I shot across the river to the opposite side, but a curve gave my infuriated pursuers a slight advantage. It seemed as if the thickets and trees were simply bridges over which the creatures hurried the faster. Making as if to sweep along below them, I back-watered one of my oars and pulled with the other, at the turn, spinning the boat clean about to hard-a-port, and sent her ahead so swiftly that all the clubs, which the devils threw at point-blank range, plunged stone-head first into the ripples behind. “Never touched me!” I bawled out in derision. They screamed in impotent rage. I rounded the curve and sped away with all the advantage mine. They gave up the chase. Ten minutes more saw me out on the lake and well away. CHAPTER XXIX A SACRED DISGUISE Before I got home I had ample time in which to think. What a strange concatenation of events! The outlet discovered, deliverance almost assured me, and then to find the camp of my bitterest enemy on the very bank of my gateway to freedom! But that human voice—what could it mean? I began to speculate and to reason from deduction. Inasmuch as I had lost myself and been found by the red Missing Links, it was evident that another man could have met with some accident which would have thrown him in contact with the Blacks of the same family or species. The Reds had treated me with marked consideration from the first, therefore the Blacks might do the same for another of my kind. More than this, the Blacks had manifested not only an extraordinary interest in myself, that day when first I met them at the volcanic peak, but they had also attempted to abduct me without injury to my body or feelings. I had made them my foes by allying myself offensively and defensively with the Reds, but they might not be savage to one who had not so given them cause. Undoubtedly, I reasoned, they knew man and what he is and had recognised me at once. They had desired also to possess me, an inclination, I reasoned, which had resulted from association with this other, mysterious man.