An angry murmur arose, and the blacks surged restlessly. The muzzles of many guns were rising from the hips. Joan was pressing the lighted end of the cigarette to the fuse. A Snider went off with the roar of a bomb-gun, and Sheldon heard a pane of window-glass crash behind him. At the same moment Joan flung the dynamite, the fuse hissing and spluttering, into the thick of the blacks. They scattered back in too great haste to do any more shooting. Satan, aroused by the one shot, was snarling and panting to be let out. Joan heard, and ran to let him out; and thereat the tragedy was averted, and the comedy began.
Rifles and spears were dropped or flung aside in a wild scramble for the protection of the cocoanut palms. Satan multiplied himself. Never had he been free to tear and rend such a quantity of black flesh before, and he bit and snapped and rushed the flying legs till the last pair were above his head. All were treed except Telepasse, who was too old and fat, and he lay prone and without movement where he had fallen; while Satan, with too great a heart to worry an enemy that did not move, dashed frantically from tree to tree, barking and springing at those who clung on lowest down.
“I fancy you need a lesson or two in inserting fuses,” Sheldon remarked dryly.
Joan’s eyes were scornful.
“There was no detonator on it,” she said. “Besides, the detonator is not yet manufactured that will explode that charge. It’s only a bottle of chlorodyne.”
She put her fingers into her mouth, and Sheldon winced as he saw her blow, like a boy, a sharp, imperious whistle—the call she always used for her sailors, and that always made him wince.
“They’re gone up the Balesuna, shooting fish,” he explained. “But there comes Oleson with his boat’s-crew. He’s an old war-horse when he gets started. See him banging the boys. They don’t pull fast enough for him.”
“And now what’s to be done?” she asked. “You’ve treed your game, but you can’t keep it treed.”
“No; but I can teach them a lesson.”
Sheldon walked over to the big bell.