“Clever stunt! Those savages are sure resourceful, I’ll say!” admired the curator. “We’re it, all right!”
A babel of yells arose from the nearest canoe as he spoke, and her light began to move out toward them, the flashes of her paddles winking like swiftly waving bars of light. The other canoes changed course likewise, and the whole pack fanned out in a sort of V, with the nearest canoe leading. A second flaming javelin soared into the night and lit up the waters. Diabolical war whoops burst out from all the canoes this time, and amid exulting yells a few long-range, roving arrows fell into the lagoon around them.
“Don’t anybody shoot, except Sadok, until I say the word!” gritted the curator, “and I want you boys to call me eighty yards as near as you can judge it when that canoe comes that near!”
Arrows from the nearest boat now began to whistle overhead and fall into the bay with a sharp chrrp! like quenching hot iron.
“Eighty yards, I think, sir,” whispered Dwight a few moments later as he peered over the gunwale.
“Just about,” muttered the curator, aiming his pistol carefully over braced knees. A sharp kjkrrr! came from the weapon as he pulled trigger. A tiny spark swept in a flat trajectory over to the canoe, and then, like detonation of thunder close at hand, came a stunning report and the white, blinding glare of the explosion of a shell. The flash gave them one tremendous, significant glimpse of flying splinters and the cannibal canoe doubling up like a broken stick—and then came pitchy, inky darkness, followed by the shouts of the savages swimming in the water and the roar of a wave rolling swiftly toward them which rocked their canoe to her beam ends.
“Gad! I hate to shoot up these beggars, even if they are cannibals bent on dining off us!” exclaimed the curator, reloading. “Hope they’re mostly scared to death! This second shell ought to do it.”
He steadied the pistol on his knees and aimed at the second canoe, swooping down on them, the cannibals yelling and discharging flights of arrows into the night. Again the blinding white flash and the terrific report. The curator had aimed it so as not to hit the canoe directly, and they saw a wave rise in front of her which engulfed the canoe and put her crew powerless in the water.
But the others came right on, regardless. “Paddle, boys! Make it quick and snappy! They’re closing in on us! Once more ought to knock the fight out of them!” He reloaded hurriedly and fired at the third canoe, the shell exploding in midair right over it. The shouts from five canoefuls of bloodthirsty cannibals surrounding them, foaming up the water with their furious paddles, filled the night with pandemonium. Their situation looked desperate now, for the Outanatas seemed determined upon their recapture and they had lost some of their fear of the curator’s shells.
“Fire, boys! for all you’re worth—I’ll give you light!” he yelled, whipping out his flashlight. “Hold it, Baderoon!” he ordered, as the rays from its parabolic reflector shot over the water.