"Close up Gogoomy _kai-kai_ me," he said. "My word, me no like boy _kai-
kai_ me."
Three days later Sheldon caught one of the boys, helpless from swamp
fever, and unable to fight or run away. On the same day Seelee caught
the second boy in similar condition. Gogoomy alone remained at large;
and, as the pursuit closed in on him, he conquered his fear of the
bushmen and headed straight in for the mountainous backbone of the
island. Sheldon with four Tahitians, and Seelee with thirty of his
hunters, followed Gogoomy's trail a dozen miles into the open
grass-lands, and then Seelee and his people lost heart. He confessed
that neither he nor any of his tribe had ever ventured so far inland
before, and he narrated, for Sheldon's benefit, most horrible tales of
the horrible bushmen. In the old days, he said, they had crossed the
grass-lands and attacked the salt-water natives; but since the coming of
the white men to the coast they had remained in their interior
fastnesses, and no salt-water native had ever seen them again.
"Gogoomy he finish along them fella bushmen," he assured Sheldon. "My
word, he finish close up, _kai-kai_ altogether."
So the expedition turned back. Nothing could persuade the coast natives
to venture farther, and Sheldon, with his four Tahitians, knew that it
was madness to go on alone.
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