailants.
“Couldn't be better!” was Jack's cheerful comment, as he took a hasty survey of their surroundings. “Wall on our right; pit on left; enemy in front; and elbow-room behind. Say, we'll buckle to with the muskets first, and reserve the cutlasses till it comes to close quarters. Look out; they're coming!”