s
to back water and lay on their oars. High palms and lofty, wide-branched
trees rose above the jungle at this spot, and the runway showed like the
entrance of a tunnel into the dense, green wall of tropical vegetation.

Van Horn, regarding the shore for some sign of life, lighted a cigar and
put one hand to the waist-line of his loin-cloth to reassure himself of
the presence of the stick of dynamite that was tucked between the loin-
cloth and his skin. The lighted cigar was for the purpose, if emergency
arose, of igniting the fuse of the dynamite. And the fuse was so short,
with its end split to accommodate the inserted head of a safety match,
that between the time of touching it off with the live cigar to the time
of the explosion not more than three seconds could elapse. This required
quick cool work on Van Horn's part, in case need arose. In three seconds
he would have to light the fuse and throw the sputtering stick with
directed aim to its objective. However, he did not expect to use it, and
had it ready merely as a precautionary measure.

Five minutes passed, and the silence of the shore remained profound.
Jerry sniffed Skipper's bare leg as if to assure him that he was beside
him no matter what threatened from the hostile silence of the land, then
stood up with his forepaws on the gunwale and continued to sniff eagerly
and audibly, to prick his neck hair, and to utter low growls.

"They're there, all right," Skipper confided to him; and Jerry, with a
sideward glance of smiling eyes, with a bobbing of his tail and a quick
love-flattening of his ears, turned his nose shoreward again and resumed
his reading of the jungle tale that was wafted to him on the light fans
of the stifling and almost stagnant air.

"Hey!" Van Horn suddenly shouted. "Hey, you fella boy stick 'm head out
belong you!"

As if in a transformation scene, the apparently tenantless jungle spawned
into life. On the instant a hundred stark savages appeared. They broke
forth everywhere from the vegetation. All were armed, some with Snider
rifles and ancient horse pistols, others with bows and arrows, with long
throwing spears, with war-clubs, and with long-handled tomahawks. In a
flash, one of them leaped into the sunlight in the open space where
runway and water met. Save for decorations, he was naked as Adam before
the Fall. A solitary white feather uprose from his kinky, glossy, black
hair. A polished bodkin of white petrified sh