Twice Napier had his fingers almost on the trigger, and twice his hand was wrenched away. The last time a thick voice whispered, "Drop it! Don't you know you're a dead man if you make a sound?" The voice of Bloom, Sir William's chauffeur! He had got Napier down again; the full weight of the assailant's body was on Napier's head; his left arm pinned under him. In that strangling darkness Napier told himself the end had come. He was dead already. Why was he resisting? He knew why, when he felt Bloom's teeth on his right forearm. He felt the pistol go from his bruised side. He heard the drop among the scant herbage of the rocks.
It was over. Resistance had been battered out of him. He was quite sure of that. Why didn't Bloom let him alone? Why was the fellow dragging him down?
It suddenly occurred to him that they couldn't be far from Table Rock. Bloom was going to throw him over!
He had loosed his hold on Napier's shoulder. Breathing heavily, he had come round and straddled across his victim's body. He fastened his hands in Napier's torn collar, pulled him up into a sitting posture, and dashed his head against a boulder. Not quite squarely, for Bloom's foot had slipped on the wet moss. He braced himself and took fresh hold. In that second the impotence passed out of Napier's body. His sinews hardened as he locked his maimed arms round the man. Before Bloom could recover from the disadvantage of his stooping posture, Napier, in a spasm of dying energy, had rolled with the chauffeur in his arms toward the edge of Table Rock. More angry than frightened by the suddenness of Napier's recovery, Bloom was striking wild.
"He doesn't know where he is!" Napier said to himself with exultation. In a very convulsion of insane strength he gripped the panting body of the German and flung it out over the edge of Table Rock.
He hung there listening.
But the blood flowed into his ears as well as into his eyes. No sound reached him. He tried to crawl back toward the stream. On the way unconsciousness, like an angel out of heaven, came down and covered him.
In spite of the tribute to McClintock's being able to do what he was told, the old man had no mind to go home at the end of the time stipulated without knowing something of what was keeping Mr. Gavan. And so, some three quarters of an hour after that body had shot out into the void, the fisherman, picking his way cannily down the gorge, slipped on something soft. His questing hands felt blood, new spilt. A match, lit in his sou'wester and instantly smothered, showed him enough. He drew back behind a rock and waited there several minutes, listening. When he got back to Napier, he had the sou'wester half full of water. He sprinkled it over Napier's face. He poured whiskey down his throat. Aye, that was better. Napier was presently able to say that a man who attacked him had been thrown over Table Rock. The question was, could McClintock get Napier back to the boat?
Oh, aye, McClintock could do that same. But Mr. Gavan had best bide there a little longer; and here was the whiskey-flask to keep him company.