Dire was the wailing, and dire the wrath throughout the village.  Jack’s words were allowed to be good words; but what was the Gospel in comparison of the trumpet?  The rascal saw his advantage, and began a fierce harangue against the heretic strangers.  As he maddened, his hearers maddened; the savage nature, capricious as a child’s, flashed out in wild suspicion.  Women yelled, men scowled, and ran hastily to their huts for bows and blow-guns.  The case was grown critical.  There were not more than a dozen men with Amyas at the time, and they had only their swords, while the Indian men might muster nearly a hundred.  Amyas forbade his men either to draw or to retreat; but poisoned arrows were weapons before which the boldest might well quail; and more than one cheek grew pale, which had seldom been pale before.

“It is God’s quarrel, sirs all,” said Jack Brimblecombe; “let Him defend the right.”

As he spoke, from Ayacanora’s hut arose her magic song, and quivered aloft among the green heights of the forest.

The mob stood spell-bound, still growling fiercely, but not daring to move.  Another moment, and she had rushed out, like a very Diana, into the centre of the ring, bow in hand, and arrow on the string.

The fallen “children of wrath” had found their match in her; for her beautiful face was convulsed with fury.  Almost foaming in her passion, she burst forth with bitter revilings; she pointed with admiration to the English, and then with fiercest contempt to the Indians; and at last, with fierce gestures, seemed to cast off the very dust of her feet against them, and springing to Amyas’s side, placed herself in the forefront of the English battle.

The whole scene was so sudden, that Amyas had hardly discovered whether she came as friend or foe, before her bow was raised.  He had just time to strike up her hand, when the arrow flew past the ear of the offending Piache, and stuck quivering in a tree.

“Let me kill the wretch!” said she, stamping with rage; but Amyas held her arm firmly.

“Fools!” cried she to the tribe, while tears of anger rolled down her cheeks.  “Choose between me and your trumpet!  I am a daughter of the Sun; I am white; I am a companion for Englishmen!  But you! your mothers were Guahibas, and ate mud; and your fathers—­they were howling apes!  Let them sing to you!  I shall go to the white men, and never sing you to sleep any more; and when the little evil spirit misses my voice, he will come and tumble you out of your hammocks, and make you dream of ghosts every night, till you grow as thin as blow-guns, and as stupid as aye-ayes!"*

     * Two-toed sloths.

This terrible counter-threat, in spite of the slight bathos involved, had its effect; for it appealed to that dread of the sleep world which is common to all savages:  but the conjuror was ready to outbid the prophetess, and had begun a fresh oration, when Amyas turned the tide of war.  Bursting into a huge laugh at the whole matter, he took the conjuror by his shoulders, sent him with one crafty kick half-a-dozen yards off upon his nose; and then, walking out of the ranks, shook hands round with all his Indian acquaintances.