out in the
tree at the creek mouth. No sight, no sound. Then, swift as darting
serpents, rivulets of flame ran over the water, and the entire creek
soon blazed into hellish radiance. Shrieks and howls resounded on the
shores, and a shower of arrows flew over the brightly illumined decks.

"Ach! I am a fool!" grunted Houten. An arrow stuck in his fat arm,
pinching up an inch of his plenteous flesh. Coolly as he might pare his
nails, he broke off the slender shaft, pulled out the head where it
emerged from his skin, and held out his arm and handkerchief to Gordon,
who expertly bound up the profusely bleeding but harmless flesh wound.
Houten grumbled on: "All the time I schmell him--schmell dot stuff--und
I know not enough to say it is oil! My own oil, I will bet, by der Great
Horn Spoon! Me, I t'ink dot schmell was joongle, by Gott!"

"Haul in all lines!" roared Barry. "Rolfe, hustle up all the spare junk
and sand. Lads, keep under cover until I call you out."

All around the ship the water glared with Satanic fires. The blazing oil
roared and leaped hungrily at the _Barang's_ tarred sides.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The order to take cover was given barely in time, for from every tree
and bush along the creek flew showers of small arrows and throwing
spears that whizzed and whirred over the crouching crew. And ever the
flames leaped higher. From a source unseen, but cunningly selected to
utilize wind and stream, fresh oil was poured on the water; the sides of
the brigantine crackled and blistered with an overpowering stench of tar
and oakum.

Seek as they might, their enemies remained invisible, and still the
shower of missiles kept up its intensity until the decks rang and
pattered with their falling, and left no space of a yard in area where a
man might stand safely. Barry watched through a scupper port, trying to
detect any one place from which arrows came thicker than elsewhere; and
at last, when one after another his white companions had called to him
about the precarious situation of launch and boat, he decided he had
found it.

"Here, all hands," he ordered, and shoved his rifle out of the scupper.
"Get an ax, Rolfe, and burst out a plank of the bulwarks." The ax was
swung, and a plank crashed into splinters, leaving a narrow loophole, a
foot wide and twelve feet long, through which the roaring flames darted
viciously. "When I give the word, all aim at that tree--" he pointed out
a round-headed, dwarfed clum