'That,' he said, 'produced in me a heated anger, and I was in the fight as I had not been till then. Stung by their mockery, I pulled myself together and was on my feet again in a trice. A spear was still sticking in my thigh, and blood flowed freely from the wound. I dragged out the spear, covered the wound with my haversack, so that neither enemy nor friend might be aware of it, and once more advanced.'
The chief grew alarmed at this steady investment of himself, and showed it by brandishing a club, as if to convey, 'Just you come nearer and this will drum on your head.'
Sir George's faculties were so keenly edged that he noted, in this bravado, a common link of mankind, high and low, civilised and barbarian. As long as the chieftain had been sure of his skin, he flung spears and sang valiantly; but when alarm entered him, those deadly measures were replaced by a mighty show. On the surface there was vast play of battle, but inwardly quaking. And Sir George marched forward, his right hand gripping the gun hard, his lip quivering, his eye burning.
The injured physical man was triumphant over the peace-loving soul, and anyhow there must now be a lesson. Of all those lines of thought Sir George was not, perhaps, conscious in his peril, yet, fetching back, he could trace them as they had worked. Seeking a solution by measures not violent, he had been given sore spears, whereon his finger tightened at the trigger, and he was a wound automaton; fixed, stern, a fate on feet, bearing down upon the chief in the shelter of the rock.
The brandished club was no stop; no more did the skirmishing support of the clan bring pause to the oncomer. The black general bobbed quite behind his rock, considering the necessity of absolute retreat. Next, he snapped off quickly, dodging here and there, as the aboriginal plan was, to avoid a cast of spears. It was not suited to avoid lead.
Everything had occurred within the space of a few minutes; for such crises do, otherwise the tension would kill. The chief ran; a tall dark body, with many other bodies watching it. Sir George raised his gun and pointed it at the warrior, struggling to a shelter from which the attack could be renewed. Snap went the trigger. With a bullet, the marksman could shoot a greater seabird, by the head, at a range of a hundred yards. This bullet caught the black between the shoulders, and he fell with a thud and a groan. In Sir George, the physical being surrendered itself again to the intellect. The situation was saved, his wounds stung him no more to vindication—he was sorrowful, a-weary.
There was no sound after the echoes of the shot had died away, a spluttering funeral knell. Other natives, laying their spears aside, sprang from behind trees and rocks to the help of their fallen chief. Nobody would harm them; the magic had ceased. They raised him with the greatest solicitude, and bore him off. His head hung on his breast; he could just stagger.
Faint from loss of blood, Sir George watched the serpent-like procession twine itself into the inner depths of the forest. Having conquered; he had to console himself on the victory and bind up his own hurts. These made him so weak that he must send to the camp for assistance, and he awaited its coming, a loaded gun on his knee. The blacks assailed no more; instead, the birds sang in the sun, and he asked himself, 'Is it all a dream?'
'Why,' declared one of his men, helping him towards the camp, 'should you worry yourself over having shot that black fellow? If you hadn't, where should we all have been? and anyhow there are plenty more like him in the country.' This comforter was himself to need comfort, by and by, on a less sombre subject. He dashed in upon Sir George, crying, 'Sir, I have seen the Old Gentleman,' and with his frame shaking as if he had. It was the Australian bat on midnight circuit, a strange serenade to the European. Another of nature's creatures was to figure amid circumstances which did hold cause for terror.
'It's curious,' Sir George mused, 'how we remember trifles of the long ago with preciseness, when often bigger events are blurred. I recollect, very well, a slight incident of the scene on the island of Dorre, off the north-west coast of Australia, when a storm caught us. In turn, I caught an old cormorant by the neck, and the bird was all we had for breakfast next morning. A most sedate character he was, trying hard to maintain a dignified attitude in face of a very tempest of wind. He wished to fly, but could not, the violence of the gale pinning him to the ground. That was his death, which we all regretted; and I'm sorry to add that we were grudging enough to call him tough in the eating.'