It may be said just here, that Nick Ribsam no longer doubted the failure of the long-range shot of Herbert Watrous.
The imperiled lad drew a deep respiration, poised himself on his advanced foot, and, swinging to one side, with a view of avoiding the full force of the charge, he brought down the stock of his gun with the utmost strength he could command.
It descended with great power—so far as a ten-year-old boy is concerned—but it was not sufficient to throw the buck off his base nor to interfere with his plan of procedure.
He struck the lad with tremendous force, sending the gun flying from his grasp and knocking Nick fully a dozen feet. Never in all his life had the boy received such a terrific shock, which drove the breath from his body and sent him spinning, as it seemed, through twenty yards of space.
Poor Nick believed half his bones were broken and that he was mortally hurt; but the result of the charge was most extraordinary.
As the antlers of the buck struck him he was thrown like a limp dummy toward the fallen tree, and, in reality, his greatest peril was therefrom. Had he been driven with full momentum against the solid trunk, he would have been killed as if smitten by a lightning stroke.
But his feet were entangled in some way and he fell headlong, his forehead within a few inches of the bark, and his head itself was driven under the trunk, which at that point was perhaps a foot above the ground.
Instinctively the nearly senseless lad did the only thing that could save him. He crawled under the trunk, so that it stood like a roof over him.
His head was toward the base, and he pushed along until the lessening space would not permit him to go further.
Thus he lay parallel with the uprooted tree, his feet at a point where the bark almost touched his heels, the space growing less and less toward his shoulders, until the back of his head rested against the shaggy bark and his nose touched the leaves.