“He’s after a canoe,” said Tom.
Bill raised a pistol. Toosa, with a quick grip, thrust back Bill’s arm, shaking his head violently and choking.
Running a light canoe out partly into the turbulent stream, Henry reached into the beached canoe of the trader, holding their menacing approach back by a threat with the rifle, and threw some of the trader’s goods into the small canoe.
“Give me the pistol if you’re afraid to fire!” cried Buckley, the trader; but again Toosa held his arm.
They watched the canoe skip away from the bank and whirl, end for end, in an eddy. Then Henry got his paddle to working and with a derisive shout, swung his blade and straightened away, flying down the stream.
“Why wouldn’t you let us stop him?” Tom cried, angry at Toosa. He saw their companions being urged to desert by a false story, saw themselves stranded in the Indian country.
“Toosa says, ‘Rapids get him,’” Buckley translated, for Toosa now spoke curtly in his own dialect, making swift gestures. “Toosa says if the rapids don’t drag him under, as is likely, the deadline will stop him. He’ll never get through. As for you fellows—if you can put up with privations and hard climbing, I can arrange with some of my Indians to escort you over the mountains—to the capital, and from there you can easily get down to the coast and your cruiser and your friends.”
“But if Henry should get through!” Tom objected. “We ought to try and catch him.”
“No!” the trader remonstrated. “Wait! He will either get out of control—he’s weakened from his heavy debauches—and go over the falls instead of down the side currents and rapids, or he will be caught by the Indians and the Honduran soldiers.”
“It’s too bad it had to happen right in the middle of the witchcraft,” mused Bill.