"
The two friends could even catch the sound of a few
words uttered in the lowest possible tones.
Joe gently brought his rifle to his shoulder as he spoke.
"Wait!" said Kennedy.
Some of the natives had really climbed the baobab,
and now they were seen rising on all sides, winding along
the boughs like reptiles, and advancing slowly but surely,
all the time plainly enough discernible, not merely to the
eye but to the nostrils, by the horrible odors of the rancid
grease with which they bedaub their bodies.
Ere long, two heads appeared to the gaze of Kennedy
and Joe, on a level with the very branch to which they
were clinging.
"Attention!" said Kennedy. "Fire!"
The double concussion resounded like a thunderbolt
and died away into cries of rage and pain, and in a
moment the whole horde had disappeared.
But, in the midst of these yells and howls, a strange,
unexpected--nay what seemed an impossible--cry had
been heard! A human voice had, distinctly, called aloud
in the French language--
"Help! help!"
Kennedy and Joe, dumb with amazement, had regained
the car immediately.
"Did you hear that?" the doctor asked them.
"Undoubtedly, that supernatural cry, 'A moi! a moi!'
comes from a Frenchman in the hands of these barbarians!"
"A traveller.
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