"Stuyvesant will yield to the Duke of York in a day or two," Peter was swiftly saying. "But he is afraid the frigate's men will land and attack the city from the north. If they do that, Stuyvesant's prestige before his own people will make him fight. Without it, he will try to drive a bargain for his own self-respect, and then yield. I am to tell the frigate's commander that if only he will but have patience and wait—Stuyvesant will surrender."
Upon that mission, tonight, might depend the whole course of history in the New World!
"There's no back way out of here?" Alan demanded.
"No. Just this one entrance. And if we should try to run, out there into that glare—"
"We'd get arrows in us," Alan finished wryly. "Those Indians are pretty close now."
The shouts of the savages were audible, where they crouched in the brush just beyond the line of fire. They were whooping with anticipatory triumph and showering the cave-mouth with their flaming missiles. Acrid yellow smoke was welling into the cave in clouds. Peter had shoved Greta to the floor where the air, so far, was a little purer. He too was coughing; and Alan felt the clutch of the resin-smoke in his own throat. To stay here another five or ten minutes would be death.
If only his time-traveling mechanism would take more than one person! But it would not. He himself was safe, of course.... He had taken a step toward the cave-mouth, and abruptly he recoiled as an arrow whizzed narrowly past his shoulder.
Nothing safe about this!
And then he knew what he must try to do. "You two stay here, just a few minutes," he said swiftly. "Keep down by the floor, both of you—air's still much better down there. I'm going away, but I'll be back."