king the most
strenuous efforts to join the main body.

To the observers on board the _Flying Fish_ it seemed that the attacked
party had made a grave mistake in thus taking to their canoes and
advancing in them to meet the enemy; the colonel's impression being that
they would have done better if they had awaited their foes on the beach
and harassed them during their attempt to effect a landing. But it soon
became evident that the threatened tribe knew perfectly well what they
were about, their canoes being larger and steadier than those of their
opponents, and their method of handling them greatly superior.

The opposing forces encountered each other at a distance of about two
miles from the western shore of the lake, when a simultaneous discharge
of arrows was poured in by both sides, after which the two fleets
closed, and a most determined and sanguinary battle commenced. The
invaders outnumbered their opponents nearly in the proportion of two to
one; yet the latter not only gallantly held their own, but actually
appeared now and then to gain some slight temporary advantage. Spears
were thrown and arrows were shot by hundreds; the heavily-knobbed war-
clubs were wielded with untiring activity and terrible effect; and,
occasionally, a flash and a faint puff of smoke followed by a report
told that one of the ancient muskets had been brought into play. The
shouting of commands, the cries of anguish or defiance, the shrieks of
the wounded, and the yells of triumph united in the creation of a most
deafening din; and that it was not noise only, but work as well, was
speedily manifested by the numerous bodies, splashing and struggling in
the agonies of death, or floating quiescent on the surface of the lake.

"How stubbornly the rascals fight!" remarked Lethbridge at last, when
the battle had been hotly raging for fully three-quarters of an hour
without yielding to either side any decided advantage. "I wonder what
the quarrel is all about?"

"It is difficult to say," answered the professor, who seemed to consider
the question as addressed to himself; "it may be a simple case of tribal
animosity; it may be an attack of retaliation; or it may be a slave-
hunting expedition. It is pretty sure to be one or the other of those
three, but it is impossible to say which."

"Well," remarked Mildmay, "whatever the cause of the fight, my
sympathies are all with the weaker side. Cannot we help the poor
wretches a little? A