During the first part of their march Martin and Barney were permitted to walk beside each other, and they conversed in low, anxious tones.

“Surely,” said Barney, as they marched along surrounded by Indians, “thim long poles the savages have got are not spears; I don’t see no point to them.”

“And what’s more remarkable,” added Martin, “is that they all carry quivers full of arrows, but none of them have bows.”

“There’s a raison for iverything,” said Barney, pointing to one of the Indians in advance; “that fellow explains the mystery.”

As he spoke, the savage referred to lowered the pole, which seemed to be about thirteen feet long, and pushing an arrow into a hole in the end of it, applied it to his mouth.  In another moment the arrow flew through the air and grazed a bird that was sitting on a branch hard by.

“Tis a blow-pipe, and no mistake!” cried Barney.

“And a poisoned arrow, I’m quite sure,” added Martin; “for it only ruffled the bird’s feathers, and see, it has fallen to the ground.”

“Och, then, but we’d have stood a bad chance in a fight, if thim’s the wipons they use.  Och, the dirty spalpeens!  Martin, dear, we’re done for.  There’s no chance for us at all.”

This impression seemed to take such deep hold of Barney’s mind, that his usually reckless and half jesting disposition was completely subdued, and he walked along in gloomy silence, while a feeling of deep dejection filled the heart of his young companion.

The blow-pipe which these Indians use is an ingeniously contrived weapon.  It is made from a species of palm-tree.  When an Indian wants one, he goes into the woods and selects a tree with a long slender stem of less than an inch in diameter; he extracts the pith out of this, and then cuts another stem, so much larger than the first that he can push the small tube into the bore of the large one,—­thus the slight bend in one is counteracted by the other, and a perfectly straight pipe is formed.  The mouthpiece is afterwards neatly finished off.  The arrows used are very short, having a little ball of cotton at the end to fill the tube of the blow-pipe.  The points are dipped in a peculiar poison, which has the effect of producing death when introduced into the blood by a mere scratch of the skin.  The Indians can send these arrows an immense distance, and with unerring aim, as Martin and Barney had many an opportunity of witnessing during their long and weary journey on foot to the forest-home of the savages.

CHAPTER XIX

WORSE AND WORSE—­EVERYTHING SEEMS TO GO WRONG TOGETHER

Although the Indians did not maltreat the unfortunate strangers who had thus fallen into their hands, they made them proceed by forced marches through the wilderness; and as neither Barney nor Martin had been of late much used to long walks, they felt the journey very severely.  The old trader had been accustomed to everything wretched and unfortunate and uncomfortable from his childhood, so he plodded onward in silent indifference.