Stones, too, began to hum around them; some struck the boat, but the greater number whizzed unpleasantly close to the heads of the two men and the girl, proving conclusively that they were visible to the unseen enemy. Gray whipped forth the revolver and fired twice. The second time a shriek of pain told that he had hit one of their assailants. The two reports made a deafening din in that place of echoes. They appeared to stir the Indians into a perfect frenzy, and it was evident, by the sounds, that the islanders had not much liberty of movement on the narrow strips of land they occupied on both sides of the gorge.
Elsie caught some significant splashing behind her.
“They are swimming towards the canoes,” she screamed.
Telling Suarez to pull for all he was worth, Gray, clambered to the stern of the boat and emptied the revolver at what he took to be the black heads of the swimmers.
“Quick! Load it again,” he said, and Elsie obeyed with a nimbleness and certainty that were amazing.
The American fired three more shots before he was satisfied that the canoes were untenanted and not cut adrift. They were now leaving the pandemonium behind, and Elsie, bethinking herself of the dog, freed him from that most objectionable muzzle. Joey forthwith awoke the welkin with his uproar, but, although the girl strained her ears for some answering hail, she could detect nothing beyond the bawling of Indians at each other across the narrow creek, and the repeated echoes of the dog’s barking.
About this time Gray began to suspect that the tide was bearing them onward at a remarkable rate. In the somber depths of the cleft or cañon it was difficult to discern stationary objects clearly enough to obtain a means of estimating the pace of the stream. But the rapid dying down of the hubbub among the savages gave him cause to think. He asked Suarez to cease pulling. The canoes behind came crowding in on the more solid boat, and an oar held out until it encountered some invisible branch was rudely swept aside. In a word, they were being impelled towards an unknown destination with the silence and gathering speed of a mill-race.
An expert engineer, though his work may have little to do with sea or river, cannot fail to accumulate a store of theoretical knowledge as to the properties and limitations of water in motion. Gray knew that the quickened impulse of the stream arose from the tidal force exerted in a channel which gradually lessened its width. The boat was traveling at sea level. Therefore, there could be neither rapids nor cataract in front; but the steady rush of the current, now plainly audible, could not be accounted for simply by the effort of the tide to gain a passage through a mere by-way, as the boat was now nearly half a mile from the estuary, and the velocity of the current was increasing each moment.
“We must endeavor to reach the bank and hold on to the branches of a tree,” he shouted in Spanish. “Down with your heads until the boat strikes, and then try to lay hold of something.”
There was no time for explanation. He seized an oar; a powerful stroke swung the boat’s nose round. By chance, he used the starboard oar. All unknowing he spun a coin for life or death, and life won. They crashed through some drooping foliage and ran into a crumbling bank. Gray unshipped the oar and jammed it straight down. It stuck between stones at a depth of three feet, and the life-boat was held fast for the time. The canoes hurtled against each other, but were swept aside instantly. When the noise ceased, they plainly heard the swirl of the water. In their new environment, it had the uncanny and sinister hiss of some monstrous snake.