CHAPTER LVII.
PURSUIT AGAIN.
Without pausing for a moment to express friendly or other signs, we rushed down with headlong speed towards the creek, where the canoes lay beached upon the thick fringe of mangrove leaves, and eight of the sixteen hunters pursued us; but notwithstanding the swiftness of foot they possessed—a swiftness acquired by a savage and roving life—we distanced them with ease, for despair seemed to lend us the strength and speed of ostriches as we rushed towards the beach.
An asseguy, aimed with almost fatal precision, glanced over my left shoulder, and shivered as it sank into the turf beyond me. Then a war-club, thrown with fatal force and dexterity, struck poor Hartly between the shoulders, and nearly prostrated him; but in less than two minutes we were in the creek, and had one of the largest canoes afloat.
"In, in, Jack—leap in!" cried Hartly, while he lightly and adroitly pushed the other three into the water, and setting them all afloat to cut off pursuit, sprang in after me.
His presence of mind was most fortunate, for on the steep brow of an eminence which overhung the creek on the side opposite to our more immediate pursuers, there suddenly burst a storm of shrill yells and discordant shouts, mingled with the beating of tum-tums and the snorting of ferocious dogs, as a number of Benin savages, who doubtless had tracked us thither with the most fell intentions, rushed to the shore in pursuit—but thank Heaven, happily too late!
Hartly's sinewy hand had shot two of the canoes some thirty yards or so from the beach; and while towing a third by its bow-knob, he proceeded to row most vigorously with one of the spade-like paddles which lay in our craft.
Ere we got out of the wooded creek its water smoked and boiled under the shower of missiles—arrows, asseguys, clubs, and stones—which were sent after us, while five negroes and several dogs plunged in to pursue or to slay.
These tracking dogs were animals of strange aspect—sharp-nosed, with skins spotted black and white, or red—they had slender legs, sharp tusks, and a low, but ferocious bark.
While four of the negroes busied themselves in bringing back the drifting canoes—an operation during which one of them was shot by the musket of some blundering comrade—the fifth, a man of fierce and resolute bearing, having red and yellow circles painted round his eyes, and a knife in his teeth, swam after us, accompanied by a dog, the most formidable of the whole.
Swiftly though our canoe shot through the water, and vigorously though we paddled, they were soon alongside of us. The dog had his fore paws, and the man his black hands, upon the gunnel at the same moment.