Chapter
22
The Lightning Bolts of Captain NemoWITHOUT STANDING UP, we stared in the direction of the forest, my hand stopping halfway to my mouth, Ned Land's completing its assignment.
"Stones don't fall from the sky," Conseil said, "or else they deserve to be called meteorites."
A second well–polished stone removed a tasty ringdove leg from Conseil's hand, giving still greater relevance to his observation.
We all three stood up, rifles to our shoulders, ready to answer any attack.
"Apes maybe?" Ned Land exclaimed.
"Nearly," Conseil replied. "Savages."
"Head for the skiff!" I said, moving toward the sea.
Indeed, it was essential to beat a retreat because some twenty natives, armed with bows and slings, appeared barely a hundred paces off, on the outskirts of a thicket that masked
