"The ship's boats--" he began, but the captain raised his gun and fired

twice aft along the side of the vessel. Cries of pain and a good deal

of splashing in the sea proved that he had expedited the departure of

several Indians who were perched on the rails beyond the reach of

Walker's steam jet.

"The ship's boats," went on Christobal calmly, "have turned up in some

mysterious manner, just in the nick of time. A few minutes more, and

they would have been too late."

"But where have they come from? Where can they have been all these

days?" whispered Elsie, whose eyes were so dimmed that she perforce

abandoned the effort to make out what was going on in the sea near the

ship.

"My brain reels under the wildest guesses. At present we are chiefly

concerned in the fact that they are here. Yet people say that the age

of miracles has passed: obviously a foolish remark."

Those who have been plucked from the precipice by a sleeve, as it were,

are seldom able to concentrate their attention on the one thought which

should apparently swamp all others. They either yield to the strain,

and lapse into unconsciousness, or their minds become the arena of

minor emotions, wherein trivialities play battledore and shuttlecock

with the tremendous issues of the moment. When a more extended

knowledge of all that had happened, joined to a nicer adjustment of the

time-factor in events, enabled Elsie to realise the extraordinary

deliverance from death which she had been vouchsafed that night, she

began to appreciate the service which Christobal rendered her in

discussing matters with such nonchalance.

Barely a minute had elapsed since they were in the throes of a struggle

which promised to be the last act of a tragedy. The ship was then

over-run by a horde of howling savages, maddened by the desperate

resistance offered by the defenders, and ruthless as wolves in their

lust for destruction. Now, the Kansas was clear of every bedaubed

Alaculof, save the many who cumbered the decks, either dead or so

seriously wounded that they could not move. These men were so near

akin to animals, that this condition implied ultimate collapse save in

a few instances of fractured skulls and broken limbs. From the final

stage of a hopeless butchery the survivors of the ship's company were

suddenly transferred to a position of reasonable security. It was not

that the arrival of the ship's boats meant such an accession of

fighting strength that the Alaculofs could not have made sure of

victory. Gray and his companions were badly armed. The Indians

remaining in the canoes could have pelted them to shreds in a few

minutes. Even those on the ship had the power to resist any attempt by

the newcomers to gain the decks. But the superstitious savages had

already screwed themselves up to an act of unusual daring in delivering

a night attack, and the appearance of boats filled with men of whose

fighting qualities they had already such a lively experience quite

demoralized them. They fled without attempting a counter assault.

Just as negroes conjure up white demons, so did these nude Alaculofs

regard with awe men who wore clothes. They were ready to kill and eat

the strange beings of another race who, few in numbers and ill armed,

wandered into their rock-pent fastness, but it was quite a different

thing to face them in equal combat.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024