“Well, of all queer yarns, this is the limit!” exclaimed Tom, when the black had finished. “What had we better do about it?”
“Get ready to attack the red pygmies at once!” decided Mr. Durban. “If we wait any longer it may be too late!”
“My idea, exactly,” declared Mr. Anderson.
“Bless my bowie-knife!” cried Mr. Damon. “I’d like to get a chance at the red imps! Come on, Tom! Let’s start at once.”
“No, we need daylight to fight by,” replied Tom, with a smile at his friend’s enthusiasm. “We’ll go forward in the morning.”
“In the airship?” asked Mr. Damon.
“I think so,” answered Tom. “There can be no advantage now in trying to conceal ourselves. We can move upon them from where we are so quickly that they won’t have much chance to get away. Besides it will take us too long to make our way through the jungle afoot. For, now that the escape of Tomba must be known, they may kill the captives at once to forestall any rescue.”
“Then we’ll move forward in the morning,” declared Mr. Durban.
They took Tomba with them in the airship the next day, though he prayed fervently before he consented to it. But they needed him to point out the exact location of the pygmies’ village, since it was not the one the hunter-scout had been near.
The Black Hawk sailed through the air. On board eager eyes looked down for a first sight of the red imps. Tomba, who was at Tom’s side in the steering tower, told him, as best he could, from time to time, how to set the rudders.
“Pretty soon by-em-by be there,” said the black man at length. “Pass ober dat hill, den red devils live.”
“Well, we’ll soon be over that hill,” announced Tom grimly. “I guess we’d better get our rifles ready for the battle.”
“Are you going to attack them at once?” asked Mr. Damon.
“Well,” answered the young inventor, “I don’t believe we ought to kill any of them if we can avoid it. I don’t like to do such a thing but, perhaps we can’t help ourselves. My plan is to take the airship down, close to the hut where the missionaries are confined. Tomba can point it out to us. If we can rescue them without bloodshed, so much the better. But we’ll fight if we have to.”
Grimly they watched as the airship sailed over the hill. Then suddenly there came into view a collection of mud huts on a vast plain, surrounded by dense jungle on every side. As the travelers looked, they could see little creatures running wildly about. Even without a glass it could be noted that their bodies were covered with a curious growth of thick sandy hair.
“The red pygmies!” cried Tom. “Now for the rescue!”
Eagerly Tomba indicated the hut where his master and mistress were held. Telling his friends to have their weapons in readiness, Tom steered the airship toward the rude shelter whence he hoped to take the missionaries. Down to the ground swiftly shot the Black Hawk. Tom checked her with a quick movement of the deflecting rudder, and she landed gently on the wheels.
“Mr. Illingway! Mrs. Illingway! We have come to rescue you!” yelled the young inventor, as he stepped out on the deck, with his electric rifle in his hand. “Where are you? Can you come out?”
The door of the hut was burst open, and a white man and woman, recognizable as such, even in the rude skins that clothed them, rushed out. Wonder spread over their faces as they saw the great airship. They dropped on their knees.
The next instant a swarm of savage little red men surrounded them, and rudely bore them, strugglingly, back into the hut.
“Come on!” cried Tom, about to leap to the ground. “It’s now or never! We must save them!”
Mr. Durban pulled him back, and pointed to a horde of the red-haired savages rushing toward the airship. “They’d tear you to pieces in a minute!” cried the old hunter. “We must fight them from the ship.”
There was a curious whistling sound in the air. Mr. Durban looked up.
“Duck, everybody!” he yelled. “They’re firing arrows at us! Get under shelter, for they may be poisoned!”
Tom and the others darted into the craft. The arrows rattled on deck in a shower, and hundreds of the red imps were rushing up to give battle. Inside the hut where the missionaries were, it was now quiet. Tom Swift wondered if they still lived.
“Give ’em as good as they send!” cried Mr. Durban. “We will have to fire at them now. Open up with your electric rifle, Tom!”
As he spoke the elephant hunter fired into the midst of the screaming savages. The battle had begun.
CHAPTER XXI
DRIVEN BACK
What the travelers had heard regarding the fierceness and courage of the red pygmies had not been one bit exaggerated. Never had such desperate fighting ever taken place. The red dwarfs, scarcely one of whom was more than three feet high, were strongly built, and there were so many of them, and they battled together with such singleness of purpose, that they were more formidable than a tribe of ordinary- sized savages would have been.
And their purpose was to utterly annihilate the enemy that had so unexpectedly come upon them. It did not matter to them that Tom and the others had arrived in an airship. The strange craft had no superstitious terror for them, as it had for the simpler blacks.
“Bless my multiplication tables!” cried Mr. Damon. “What a mob of them!”
“Almost too many!” murmured Tom Swift, who was rapidly firing his electric rifle at them. “We can never hope to drive them back, I’m afraid.”
Indeed from every side of the plain, and even from the depths of the jungle the red dwarfs were now pouring. They yelled most horribly, screaming in rage, brandishing their spears and clubs, and keeping up an incessant fire of big arrows from their bows, and smaller ones from the blowguns.
As yet none of our friends had been hit, for they were sheltered in the airship, and as the windows were covered with a mesh of wire, to keep out insects, this also served to prevent the arrows from entering. There were loopholes purposely made to allow the rifles to be thrust out.
Mercifully, Tom and the others fired only to disable, and not to kill the red pygmies. Wounded in the arms or legs, the little savages would be incapable of fighting, and this plan was followed. But so fierce were they that some, who were wounded twice, still kept up the attack.
Tom’s electric rifle was well adapted for this work, as he could regulate the charge to merely stun, no matter at what part of the body it was directed. So he could fire indiscriminantly, whereas the others had to aim carefully. And Tom’s fire was most effective. He disabled scores of the red imps, but scores of others sprang up to take their places.
After their first rush the pygmies had fallen back before the well- directed fire of our friends, but as their chiefs and head men urged them to the attack again, they came back with still fiercer energy. Some, more bold than the others, even leaped to the deck of the airship, and tried to tear the screens from the windows. They partly succeeded, and in one casement from which Ned was firing they made a hole.
Into this they shot a flight of arrows, and one slightly wounded the bank clerk on the arm. The wound was at once treated with antiseptics, after the window had been barricaded, and Ned declared that he was ready to renew the fight. Tom, too, got an arrow scratch on the neck, and one of the barbs entered Mr. Durban’s leg, but the sturdy elephant hunter would not give up, and took his place again after the wound had been bandaged.
From time to time as he worked his electric gun, which had been charged to its utmost capacity, Tom glanced at the hut where the missionaries were prisoners. There was no movement noticed about it, and no sound came from it. Tom wondered what had happened inside—he wondered what was happening as the battle progressed.
Fiercely the fight was kept up. Now the red imps would be driven back, and again they would swarm about the airship, until it seemed as if they must overwhelm it. Then the fire of the white adventurers was redoubled. The electric rifle did great work, and Tom did not have to stop and refill the magazine,
as did the others.
Suddenly, above the noise of the conflict, Tom Swift heard an ominous sound. It was a hissing in the air, and well he knew what it was.
“The gas bag!” he cried. “They’ve punctured it! The vapor is escaping. If they put too many holes in the bag it will be all up with us!”
“What’s to be done?” asked Mr. Durban.
“If we can’t drive them back we must retreat ourselves!” declared Tom desperately. “Our only hope is to keep the airship safe from harm.”
Once more came a rush of the savages. They had discovered that the gas bag was vulnerable, and were directing their arrows against that. It was punctured in several more places. The gas was rapidly escaping.
“We’ve got to retreat!” yelled Tom. He hurried to the engine-room, and turned on the power. The great propellers revolved, and sent the Black Hawk scudding across the level plain. With yells of surprise the red dwarfs scattered and made way for it.
Up into the air it mounted on the broad wings. For the time being our friends has been driven back, and the missionaries whom they had come to rescue were still in the hands of the savages.
CHAPTER XXII
A NIGHT ATTACK
“Well, what’s to be done?”
Tom Swift asked that question.
“Bless my percussion cap! They certainly are the very worst imps for fighting that I ever heard of,” commented Mr. Damon helplessly.
“Is the gas bag much punctured?” asked Ned Newton.
“Wait a minute,” resumed the young inventor, as he pulled the speed lever a trifle farther over, thereby sending the craft forward more swiftly, “I think my question ought to be answered first. What’s to be done? Are we going to run away, and leave that man and woman to their fate?”
“Of course not!” declared Mr. Durban stoutly, “but we couldn’t stay there, and have them destroy the airship.”
“No, that’s so,” admitted Tom, “if we lost the airship it would be all up with us and our chances of rescuing the missionaries. But what can we do? I hate to retreat!”
“But what else is there left for us?” demanded Ned.
“Nothing, of course. But we’ve got to plan to get the best of those red pygmies. We can’t go back in the airship, and give them open battle. There are too many of them, and, by Jove! I believe more are coming every minute!”
Tom and the others looked down. From all sides of the plain, hastening toward the village of mud huts, from which our friends were retreating, could be seen swarms of the small but fierce savages. They were coming from the jungle, and were armed with war clubs, bows and arrows and the small but formidable blowguns.
“Where are they coming from?” asked Mr. Damon.
“From the surrounding tribes,” explained Mr. Durban. “They have been summoned to do battle against us.”
“But how did the ones we fought get word to the others so soon?” Ned demanded.
“Oh, they have ways of signaling,” explained Mr. Anderson. “They can make the notes of some of their hollow-tree drums carry a long distance, and then they are very swift runners, and can penetrate into the jungle along paths that a white man would hardly see. They also use the smoke column as a signal, as our own American Indians used to do. Oh, they can summon all their tribesmen to the fight, and they probably will. Likely the sound of our guns attracted the imps, though if we all had electric rifles like Tom’s they wouldn’t make any noise.”
“Well, my rifle didn’t appear to do so very much good this time,” observed the young inventor, as he stopped the forward motion of the ship now, and let it hover over the plain in sight of the village, the gas bag serving to sustain the craft, and there was little wind to cause it to drift. “Those fellows didn’t seem to mind being hurt and killed any more than if mosquitoes were biting them.”
“The trouble is we need a whole army, armed with electric rifles to make a successful attack,” said Mr. Durban. “There are swarms of them there now, and more coming every minute. I do hope Mr. and Mrs. Illingway are alive yet.”
“Yes,” added Mr. Anderson solemnly, “we must hope for the best. But, like Tom Swift, I ask, what’s to be done?”
“Bless my thinking cap!” exclaimed Mr. Damon. “It seems to me if we can’t fight them openly in the daytime, there’s only one other thing to do.”
“What’s that?” asked Tom. “Go away? I’ll not do it!”
“No, not go away,” exclaimed Mr. Damon, “but make a night attack. We ought to be able to do something then, and with your illuminating rifle, Tom, we’d have an advantage! What do you say?”
“I say it’s the very thing!” declared Tom, with sudden enthusiasm. “We’ll attack them tonight, when they’re off their guard, and we’ll see if we can’t get the missionaries out of that hut. And to better fool the savages, we’ll just disappear now, and make ’em believe we’ve flown away.”
“Then the missionaries will think we’re deserting them,” objected Mr. Anderson.
But there was no help for it, and so Tom once more turned on the power and the craft sailed away.
Tomba, the faithful black, begged to be allowed to go down, and tell his master and mistress that help would soon be at hand again, even though it looked like a retreat on the part of the rescuers, but this could not be permitted.
“They’d tear you in pieces as soon as you got among those red imps,” said Tom. “You stay here, Tomba, and you can help us tonight.”
“A’right, me glad help lick red fellows,” said the black, with as cheerful a grin as he could summon.
The Black Hawk circled around, with Tom and the others looking for a good place to land. They were out of sight of the village now but did not doubt but that they were observed by the keen eyes of the little men.
“We want to pick out a place where they won’t come upon us as we descend,” declared Tom. “We’ve got to mend some leaks in the gas bag, for, while they are not serious, if we get any more punctures they may become so. So we’ve got to pick out a good place to go down.”
Finally, by means of powerful glasses, a desolate part of the jungle was selected. No files of the red dwarfs, coming from their scattered villages to join their tribesmen, had been noted in the vicinity picked out, and it was hoped that it would answer. Slowly the airship settled to earth, coming to rest in a thick grove of trees, where there was an opening just large enough to allow the Black Hawk to enter.
Our friends were soon busy repairing the leaks in the bag, while Mr. Damon got a meal ready. As they ate they talked over plans for the night attack.
It was decided to wait until it was about two o’clock in the morning, as at that hour the dwarfs were most generally asleep, Tomba said. They always stayed up quite late, sitting around camp-fires, and eating the meat which the hunters brought in each day. But their carousings generally ended at midnight, the black said, and then they fell into a heavy sleep. They did not post guards, but since they knew of the presence of the white men in the airship, they might do it this time.
“Well, we’ve got to take our chance,” decided Tom. “We’ll start off from here about one o’clock, and I’ll send the ship slowly along. We’ll get right over the hut where the captives are, if possible, and then descend. I’ll manage the ship, and one of you can work the electric rifle if they attack us. We’ll make a dash, get Mr. and Mrs. Illingway from the hut, and make a quick get-away.”
It sounded good, and they were impatient to put it into operation. That afternoon Tom and his friends went carefully over every inch of their craft, to repair it and have it in perfect working order. Guns were cleaned, and plenty of ammunition laid out. Then, shortly after one o’clock in the morning the ship was sent up, and with the searchlight ready to be turned on instantly, and with his electric rifle near at hand, Tom Swift guided his craft on to the attack. Soon they could see the glow of dying fires in the dwarfs’ village, but no sound came from the sleeping hordes of red imps.
CHAPTER XXIII
&n
bsp; THE RESCUE
“Can you make out the hut, Tom?” asked Ned, as he stood at his chum’s side in the steering tower, and gazed downward on the silent village.
“Not very clearly. Suppose you take a look through the night- glasses. Maybe you’ll have better luck.”
Ned peered long and earnestly.
“No, I can’t see a thing.” he said. “It all looks to be a confused jumble of huts. I can’t tell one from the other. We’ll have to go lower.”
“I don’t want to do that,” objected Tom. “If this attack succeeds at all, it will have to be sharp and quick. If we go down where they can spot us, and work our way up to the hut where the captives are, we’ll run the chance of an attack that may put us out of business.”
“Yes, we ought to get right over the hut, and then make a sudden swoop down,” admitted Ned, “but if we can’t see it—”
“I have it!” cried Tom suddenly. “Tomba! That African can see in the dark like a cat. Why, just before we started I dropped a wrench, and I didn’t have any matches handy to look for it. I was groping around in the dark trying to get my hands on it, and you know it was pretty black in the jungle. Well, along come Tomba. And he spotted it at once and picked it up. We’ll call him here and get him to point out the hut. He can tell me how to steer.”
“Good!” cried Ned, and the black was soon standing in the pilot house. He comprehended what was wanted of him, and peered down, seeking to penetrate the darkness.
“Shall I go down a little lower?” asked Tom.
For a moment Tomba did not answer. Then he uttered an exclamation of pleasure.
“Me see hut!” he said, clutching Tom’s arm. “Down dere!” He pointed, but neither Tom nor Ned could see it. However, as Tomba was now giving directions, telling Tom when to go to the left or the right, as the wind currents deflected they were certain of soon reaching the place where Mr. and Mrs. Illingway were concealed, if they were still alive.
The Black Hawk was moving slowly, and was not under as good control as if she had been making ninety miles an hour. As it was desired to proceed as quietly as possible, the craft was being used as a dirigible balloon, and the propellers were whirled around by means of a small motor, worked by a storage battery. While not much power was obtained this way, there was the advantage of silence, which was very necessary. Slowly the Black Hawk sailed on through the night. In silence the adventurers waited for the moment of action. They had their weapons in readiness. Mr. Durban was to work the electric rifle, as all Tom’s attention would be needed at the machinery. As soon as the craft had made a landing he was to leap out, carrying a revolver in either hand, and, followed by Tomba, would endeavor to gain entrance to the hut, break through the flimsy grass-woven curtain over the doorway, and get Mr. and Mrs. Illingway out. Ned, Mr. Damon and the other two men would stand by to fire on the red pygmies as soon as they commenced the attack, which they would undoubtedly do as soon as the guards of the captives raised the alarm.
The Tom Swift Megapack Page 124