Part 25 (1/2)
As I came forward he was rapidly distributing--he and Pedro--the articles which had been packed in the box. He gave half a dozen to each man of the crew. He likewise broke up lengths of slow-matches--that Chinese punk that is usually used when fireworks are set off. And it was fireworks he was giving me--half a dozen good-sized rockets!
”What shall we do with these?” I demanded. ”Why, Captain Tugg! you don't mean to illuminate the schooner? Those savages will pin us with their spears if we light up here.”
He spoke first to the crew, and they ran at once and crouched under the bulwarks on that side nearest the sh.o.r.e. The canoes were within a hundred yards.
”Quick!” he said to me. ”Start the first rocket fuse. Lay it on the rail here, son, and aim it at them canoes. We'll pepper them skunks--now, won't we?”
All along the line of the rail I heard the fuses sputtering. Little sparks of blue and crimson flame shot into view. ”Let 'em go!” bawled Adroniam Tugg.
The four canoes came fairly bounding over the water. I never knew that canoes could be paddled so rapidly. They were almost upon the schooner when the first rocket went off with a terrible sputter. It shot like a bird of fire right into the leading canoe, and then another, and another, shot off until the air between the schooner and the canoes seemed filled with shooting flames.
The savages' yells changed monstrously quick. When the rockets began to blow up and sprinkle around b.a.l.l.s of red and blue and green fire, the boats were emptied in a moment or two. Wildly shrieking, the naked savages sprang overboard and swam back toward land, while we along the rail of the Sea Spell sent broadside after broadside of rockets after them.
We saw them splash through the shoal water, gain the land, and disappear beyond the illumination of the fires before all our skyrockets were used up.
”Avast firin'!” roared Captain Tugg, and Pedro, the mate, repeated the order in Spanish. ”Now out with a boat, Pedro, and save those canoes.
They'll come in handy for our use.”
No matter what the situation might be, the Yankee could not lose sight of the main chance. We gathered in those canoes and then awaited daylight before we made any further move. We found then that the savages had totally disappeared.
”We can warp her off and I doubt if she's damaged at all,” declared Captain Tugg. ”But I'm too worried about the Professor to begin that now. I'm going to leave Pedro here and we'll take some of the boys and sail up to headquarters and see what's happened there. You can bring your hardware, Mr. Webb. We may have need of it after all, for if they've troubled the Professor, I swanny I'll shoot some of the long-legged rascals!”
What I had read of white men in wild countries had led me to believe that they usually shot the savages first and inquired into their intentions afterward. But Captain Tugg a.s.sured me that in the fifteen years he had been in this country he had never been obliged to more than string a few savages up by their thumbs and ropes-end them!
”They've been ugly at times--not my boys around here, but some of the far, up-country tribes--and I've been obliged to show them things. I'm kind of a wonder-worker, I be. Them scamps that waylaid us last night will scatter the news of that fireworks show throughout ten towns.h.i.+ps, and don't you forgit it. Jest because Adoniram Tugg can show 'em something new ev'ry time is what's kept his head on his shoulders for fifteen years.”
”Goodness! they're not head-hunters?” said I.
”No. But they'd take a white man's head and sell it to tribes farther north that _do_ prize sech trophies. Oh, this ain't no country for tenderfoots, son. There ain't no tract in the back-end of India, or the middle of Africa, that's as barbarous as a good wide streak of South America yet.”
And I could believe that later when, after sailing some miles up the inlet, we came to the burned ruins of a collection of huts and sheds.
This was Tugg's headquarters, and his partner, Professor Vose, the man I had come so far to see, was not there.
CHAPTER XXVIII
IN WHICH ARE RELATED SEVERAL DISAPPOINTMENTS
The attack on the encampment of the animal trappers had evidently been made several days before. The fire had devastated the place. All the animals in cages had been killed or released. And in the blackened ruins and about the clearing, on the rocks, there lay the bodies of more than a dozen Patagonians. Tugg showed real feeling when he saw these dead men.
”Poor boys!” he muttered, standing leaning on his rifle and gazing upon one fellow who was really a giant. ”They was square, jest the same. Ye see, they fought for the Professor and the traps. But them scoundrels was too many for them.”
It was a dreadful sight. I do not want to write about it. Nor do I wish to give the particulars of our search of the neighborhood for some trace of the single white man who had been in the vicinity--the man whom Tugg called the Professor, but who was the Man of Mystery to me. We found a place where a huge fire had been built beneath the trees. There was a green liana hanging from a high limb and the end of the liana had been tied around the ankles of a man. The feet shod in American made boots were all of that victim of the savages' cruelty which had not been burned to ashes.
”It's a way they have,” whispered Tugg. ”They start the poor feller swinging like a pendulum, and every time he swings through the flames he's burned a little more--and a little more----”
I turned sick with the horror of it. There was nothing more to do. Tugg recognized his partner's boots. The savages had made their raid, burned the camp, destroyed all they could, and done their best to wreck the Sea Spell. There must have been one traitor among Tugg's men at the encampment or the savages would not have known of the schooner's approach. At least, I shall always believe so.