“How about their finding the canoe before we do?” suggested Nicky, eagerly.
“I’ve thought of that. We’ve got to move as soon as they pass us, and get Dwight along somehow. Sadok and I will carry him. We’ll have to beat ’em to it.”
A pygmy came out of the bushes directly below him, and his little black eyes popped with sudden discovery. Before he could utter a yell a dart from Sadok’s sumpitan ended him. Then another appeared, working uphill to their right, and he, too, was tumbled over in a silent heap. The curator felt a touch on his arm. He turned his head, to see Dwight, who had crawled over on hands and knees, and he was pointing up to their left with a look of horror in his eyes. There stood a pygmy in plain sight in the act of raising the warwhoop!
THE PISTOLS BARKED IN UNISON WITH THE
HIGH-PITCHED YELL THAT THE MAN LET OUT
The pistols barked in unison with the high-pitched yell that the man let out. There were swift rustlings all over the mountain side, and a knot of warriors below charged up the hill, shouting their battle cries. The curator dropped a shell on them. A great brown geyser of earth and stones obliterated the group, simultaneous with its thundering report, and the jungle below burst into flames with the intense heat of the explosion. In another instant there was not a pygmy in sight anywhere on the whole landscape.
“Now, then, cut and run for it!” hissed the curator. “Make for the canoe, Nick, and get sail on her. We’ll come along with Dwight, somehow!”
Nicky darted off into the jungle to their left, while Sadok and the curator hoisted Dwight to his feet and started off along the rocky side of the mountain. They saw a party of the pygmies scuttling along in the valley below to get ahead of them. Stopping an instant to aim, the curator drove another shell down on them. Its detonation was followed by a sudden silence, and then out of the green depths of the jungle across the creek burst a full, deep-throated war chant.
“Ko! Ko! Ko!
Hy-yah! Hy-yah! Hy-yah!