"Well, he"ll have to fight," said Billy with bloodthirsty determination.
"I for one am not going to stand calmly by and have my throat cut, or worse still be taken prisoner by this old Muley-Ha.s.san."
Old Sikaso glanced approvingly at him.
"Well spoken, Four-eyes," said he; "spoken like a son of a warrior."
Billy"s ears tingled at the compliment, which was really in the old African"s opinion the highest that could be paid to a man or a boy, and hurried off to wake "the bugologist" as be disrespectfully termed the professor. To his surprise, for he more than half expected an outbreak, Professor Wiseman did not appear particularly concerned at the news that Diego, and Muley-Ha.s.san were--as the boys had every reason to believe--at that moment advancing on the camp.
"I will dress myself with all alacrity," he said, "and join you in your tent, but I must say I don"t believe in all this witchcraft."
"Will this Muley-Ha.s.san be well armed?" asked Billy, in a voice which was rather shaky, of their black friend.
"Plenty rifles," was Sikaso"s brief reply.
"Don"t you want a rifle or at least a heavy caliber shotgun?" asked Billy.
The old warrior laughed and swung his mighty axe round his head till the blade flashed like a continuous band of steel and the air whistled at the cleavage of the sharp edge. Then he began to sing softly a war-song which may be roughly rendered in English thus:
"At dawn I went out with my axe into the red fight; Like the gra.s.s before the fire, like the clouds before the wind, I drove them. I, Sikaso, I drove them.
There were rivers that day; but the rivers were red.
They were the rivers of the blood of my enemies; With my war-axe I killed them.
This is the song of mighty Sikaso, and his terrible axe of death."
Although the boys of course did not understand the words, the fierce voice in which the old warrior intoned the chant made them realize what a terrible foe he was likely to prove in battle. But now as Sikaso brought his song to a conclusion and rested his axe on the ground, leaning on its hilt, he suddenly stiffened into an att.i.tude of close attention.
"Hark, my white brothers!" he cried, "the war-eagles are gathering for the slaughter."
But the slight sound the keen ears of the savage had caught without difficulty was longer in making itself manifest to the two white boys. After a few minutes of listening, so intense as to be painful, they likewise, however, distinctly heard the regular, rhythmic dip of paddles coming down the river.
"There are six war canoes full of them," announced, Sikaso, with almost a groan, after he had given close attention to the sounds.
"Alas, my white brothers, there is little use of our giving battle."
"Well, I for one am not going to give up without dropping a few of the cowardly wretches," cried Billy.
"Nor I," echoed Lathrop, enthused by Billy"s brave example.
The old warrior"s eyes kindled as he gazed at the two brave young Americans, each clutching his rifle and waiting for the moment to arrive when they could use them.
"If we only had had time to throw up a stockade, my brothers, we might have driven them off yet," he cried.
"Well, we"ll give as good an account of ourselves as possible,"
declared Lathrop.
And now began what has been acknowledged to be the most trying part of any engagement, from a duel to a battle--the waiting for hostilities to begin. It seemed that an interminable time had elapsed from the moment that they heard the first "dip-dip" of the paddles to the sharp crack of a twig sounded in the jungle directly ahead of them. The snapped branch told them that the enemy"s outposts were reconnoitering to see that the camp was actually, as it seemed to be, wrapped in sleep.
Apparently the scout, whoever he was, was soon convinced of the fact that the adventurers were slumbering, for he advanced boldly from the dark sheltering shadows of the jungle and emerged into the bright moonlight which flooded the clearing in which the camp stood.
Billy raised his rifle to his shoulder and the next minute would have been the savage scout"s last had not old Sikaso sternly seized and lowered the weapon, saying in a tense whisper:
"The time is not yet ripe, my brother. To fire now would be unnecessarily to give the alarm. Wait until they are ma.s.sed thick and then fire into the bodies of the Arab dogs."
The scout didn"t waste much time in reconnoitering. After a short time spent in peering about he dived once more into the forest and Billy whispered to Lathrop:
"Now it"s coming, old man."
And come it did.
Five minutes after the scout had dived back into the forest a dozen dark forms crept from the bush and stealthily advanced toward the tent.
The leader had reached the door and Billy was frantically imploring old Sikaso to let him shoot when an appalling shriek rent the air.
The old Krooman"s axe flashed once in the moonlight and the leader of the attacking party lay dead at the tent door, severed almost to the chest.
There was not a second"s time, however, to take in what had happened. In a flash the whole horde was upon them, and Billy and Lathrop began firing desperately into the ma.s.s of foemen who appeared to spring from every side of the clearing at once.
Even in this extremity a strange thought flashed across Billy"s, mind:
"Where was Professor Wiseman?"
CHAPTER XII
IN THE HANDS OF SLAVE-TRADERS
The ebon form of the Krooman giant seemed everywhere at once.
In the moonlight his terrible axe flashed incessantly and every time it fell a shriek or a m.u.f.fled groan showed that it had found its fatal mark. The huge form of the warrior black seemed, however, to bear a charmed life. Again and again one of the attacking force would fire at him, but the bullets seemed to be warded off by some supernatural force. He was immune alike to bullets and arrows--with which latter the natives attached to Muley-Ha.s.san"s force battled.
Billy and Lathrop fought with unflinching courage, pouring out a leaden hail into the onslaught that again and again seemed as if it must drive the attacking force back. But fighting at such desperately uneven odds could not in the nature of things last long.
There came a minute when Billy, turning to reload, found that before he could s.n.a.t.c.h up a handful of cartridges a huge Arab was on top of him.
Lathrop"s clubbed rifle struck the fellow helpless the next minute and sent his long, cruel knife with a ringing crash to the floor.
Before Billy"s half breathed "Thanks, old man," had left his lips, however, another of Muley-Ha.s.san"s followers had rushed in and the moment would have been Lathrop"s last but that Billy drove his fist into the fellow"s face with a crashing blow that knocked him on the top of his fallen comrade. It was hand-to-hand fighting then with a vengeance. Billy seized hold of the muzzle of an Arab"s revolver as it was thrust into his very face, and twisted it upward as it was discharged. Seizing up a camp chair Lathrop swung it round his head like a club and scattered the brains of a native follower of Muley-Ha.s.san.
But strategy was to put an abrupt end to the fight even if it could have continued much longer.
Billy was bleeding from a cut over the forehead which blinded him, and Lathrop had got two nasty knife thrusts, one in the arm and the other in the fleshy part of the calf of his leg, when they were suddenly attacked from the rear by half-a-dozen slavers. The next minute, wounded and bound, they were as helpless as two captured puppies.
The fight was over, but the Arabs had come out of it with a badly crippled force.
Of the twenty-five men who had attacked the adventurers" camp ten had been killed outright and half a dozen others so badly wounded that they could not move. Hardly one of them had not received some minor injury, and the very fact that they had made such a poor showing against two American boys and a Krooman armed only with an axe, filled Muley-Ha.s.san with savage rage.
Furiously the slave-dealer ordered the two boys brought before him.
A huge fire had been lighted by his followers and in the glare cast by this he received them. It was a wild scene and the two boys hardly knew whether they were awake or dreaming, as they were roughly hustled into the presence of their captor.