Frank nodded gravely.
“I’m afraid our chances of seeing the Golden Eagle II and our comrades are about nil,” he said.
The other boy did not reply. He was listening to the sounds of the dogs baying and the savage human shouts that grew momentarily nearer.
“Don’t use the revolvers unless you have to,” whispered Frank, whose wind was now returning,—“but the first dog that comes over the top of the rock—knife him.”
Harry nodded and drew his heavy hunting-knife from its case. Frank did the same.
“Now we are ready for all comers,” said Harry, with a wan smile, gripping the horn handle of his blade with a determined grip.
They had not long to wait. From their nest in the rocks they saw the first dog, a huge, bristly-haired Cuban bloodhound, with heavy hackles and blood-shot eyes, come bounding into the clearing, sniffing the ground and from time to time throwing his head into the air with a loud ringing bay that chilled the blood.
The animal was followed by half a dozen others of his own breed. Without a moment’s hesitation they made straight across the glade and for the rocks. The first one scrambled up with difficulty, and as his dripping fangs showed over the top of the rampart of rock, Frank’s arm shot out and he fell back with a choking growl—dead.
The next of the savage beasts fell before Harry’s knife, a great gaping wound in its throat; but after that the boys were no match for the four huge beasts that fell on them at once. Frank felt the teeth of one brute grip him through his stout khaki clothes while he had his hands on the throat of another, choking its life out. Harry had plunged his knife into another and was turning desperately on its mate when there was a sudden interruption of the impending tragedy.
A sharp, clear whistle rang through the clearing and the survivors of the brutes that had attacked the boys limped dispiritedly away from them and shuffled in the direction from which the summons had proceeded. From their eyrie in the rocks the boys saw two dozen or more small yellow men, in white duck jackets and trousers, with yellow straw slippers on their feet, rush into the glen followed by a tall man in a sort of undress naval uniform. He it was who had given the whistle. He gave an evil laugh as he saw the wounded, exhausted animals come shuffling toward him, their tails between their legs.