The automatics began to bark, while the negro crouched behind the gunwales, shivering with fear, yet holding the light steadily on two war canoes bunched close together. The curator aimed a short-range shell right over them, hoping to founder the remaining canoes. The fearful concussion of the T. N. T. knocked their own party sprawling, and, where there had been two canoes, now there was a boiling geyser of water in which they rose like tossed logs, their crews tumbling headlong through the white glare. It proved too much for the remaining three canoes. The flashlight showed them turning tail and paddling away in frantic haste. “Travel, Nigger, Travel!--that’s what T. N. T. means!” whooped the curator. “Paddle, boys, after ’em--_hard_! I’m going to put the fear of God into these people!” He aimed the air gun at a high arc, and the shell whistled on its way. High over the three canoes it exploded, with the strength of giant-powder fireworks. Under its glare they could see the paddlers knocked hurtling with the concussion. Baderoon laughed uproariously. “_Yow-yowri!_ Prenty debbil-debbil, _Orang-kaya!_ Make’m thunder--_Boom! Boom!_” “Threw a good scare into ’em! That’s the ticket!” grinned the curator. “They’ll swim ashore pretty well gentled, I’m thinking!--Keep after ’em, boys, as hard as you can make her go! They’re gaining on us!” He raised the air gun to its utmost elevation and the tiny streak of fire of the fuse rose in a high arc. It fell into the bay ahead of the three canoes, and there was a muffled thud which blew the whole bottom out of the bay. A white avalanche of water came roaring toward the three canoes and their bows rose dizzily and then the sterns flipped high in the air. A babel of yells and shouts told of one canoe upset, and then they steadied their own to meet the onrushing wave. It rocked giddily, like a bark canoe in a boiling rapids, and water slapped over her sides in a deluge, but her deep keel held her upright. “Bail, Dwight--and you, too, Baderoon!” ordered the curator. “Nicky, you and Sadok keep on paddling. Don’t kill yourselves, as we’re out of range of them now. I’m going up to that village and lay down the law to that whole tribe! They’ll let white men alone, after that.” They followed slowly in the wake of the two fleeing canoes, and finally lay floating idly about a mile out in front of the village. The canoes that had gone across the lagoon and those from upstream had now returned, as they could see by the assembling flares at the landing. Howlings and constant booming of drums came over the water. They dozed on the thwarts, letting the canoe drift and waiting for dawn. The noise on shore kept up throughout the night, but, after an interminable wait, a faint paling in the east, which swiftly grew to daylight over the calm waters of the lagoon, set them to paddling slowly toward the shore again.