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In one hand he bore a broken leash of red bronze, and in the other two hunting spears with blades of flashing findruiney and the hafts were long, slender, and shining. By his thigh hung a short sword in a sheath of red yew and beside it the polished and nigh transparent horn of the Urus, suspended in a baldrick of knitted thread of bronze. The grass stood erect from the pressure of his light feet.
He, José, Pedro, Lourenço, and even Rand were gashed by thrusts from broken spear hafts, bleeding from open bites, ripped by glancing sweeps of tooth-set clubs, bruised by fierce blows minor injuries all, but such as might easily have resulted in blood poisoning unless given prompt attention.
Whilst the brown mothers smoked and carried their babies, the men bore guns adorned with brass tacks, or leaned upon their short, straight, conical "spuds" and hoes, long-handled bits of iron whose points, after African fashion, passed through the wood. I nowhere saw the handsome carved spoons, the hafts and knife-sheaths figured by the Congo Expedition.
Although they are shown knives with ivory hafts, combs, and toys of the same material, and are convinced that the ivory thus manufactured was originally part of a tooth, they are not satisfied.
To his unbounded delight, the cannibals now formed a circle and began to sing, slowly parading round the doomed men and clashing the hafts of their spears, thus effectually drowning any sounds the approaching troops might make, and at the same time notifying their presence to the Japanese.
A slight movement of the ice round the ship caused the rudder to become dangerously jammed on the 21st, and we had to cut away the ice with ice-chisels, heavy pieces of iron with 6-ft. wooden hafts. We kept steam up in readiness for a move if the opportunity offered, and the engines running full speed ahead helped to clear the rudder.
But the long hafts of the pikes made them most unwieldy, and in the few seconds that followed Jim stood cheek-by-jowl with death. Suddenly his eyes encountered the face of Canty over the left shoulder of the swaddy. The little Irishman had pulled himself to his feet, his back was to the logs, his pike raised in his two hands. Lurching forward, he plunged the blade into the neck of the soldier.
So fierce was the fight they fought that they cleft the shields to their centers. So fierce was the fight they fought that their spears were shivered from socket to haft. So fierce was the fight they fought that the demons of the air screamed along the rims of the shields, and from the hilts of their swords and from the hafts of their spears.
Throwing off his jerkin, he rolled up his sleeves, and seizing the axe on which he had been engaged when Hilda interrupted him, he wrought so vigorously at the stubborn metal with the great forehammer that in the course of half an hour it was ready to fit on the haft. There was a bundle of hafts in a corner of the workshop.
You have your swords and your pikes use them." Several of the men unconsciously gripped the hafts of the long steel blades at their sides as he spoke the words, but their eyes never left the commanding figure on the hummock. "As for food," he continued, "we'll live off the land. You'll find that most of the animals are edible, but stay away from the plants unless I give the O.K.
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