At last the king and his chiefs emerged, and we could see by their stern faces that a climax in our adventure had arrived.
Moit was ready for them. He backed the machine around until it was facing the barricade and as far removed from it as the enclosure would allow. He had made Ilalah crouch low on the floor of the car, so that her people would not discover her presence.
A spokesman advanced from the group of warriors and demanded Bryonia’s promised answer.
I opened a side window and said, boldly and in a loud voice, that we had played with the San Blas people long enough.
“You annoy us with your foolish demands,” I added, “and we cannot bother to remain with you longer. Had you been friendly, we would have favored you; but you are silly children, and so we leave you.”
As I finished speaking Duncan opened the window in front of his steering wheel and aimed a shot from his revolver at the red chalk mark on the barricade that marked the location of the explosive. There was no result, so he fired again, and still again.
The natives, at first furious at my insults, now paused to wonder what the big white slave was shooting at, and I saw that the inventor’s nervousness or lack of marksmanship was likely soon to plunge us into a deal of trouble. Leaping to his side I pushed him away and took careful aim with my own revolver.
A crash that seemed to rend the very air followed. The machine was hurled backward against the king’s palace, from which a rain of mud bricks and bits of wood rattled down upon us, while all the open space of the enclosure was filled with falling debris.
Shrieks of terror and pain followed, while we, who had all been dumped in a heap on the floor of the car, scrambled up and took note of what had happened. The wall had vanished, and only a ragged depression in the earth remained to mark the place where the barricade had lately stood.
None of us was injured, fortunately, and as soon as Duncan had assured himself that Ilalah was alive and unhurt he sprang to the lever and the machine bounded forward and skimmed light as a feather over the littered ground.