e poised to jump, the foremast fell with a
terrific smash, erupting sparks and flame, covering the decks and the
water around with fragments of fiery splinters, charred blocks, and
smoking serpents of rope.

"Oh, jump together!" Barry screamed, dancing on his own hot place and
blowing on his hands which were in agony from contact with the metal
wheel. The three leaped; and the launch's stern dipped perilously under
the tremendous influx of weight; the flaming oil alongside licked
ravenously at their smaller and nearer prey.

"Now keep your guns shooting!" was the skipper's final order, and he
sent the launch straight for the entrance, while the unseen foes on the
banks transferred their aim from the brigantine and made the forest ring
with their howls of rage.

In the narrowed entrance, forced to scrape the matted grass by the
eddying current, the launch soon resounded with the cries of wounded
seamen. Barry kept his hands on the wheel by sheer force of will, for
the little circle of brass scorched to the touch. The rifles burned the
hands of the men who used them; native riflemen began to look piteously
at their white leaders, afraid to slip fresh cartridges into smoking
breeches. And the arrows fell thicker than ever, the smoke from the
launch's furnace streamed away full of flame, the boat itself roared and
crackled from the water line to the gunwale. But the oil thinned out as
they sped; those rifles that kept shooting took heavier toll as the
range closed, and Barry prayed that his hands would hold out. His white
companions stood grimly to their guns, uttering no sound save to
encourage and soothe the natives. Then a cartridge exploded in a man's
hand, and the rifle was flung overboard with a howl of terror. Still
another shell burst with the fierce heat, and panic threatened. Bill
Blunt stopped it.

"Here ye go, then, Bullies!" he roared, flinging down his own gun. "Put
'em down, me sons, and git busy like me. Here's th' river close aboard,
lads, an' in a minit ye'll all be freezin'."

Tearing off his jacket he dragged it in the river when he came to a spot
bare of oil, then fell heartily to work beating down the fire along the
gunwale. The seamen gained heart, once safely quit of their dangerous
rifles, and followed the old fellow's lead, until the business of
fire-fighting drove from their minds the fear of flying missiles from
shoreward.

"Here iss the riffer, mine friendts," Houten rumbled at last, and