"I'll kill you! I'll kill you! I'll kill you!"
He would have gone on repeating this for an indefinite time had I not thrown off his hand, and said—
"I advise you to be a little more careful, my friend, or you'll get yourself into trouble. In this country you won't be allowed to go about killing people just as you please."
My coolness only seemed to heap additional fuel on his already surcharged fires. He almost foamed at the mouth. Grasping my arm again, he hissed—
"Coward! coward! I knew you were a coward!"
Not being able to stand this, I did my best to knock him down. It was a futile attempt, however, for he leapt on one side, and in doing so struck me a heavy blow on the side of my face.
"There," he cried, almost dancing in the moonlight. "What now?"
"Now," I said, as quietly as I could under the circumstances, "you've done it, and I'll have your life if you're twenty times mad!"
"For once you talk like a man," he remarked. "Come with me, and we'll settle it now and for ever. She shall see who is the better man."
If I had any scruples left, that reference to Juanita obliterated them; and so side by side we tramped through the bush round the elbow of the hill to an open spot among ferns and aloe bushes, about the centre of the island. It was a strange place surrounded by giant ant-hills, which in many cases reared themselves quite eight feet above the ground, like monuments in a well-populated cemetery.