"Sheep-headed! Look you, I stand no abuse. I've done your job; two hundred roubles is little enough for it; and I'll trouble you to hand over the balance."
"The balance!" snarled Sowinski. "Eka! You may think yourself lucky to have got what you have. You get no more from me."
"We'll see about that, you white-livered little rat!"
The man made a sudden step forward and shot out his free hand to grip the Pole by the throat. But Sowinski, instinctively aware of what was coming, drew back quickly, his right hand seeking his pocket. The Russian saw the movement, flung himself forward,—dropping the candle, which sputtered on the floor of the passage—seized the Pole with his right hand, and with the left clutched at the other's right arm. But he was a second too late. He missed his grasp, and even as he swung his opponent round with the intention of hurling him into the abyss, there was a flash and a report that startled a hundred echoes from the cavern and the galleries. The Russian gave a quick grunt; then all was in darkness; they had trodden out the light. Into the next moments so much was crowded that Jack could never disentangle the separate events in his mind. His father's voice; a cry from Hi Lo; an appalling scream from Sowinski; a dull thud, followed by a brief silence save for the splash and rumble of the cataract. Then, through the sound of the waters, came a second and heavier thud that turned Jack's blood cold. At his side his father struck a match.
"They're gone!" gasped Jack, white to the lips.
"Your pistol?"
"No."
"Thank God!"
Tempter and tempted had struck the ledge in their fall, rebounded, and gone headlong to the rocks a hundred feet below.
Some few minutes after midnight, a sampan put off silently from a solitary angle of the bay. Creeping through the white mist, slowly, to avoid the intervening junks, it skirted the anchored vessels and quietly ran alongside of the Yu-ye. A hooded figure leant over the bulwarks, watching with straining eyes as five dark figures climbed up the side.