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Updated: June 10, 2025
Just as the little launch, flying the stars and stripes out of compliment to the boys, was drawing out into the stream with a long blast of her whistle, a tall, black form came racing along the bank and with one bound cleared the five feet or so between the launch and the shore. It was Sikaso.
"Come back one, two, three. Two die. Sikaso know. Br-r-r-r-r, he gives me the creeps." They all laughed at Billy's absurd aping of the stately negro, but nevertheless none of them felt inclined for more talk that night. Somehow, the Krooman had cast a gloom on the party. Had they known how nearly his prophecy was to come to fulfillment they might even have been tempted to abandon the expedition.
To Billy's gun had fallen a plump young deer and Lathrop had brought down, not without a feeling of considerable pride, a species of wild hog which Sikaso proclaimed with a grunt was "heap good." Flushed with triumph and carrying their own bag, the young hunters set out for the camp, arriving there at dusk.
The faces of both the young navigators were drawn and lined with anxiety as they paddled ahead in the turbulent current. "See," cried Sikaso harshly, as the picture faded, "do the white boys still doubt?" "No, no!" cried Harry. "Show us more, Sikaso." The Krooman cast more of the magic powder into the dying fire and again a thick pillar of smoke curled upward.
But as they gazed the strange, crouched form suddenly vanished. It was late afternoon of the day that Frank, Harry and Ben had left the River Camp. Lathrop, Billy, Barnes and old Sikaso had wandered into the jungle with their rifles, intent on bringing down some sort of game to replenish the camp larder.
Although the boys of course did not understand the words, the fierce voice in which the old warrior intoned the chant made them realize what a terrible foe he was likely to prove in battle. But now as Sikaso brought his song to a conclusion and rested his axe on the ground, leaning on its hilt, he suddenly stiffened into an attitude of close attention.
The leader had reached the door and Billy was frantically imploring old Sikaso to let him shoot when an appalling shriek rent the air. The old Krooman's axe flashed once in the moonlight and the leader of the attacking party lay dead at the tent door, severed almost to the chest. There was not a second's time, however, to take in what had happened.
As for Sikaso after demolishing Billy's machine, he turned to the tribesmen and addressing them in stately tones said as he afterward translated it to Frank: "Village fools. You see there is no magic in the little black box. It is nothing but a child's plaything for the fat, spectacled idiot." Do I fear? Do I look now like a man in terror of the white man's medicine. It is nothing.
The two blacks uttered a sharp cry of warning as the bushes parted and a huge form dashed out, whirling about its head a glistening axe. It was Sikaso! The next minute would have been Diego's last but that his two followers lifted him to his feet and, picking him up like a child, ran for his canoe with him.
Sikaso will stay with the four-eyed one and the ruddy-haired one and we will see that no harm comes to the camp of the young white warriors." "It is well," replied Frank, who was falling into a trick of addressing the stately Krooman in the same grandiloquent fashion as the latter was in the habit of using, "I place my trust in you."
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