The natives came on, yelling and dancing. Most of them wore long white boars’ tusks through the nose and curving up around their cheeks, giving them a singularly fierce aspect. Some had white shell combs dangling low over their foreheads, and nearly all wore a collection of white shell rings hanging in their ears. They brandished their spears and clubs as they advanced and retreated, going through the pantomime of mimic warfare. They made diabolical faces and thrust out red tongues at the explorers as they came closer, but whether it was war or peace even Baderoon could not tell them.
The boys watched the war dance, striving to quiet the shivers of apprehension that would persist in rising. It was harder to bear there than any amount of fighting, and they had much preferred standing off any number of natives well hidden in the bush.
At about fifteen yards off, the line of natives had worked themselves into furious action, stabbing with their spears at the air, the rows of hideous shields dancing like evil genii from some other world. As more of them spread out on each flank, a guttural shout came from one of the tallest.
“Shoot, Orang!” shrieked Baderoon, but he was too late! From behind each native’s shield swung a black arm holding a short stick of bamboo. They swept forward like flails, and instantly the air was filled with blinding fine sand and ash dust. It closed their eyes with the acrid, cutting particles, and involuntarily their arms went up to shield their faces, while guns went off aimlessly. Sadok flashed out his parang in the cloud, and the curator jumped back to throw his bomb, but there was no room to use it. The natives closed in on them in a whirlwind of grabbing, skinny arms. Dwight saw stars as a club descended on his helmet, and everything went white before him. He was dimly conscious of a last impression of Sadok standing off three of them with his parang, and the curator buffeting his way through the shields toward him with bare fists, when his senses left him....
When he came to he was lying on the ground with his arms tightly bound behind him. Nicky and the curator were sitting up, also tied, and beyond them was Sadok, his head covered with blood where they had clubbed him. An occasional suppressed groan came from Baderoon; only themselves could understand the agony he was enduring, with his wounded arm ruthlessly trussed up like their own.
The Outanatas were chattering and arguing around them. Finally a long rope was brought and the captives tied together, a loop of it in a single knot around each of their necks, so that any attempt to escape would bring it tight. Then they were all dragged to their feet and formed in a line, with a double file of natives on each side, and the party set off through the jungle.
The way led back through the same trail the natives had come up on, the jungle path working gradually down toward the lagoon. The boys did little talking, for it seemed to make their captors angry, but they had plenty of time to think as they marched along. Dwight noted that the curator still carried his queer pistol, and their own were in the holsters yet, for the natives had dropped the flaps in disgust at the first sight of steel. Their shotguns were being carried by a couple of natives, each holding it with a wad of moss in his hand to protect it from the touch of steel, against which they had a taboo. Sadok’s sumpitan, with its spear blade lashed to its muzzle like a spear, they could understand, and his parang and Nicky’s were in the hands of their captors. They evidently respected these as real weapons of war, as they also did Baderoon’s bows and arrows and both the shields, for these were being carried along as trophies.
THE WAY LED BACK THROUGH THE SAME TRAIL THE
NATIVES HAD COME UP ON, THE JUNGLE PATH
WORKING GRADUALLY DOWNWARD TO THE LAGOON
By nightfall the trail pitched suddenly downward toward the lagoon, and the warriors raised their voices in an exulting chant. It was answered by the deep boom of war drums, and presently they came down to a native village on the shore of the lagoon. The mangroves had been cleared away here, and on the beach were some twenty long black canoes, hauled up, their high carved prows looming darkly against the glassy surface of the waters, greenish orange in the dying hues of twilight.