“It helps, Sam, it helps; and I have a plan. Remember this: If I drown we are saved.”
I said this hastily, for the three chiefs now came over to us. Intschu-Tschuna said: “We will now free Old Shatterhand, but he need not think he can escape, for more than a hundred will follow him to the water’s edge.”
“It would never occur to me,” I said, “for, if I could get away, it would be disgraceful to desert my comrades.”
I was liberated, and moved my arm to test its powers. Then I said: “It is a great honor for me to contest with the chief of the Apaches, but it is not an honor for him.”
“Why not?”
“Because I am no adversary for him. I have bathed, of course, but I would not dare cross such a broad, deep river as that is.”
“I am sorry to hear it; Winnetou and I are the best swimmers of the tribe, and it is no victory for us to conquer a poor swimmer.”
“And you are armed, while I am not; I go, then, to my death, and my comrades must also die. When will you strike me with the tomahawk?”
“When it pleases me,” he said, with the contemptuous smile of a virtuoso to an amateur.
“It may be done in the water?”