He drove his paddlers to their work once more. He dared not attempt to make Uras Cove again. All the coast was up and hunting him. The best—the only chance for him was to head southwest, heading past Sunaku’s territory for Maramasike Pass, across it, and to the mission at Saa.
He struck out on the course as darkness settled down upon the ocean and all the world. And half an hour later, with the dull reverberations of many drums dying away below the horizon, one of the paddlers panted.
“Marster! One-fella irora!”
Gleason strained his ears and heard it. It was following!
Utter blackness lay over all the world. To the right there was the long, low pestilential coast where Sunaku held sway, where any white man was fair game and Gleason would be prized more than most. To the left was open sea, from which only swells came rolling in unendingly. Ahead was emptiness. Behind was the dull rumble of devil-devil drums in half a dozen villages whose warriors were hunting Gleason—and, nearer, the splashing paddles of a canoe. By the splashings and the tempo, the paddlers were weary to exhaustion. But the canoe drew steadily nearer.
Gleason swung off his course and cursed his men in a whisper. He let the boat rock and roll in the darkness without a paddle lifted, and the following canoe went on past. And then the whaleboat sped on toward the shore to resume its course.
But presently the dreary splashing of paddles in the hands of exhausted men sounded once more in the darkness. A voice called, startlingly close. Maehoe’s voice. In a frenzy, Gleason shot at it.
And that shot was heard on shore.
In half an hour the heavens were echoing the dull, monotonous booming of a devil-devil drum ahead, and word was passing through the bush in the mysterious fashion of bush-wireless, of Gleason’s presence and his new course. And, of course, the sea was swarming with hunting war-boats.