All this time the Indian had kept his eyes tight closed, and had not uttered a word. Now, however, he opened his eyes, and threw himself down flat on his face on the Discoverer’s deck. There he groveled in an attitude of the most complete humility.
“He thinks we are sky gods, or demons of some sort,” declared the professor, reading the man’s consternation aright.
“I don’t much blame him,” said Nat, with a smile, “that ride through the air at the end of the rope must have been the most terrifying experience of his young life.”
“Young life,” scoffed Joe, “he must be sixty at least.”
“Well, that is young sometimes,” said the professor, who owned to that age himself, although he was as active as most men half his age.
Suddenly the Indian began to speak, but without raising his head. He poured out a flood of words. For an instant, they thought he was speaking his native dialect, but all at once the professor understood.
“He’s talking Spanish,” he said, “and imploring us to spare his life. Just as I thought, he thinks we are beings from another world.”
“Well, if I were in his fix I’d be inclined to think so myself,” said Joe.
But the professor began putting rapid questions, at the same time raising the man’s head and showing him by signs that they meant no harm to him. Little by little the Indian seemed to recover his courage. But he was sorely shaken by his adventure, and explained that when the ropes began to drag over the ground he had seized them to stop the dirigible, and had become entangled in them.
“Why did your tribe attack us?” asked the professor.