ighting ever taken place. The red dwarfs, scarcely one of
whom was more than three feet high, were strongly built, and there
were so many of them, and they battled together with such singleness
of purpose, that they were more formidable than a tribe of ordinary-sized
savages would have been.

And their purpose was to utterly annihilate the enemy that had so
unexpectedly come upon them. It did not matter to them that Tom and
the others had arrived in an airship. The strange craft had no
superstitious terror for them, as it had for the simpler blacks.

"Bless my multiplication tables!" cried Mr. Damon. "What a mob of
them!"

"Almost too many!" murmured Tom Swift, who was rapidly firing his
electric rifle at them. "We can never hope to drive them back, I'm
afraid."

Indeed from every side of the plain, and even from the depths of the
jungle the red dwarfs were now pouring. They yelled most horribly,
screaming in rage, brandishing their spears and clubs, and keeping
up an incessant fire of big arrows from their bows, and smaller ones
from the blowguns.

As yet none of our friends had been hit, for they were sheltered in
the airship, and as the windows were covered with a mesh of wire, to
keep out insects, this also served to prevent the arrows from
entering. There were loopholes purposely made to allow the rifles to
be thrust out.

Mercifully, Tom and the others fired only to disable, and not to
kill the red pygmies. Wounded in the arms or legs, the little
savages would be incapable of fighting, and this plan was followed.
But so fierce were they that some, who were wounded twice, still
kept up the attack.

Tom's electric rifle was well adapted for this work, as he could
regulate the charge to merely stun, no matter at what part of the
body it was directed. So he could fire indiscriminantly, whereas the
others had to aim carefully. And Tom's fire was most effective. He
disabled scores of the red imps, but scores of others sprang up to
take their places.

After their first rush the pygmies had fallen back before the
well-directed fire of our friends, but as their chiefs and head men
urged them to the attack again, they came back with still fiercer
energy. Some, more bold than the others, even leaped to the deck of the
airship, and tried to tear the screens from the windows. They partly
succeeded, and in one casement from which Ned was firing they made a
hole.

Into this they shot a flight of arrows, and one sli