The savages’ yells changed monstrously quick. When the rockets began to blow up and sprinkle around balls of red and blue and green fire, the boats were emptied in a moment or two. Wildly shrieking, the naked savages sprang overboard and swam back toward land, while we along the rail of the Sea Spell sent broadside after broadside of rockets after them.
We saw them splash through the shoal water, gain the land, and disappear beyond the illumination of the fires before all our skyrockets were used up.
“Avast firin’!” roared Captain Tugg, and Pedro, the mate, repeated the order in Spanish. “Now out with a boat, Pedro, and save those canoes. They’ll come in handy for our use.”
No matter what the situation might be, the Yankee could not lose sight of the main chance. We gathered in those canoes and then awaited daylight before we made any further move. We found then that the savages had totally disappeared.
“We can warp her off and I doubt if she’s damaged at all,” declared Captain Tugg. “But I’m too worried about the Professor to begin that now. I’m going to leave Pedro here and we’ll take some of the boys and sail up to headquarters and see what’s happened there. You can bring your hardware, Mr. Webb. We may have need of it after all, for if they’ve troubled the Professor, I swanny I’ll shoot some of the long-legged rascals!”
What I had read of white men in wild countries had led me to believe that they usually shot the savages first and inquired into their intentions afterward. But Captain Tugg assured me that in the fifteen years he had been in this country he had never been obliged to more than string a few savages up by their thumbs and ropes-end them!
“They’ve been ugly at times—not my boys around here, but some of the far, up-country tribes—and I’ve been obliged to show them things. I’m kind of a wonder-worker, I be. Them scamps that waylaid us last night will scatter the news of that fireworks show throughout ten townships, and don’t you forgit it. Jest because Adoniram Tugg can show ’em something new ev’ry time is what’s kept his head on his shoulders for fifteen years.”
“Goodness! they’re not head-hunters?” said I.
“No. But they’d take a white man’s head and sell it to tribes farther north that do prize sech trophies. Oh, this ain’t no country for tenderfoots, son. There ain’t no tract in the back-end of India, or the middle of Africa, that’s as barbarous as a good wide streak of South America yet.”
And I could believe that later when, after sailing some miles up the inlet, we came to the burned ruins of a collection of huts and sheds. This was Tugg’s headquarters, and his partner, Professor Vose, the man I had come so far to see, was not there.