The curator studied the situation over uneasily.
“I do wish Dwight could move!” he said to Nicky at his right. “We might try carrying him, but it seems suicidal to me. The pygmies are coming, sure as death, and they’ll move much faster than we could go with a burden. We’d be overtaken before we got halfway back to the canoe. We’ll have to stay here and fight. After the ammunition is all gone, every man make for that canoe at top speed. The first one there will get sail on her and wait until forced to draw out to the lagoon. That is about all I can plan ahead at the present. Too bad we lost Baderoon,” he sighed. “That was the finest black boy I ever knew! No one who ever knew that happy, rollicking native could help loving him—and I rather depended on him getting through and bringing up the Outanatas.”
He went over to where Dwight lay in the shade of a bush.
“How’s it coming, old man?”
“I’m weak as a cat,” said Dwight, lifelessly. “I can’t even move that arm. Pull it in out of the sun and lay it across my chest, won’t you?” he begged, querulously.
The curator shook his head. It would be at least another hour before Dwight could even move his own legs. The curator fidgeted with impatience as he cursed the upas vine and all its relatives. Hours were precious as dear life, now. He had about decided on a scheme for pushing along and carrying Dwight in relays, when a low whistle from Nicky brought him to his feet.
“Here they come, sir!” announced the boy, tensely.
He peered out of their lair. A long line of the little black men swept across the upper swales, arrows on bows, walking about fifteen feet apart, searching warily every foot of the grass. More burst out of the jungle along the creek every few moments, and far to the right, other parties could be seen beating across the jungle toward the banyan-tree mountain. Nothing could escape such a dragnet!
They watched them impotently, as the warriors slowly worked down the swales toward their position. There were at least fifty of them in the line that finally reached the site of Cassowary Camp. Then they began to slowly filter up the mountain side.
“Now’s our only chance!” said the curator in a low voice. “Sadok, you pick off any that come near this position, or any that seem likely to discover us, and we’ll hope that the rest may go by without finding us.”