“Tom’s killed him with the electric rifle!” cried Mr. Durban.
“Bless my incandescent lamp! so he has,” agreed Mr. Damon. “Bless my dynamo! but that’s a wonderful gun, it’s as powerful as a thunderbolt, or as gentle as a summer shower.”
Mr. Durban seeing that the lion was dead, in that brief glance he had had of the brute, called to some of the natives to come and get their tribesman. They came, timidly enough at first, carrying many torches, but when they understood that the lion was dead, they advanced more boldly. They carried the wounded black to a hut, where they applied their simple but effective remedies for the cruel bite in his shoulder.
After Tom had shot several other of the illuminated charges into the jungle, to see if he could discover any more lions, but failed to do so, he and his friends returned to the anchored airship, amid the murmured thanks of the Africans.
Bright fires were kept blazing all the rest of the night, but, though lions could be heard roaring in the jungle, and though they approached alarmingly close to the place where our friends were encamped, none of the savage brutes ventured within the clearing.
With the valuable store of ivory aboard the Black Hawk, which was now completely repaired, an early start was made the next morning. The Africans besought Tom and his companions to remain, for it was not often they could have the services of white men in slaying elephants and lions.
“But, we’ve got to get on the trail,” decided Tom, when the natives had brought great stores of food, and such simple presents as they possessed, to induce the travelers to remain.
“Every hour may add to the danger of the missionaries in the hands of the red pygmies.”
“Yes,” said Mr. Anderson gravely, “it is our duty to save them.”
And so the airship mounted into the air, our friends waving farewells to the simple-hearted blacks, who did a sort of farewell war-dance in their honor, shouting their praises aloud, and beating the drums and tom-toms, so that the echoes followed for some time after the Black Hawk had begun to mount upward toward the sky.