Page:Tom Swift in Captivity.djvu/110

100 front of them, and try to turn them to one side."

From the rocks, behind which the natives and our friends crouched, there came a steady stream of electric fire. Horse after horse went down, stunned but not badly hurt, and in a few hours the beasts would feel no ill effects. The firing was redoubled, and then there came a break in the steady stream of horseflesh.

Some hesitated and sought to turn back. Others, behind, pressed them on, and then, as if in fear at the unknown and unseen power that was laying low animal after animal, the great body, of horses, suddenly turned at right angles to their course and broke away. There were now two bodies of the wild runaways, those that had passed the tethered mules, and those that had swung off. The stampede had been broken.

"That's the stuff!" cried Tom, jumping up from behind the rocks, and swinging his hat. "We've turned them."

"And just in time, too," added Ned, as he joined his chum. Then all the others leaped up, and the sight of the human beings completed the scare. The stampeding animals swung off more than before, so that they were nearly doubling back on their own trail. The others thundered off, and the ground was strewn with unconscious though unharmed animals.