Again and again the captain's gun cracked. Knowlton's joined in. Before their rifles grew silent the blunt roar of Pedro's repeater broke out. And with the emptying of their long guns the Americans drew their short ones, and in a concerted ripping crash the forty-fives volleyed death and dismay into the oncoming cannibals. The rush was checked. For a few seconds the Red Bones wavered and milled about. Into their mass poured a cloud of arrows and blowgun darts from the silent but no less deadly weapons of the Mayorunas. As the whites paused to reload, Pedro opened a new blast from Lourenço's rifle, which his comrade had passed to him on the run. Lourenço was not shooting, but working madly and alone to save the equipment. And, thanks to the renewed deadly fire of the guns, he saved it. Before the wicked belch of the three rifles and the two automatics the Red Bones gave back more and more. Their arrows plunged all around the fighting men, but they fell at random, for the gunmen and the canoes were virtually invisible in the deep shadows. Downstream, Tucu's harsh voice jarred in commands as he straightened out the line of boats. At the next lull in the firing Lourenço panted: "In, comrades! We are loaded. In!" "Great guns! Are you still here?" snapped McKay. "I told you--" "In! Talk later. Come!" The three gun fighters swiftly obeyed. With a powerful heave Lourenço sent the canoe after the others. Americans, Brazilians, and the Raposa hunched up among the packs, all went sliding down a jungle Styx. A moment later the Red Bone warriors, taking heart from the cessation of firing, poured an avalanche of arrows into the spot where they had been. And as the canoe, last in the escaping line, was swallowed up in the impenetrable blackness of the forest a hair-raising screech of diabolical fury blended with a swift succession of splashes back where the cannibals were plunging headlong into the stream to reach the dead or wounded men whom they vainly hoped to find on the farther shore. "I told you to take this man and go!" McKay fumed. "By disobeying orders you risked losing him." "Oh, pipe down, Rod!" remonstrated Knowlton. "If they had, where'd we be now? This was the last canoe." "_Si._ It is so," added Lourenço, his voice hard edged. "As it is, the man and the equipment and you also are here. And let me tell you this, Capitao Makkay, whether you like it or not: Pedro and I would see this wild man and a million others like him in a hotter place than this before we would abandon fighting comrades." To which McKay, finding no adequate answer, made none whatever. CHAPTER XXII. THE SIREN OF WAR Like a fleet manned by sightless sailors the line of boats blundered on through the blackness. With no guiding light, the canoes bumped the banks and collided with one another in perilous confusion. Speed was impossible, yet speed was imperative. Knowlton and his little flashlight solved the problem.