manded Ashman, addressing Bippo and his friends.

The words were like an electric shock to the helpers, who instantly
clambered into the canoe and lay flat behind the luggage, where they
were safe from the poisoned missiles that would soon be flying through
the air.

Those natives, with their crude weapons, were only incumbrances in a
crisis like the present.

The whites exchanged but a word or two and then opened the ball.

A savage, evidently the leader, and one who probably now saw the whites
for the first time, had the audacity to step forward a couple of paces,
and with a yell of defiance, raised his spear over his head.

Before he could launch the missile Jared Long sent a bullet through
him, and then, shifting the muzzle of his Winchester toward the line of
dusky figures, he blazed away as fast as he could sight the weapon and
pull the trigger.

At the same instant the Professor and Ashman opened, and the
bombardment which followed was enough to strike terror to the hearts of
a hundred men.

It was more than the savages could stand, but, great as was their
panic, most of them hurled one or two javelins apiece at the white men
who stood fearlessly erect and combated them. They had come from their
village prepared for a fight, and each warrior was provided with
several of the poisoned missiles.

Before the explorers had emptied the magazines of their Winchesters not
a live foe was left. The affrighted survivors, shrieking with terror,
scrambled hastily back among the trees, some of them dragging the dead
bodies, so that the spot was freed of the dusky miscreants with as much
suddenness as it had been occupied by them.

There were plenty of shots left, and, after the disappearance of the
savages, the whites fired into the woods, where they had vanished, not
with the expectation of accomplishing anything more than adding to the
panic.

When it was sure the wretches were gone, our friends made their
preparations for leaving the spot, for nothing was clearer than that
such was the wisest step to take.

It will be borne in mind that all the trouble had taken place on the
left bank of the Xingu, no savages having been observed on the western
bank. The daring of the savages could not be questioned. They had
faced death repeatedly, and now, that they had the strongest of all
motives--revenge--to prompt them, they were sure to use every means
possible to bring about the ruin of the whites and their three n