“I hadn’t pluck enough to sit still and be shot, Mas’r Harry, for you know what a cur I always was; and I thought it a pity to sink the canoe in case you, if you were alive, or Mas’r Landell, might come back to look for it. So I made up my mind to the last, being bristly, and, with my monkey up, I dashed at him.
“Bang! He got a shot at me, and I felt just as if some one had hit me a blow with a stick hard enough to make me savage; but it didn’t stop me a bit, for I reached at him such a crack with my double fist just as he struck his knife into me; and then we were overboard and struggling together in the sunlit water, making it splash up all around.
“‘It’s all over with you, Tom!’ I said to myself; for as we rose to the surface after our plunge he got one arm free, his knife was lifted, and I looked him full in the face as I felt, though I didn’t say it—‘You cowardly beggar! why can’t you fight like a man with your fists?’
“The next moment he must have struck that knife into me again, when I never see such a horrible change in my life as come over his face—from savage joy to fear—for in a flash he let go the knife, shrieked horribly, and half-forced himself out of the water, leaving me free, when, with a terrible fear on me that the crockydiles were at him, I swum for the canoe; and how, I don’t know, I managed to get in, with hundreds of tiny little fish leaping and darting at me like a shoal of gudgeons, only they nipped pieces out of my hands and feet, which were bare; and if I hadn’t been quick they’d have had me to pieces.
“No sooner was I in the canoe than I turned, for Garcia was shrieking horribly in a way that nearly drove me mad to hear him, as he beat, and splashed, and tore about in the water—now down, now up, now fighting this way, now that—wild with fear and despair, for those tiny fish were at him by the thousand; his face and hands were streaming with blood, and I could see that it would be all over with him directly, when, catching up a paddle, I sent the canoe towards him, to pass close by his hand just as he sank.
“To turn and come back was not many moments’ work; but he didn’t come up where I expected, and I had to paddle back against stream, but again I missed him, and he went down with a yell, Mas’r Harry, that’s been buzzing in my ears ever since—wakes me up of a night, it does, and sends me in a cold perspiration as all the scene comes back again.
“I forgot all about his shooting and knifing me; and, Mas’r Harry, as I hope to get back safe to old England I did all I could to save him when he come up again—silent this time! Did I say him? No, it wasn’t him, but a horrible, gashly, bleeding mass of flesh and bone, writhing and twisting as the little fish hung to it and leaped at it by thousands, tearing him really to pieces before he once more sank under the stream, which was all red with blood.
“I paddled here and I paddled there, frantically, but the body didn’t come up again; and then, Mas’r Harry, it seemed to me as if a strong pair of hands had taken hold of the canoe and were twisting it round and round, so that the river and the trees on the banks danced before my eyes, making me that giddy that I fell back and lay, I don’t know how long.
“When I opened my eyes again, Mas’r Harry, I thought I was dying, for there was a horrible sick feeling on me—one which lasted ever so long—till, remembering all about what had taken place, I felt that I had only been fainting; and, raising myself up, I looked on the river for a few minutes, shuddering the while as I tried to leave off thinking about the horrors in it; but try hard as I would, I couldn’t help looking—the place having a sort of way for me as if it was pulling me towards it—and I seemed to see all that going on again, though, perhaps, I’d floated down a good mile since it happened.
“At last I dragged my eyes from the water and they fell upon the packages, and they made me think of you, Mas’r Harry; and, in the hope that you were a long way on ahead, I took up a paddle—thinking, too, at the same time, that if you was alive, as soon as you had got Miss Lilla safe you would come back for me.”