Retarded by the vast, birdlike bulk that trailed below, they seemed hardly to make any progress at all. Stern ordered the free boats to hitch on and help by towing. Lines were passed, and after a while all twenty-five canoes, driven by the power of two hundred and fifty pairs of sinewy arms, were dragging the Pauillac shoreward. Stern's excitement--now that the machine was really almost in his grasp again--far from diminishing, was every minute growing keener. The delay until he could examine it and see its condition and its chances of repair, seemed interminable. Continually he urged the patriarch--himself profoundly moved--to force the rowers to still greater exertion. At a paddle he labored, throwing every ounce of strength into the toil. Each moment seemed an hour. "Gad! If it's only possible to make it fly again!" thought he. Half an hour passed, and now at length the dim and clustered lights of the village began to show vaguely through the mist. "Come on, boys; now for it!" shouted Stern. "Land her for me and I'll show you wonders you never even dreamed of!" They drew near the shore. Already Stern was formulating his plans for landing the machine without injuring it, when out from the beach a long and swift canoe put rapidly, driven by twenty men. At sight of it the rowing in Stern's boats weakened, then stopped. Confused cries arose, altercations and strange shouts; then a hush of expectancy, of fear, seemed to possess the boat crews. And ever nearer, larger, drew the long canoe, a two-pronged, blazing cresset at its bows. Across the waters drifted a word. "Go on, you! Row!" cried Stern. "Land the machine, I tell you! Say, father, what's the matter _now?_ What are my men on strike for all of a sudden? Why don't they finish the job?" The old man, perplexed, listened intently. Between the group of canoes and the shore the single boat had stopped. A man was standing upright in it. Now came a clear hail, and now two or three sentences, peremptory, angry, harsh. At sound of them consternation seized certain of the men. A number dropped the ropes, while others reached for the slings and spears that always lay in the bottoms of the canoes. "What the devil _now?_" shouted Stern. "You all gone crazy, or what?" He turned appealingly to the old man. "For Heaven's sake, what's up?" he cried. "Tell me, can't you, before the idiots drop my machine and ruin the whole thing? What--" "Misfortune, O my son!" cried the patriarch in a strange, trembling voice. "The worst that could befall! In our absence _he_ has come back--_he_, Kamrou! And under pain of death he bids all men abandon every task and haste to homage. _Kamrou the Terrible is here!_" CHAPTER XXXV FACE TO FACE WITH DEATH For a moment Stern stared, speechless with amazement, at the old man, as though to determine whether or not he had gone mad. But the commotion, the mingled fear and anger of the boat crews convinced him the danger, though unknown, was very real.