“Let ’em come!” he grunted. “We’ll fix ’em, Mr. Webb; we’ll fix ’em.”
There were four large canoes. I heard Tugg whispering to himself about them as he watched the half-naked paddlers urging them toward the schooner:
“Ugly mugs. From up river. Come three or four hundred miles in them canoes, mebbe. Wisht I knew what has happened the Professor. They sartainly have cleaned our headquarters, or they wouldn’t have displaced that beacon lantern.” Then he turned to urge Pedro. “Got that mess o’ stuff out o’ the box? That’s it. Now, Mr. Webb, never mind them guns o’ yourn. Put ’em down and bear a hand here.”
He was the skipper and I obeyed; but I hated to give up the rifle. It looked to me as though we were in for a hand-to-hand fight with the savages—and they really were giants. I had read of these Patagonians; but I had never more than half believed the stories they told about them. I could realize now that any fifty of them one might see in a crowd together would average—as the books said—six feet, four inches in height.
As I came forward he was rapidly distributing—he and Pedro—the articles which had been packed in the box. He gave half a dozen to each man of the crew. He likewise broke up lengths of slow-matches—that Chinese punk that is usually used when fireworks are set off. And it was fireworks he was giving me—half a dozen good-sized rockets!
“What shall we do with these?” I demanded. “Why, Captain Tugg! you don’t mean to illuminate the schooner? Those savages will pin us with their spears if we light up here.”
He spoke first to the crew, and they ran at once and crouched under the bulwarks on that side nearest the shore. The canoes were within a hundred yards.
“Quick!” he said to me. “Start the first rocket fuse. Lay it on the rail here, son, and aim it at them canoes. We’ll pepper them skunks—now, won’t we?”
All along the line of the rail I heard the fuses sputtering. Little sparks of blue and crimson flame shot into view. “Let ’em go!” bawled Adroniam Tugg.
The four canoes came fairly bounding over the water. I never knew that canoes could be paddled so rapidly. They were almost upon the schooner when the first rocket went off with a terrible sputter. It shot like a bird of fire right into the leading canoe, and then another, and another, shot off until the air between the schooner and the canoes seemed filled with shooting flames.