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.
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