He was just in the act of stepping over the log, with his little axe upraised, when the white man suddenly threw off his blanket and leaped for the savage.
The old fellow flew at him with his upraised tomahawk glittering in the little light that the bivouac-fire yet threw out.
But "Ringiringi" was too quick for him. He ducked dexterously, and caught the Maori by the ankle, and, with a lightning twist that he had learned from his Taranaki people, threw him to the ground.
The murderer-in-intent fell on his back and almost on the fire, and the tomahawk dropped from his hand.
"Ringiringi" pounced on the furious old savage as he fell, and with a knee on his bare chest, and one hand on his throat, reached out with the free hand for the tomahawk, which lay just within his grasp.
The Maori would have continued the struggle, and in the rough-and-tumble would probably have got the better of the white man, had not "Ringiringi," now roused to murderous mood himself, threatened to split his head in two if he moved, and emphasised his words by bringing the weapon down until the blade was within an inch of the old fellow's ugly, tattooed nose.
The Maori sulkily promising to lie quietly in his sleeping-place for the rest of the night, the pakeha relinquished his grip of the old man and backed to his own side of the bivouac. He fed the fire with dry branches of pine, and presently the little glade was a blaze of light again, and the black tree-shadows danced like forest-ghosts to the rising and falling of the flames.
The old Maori pulled his blanket over his face and pretended to go to sleep, but "Ringiringi" did not take his eyes off him the rest of that night. He sat by the fire till daylight, the captured tomahawk between his knees.
In the morning the two enemies silently packed their takes of eels in their kits, and slung them on their backs by flax-leaf straps, for the home-journey.