Trusting now to the light, I rose and proceeded carefully towards the round stone. When I reached it I found no one there, but on the lip of the basin there were several shadows moving. The foremost, evidently thinking I was the man who had gone along the spar and was now returning behind me, gave the guttural challenge. There was no time to waste in purring, so I gave the countersign with my revolver. He staggered back and disappeared.
Then all was confused. Vague shadows flitted round the rim of the basin. I pushed one off into the abyss, another I shot as he came at me, and he fell into the water. A well-aimed stone carried my hat from my head back into the abyss, cutting the skin of my scalp to the bone as it passed. I heard feet pattering behind me and ran on round the lip of the basin. Now I was facing the place where I knew the opening in the mountain side lay concealed beneath twenty feet of water. I had two shots left; the one I fired at something I saw moving on my left, the other I reserved for the one who was running quickly round the lip of the basin behind me. Turning, I fired at a distance of five yards. He did not fall, but uttered a fierce “Ngha!” and came on.
With a quick plunge I leapt from the rock and struck out downwards into the dark with all my strength. Presently I felt the current rushing through my fingers. Another vigorous stroke would have sent me into it, but as I drew up my legs something touched my foot. I kicked back and encountered what felt like solid flesh. I was now head and shoulders in the current, and could see a round light before me, but an arm slid along my leg, a hand closed round my ankle, and I was dragged forcibly out of it again.
I turned in the water to face my antagonist, whom I now knew to be Ngaraki himself, and, guiding my hands along his chest and shoulders, caught him by a bronze pillar for all the impression I could make on the throat. But I might as well have tried to throttle it. The next thing I knew was that his hand had closed over my own throat with a grip like iron. He shook me in the water as if I were a mere rat, and we rose to the surface.
He still retained his terrible grip as he groped along the bank for the steps in the wall. By the time he had found them my senses were beginning to go. I could get no breath until he released my throat, and it was now nearly half a minute since I drew my last. I was getting confused, but I remember one thing which made a distinct impression upon me. My hands, in attempting to get at his own throat again encountered a small stream of something warm trickling from his chest, and, strange as it may seem, almost my last feeling was one of remorse that my final bullet had wounded this strange man, for whom, notwithstanding all his attempts to kill me, I had conceived a kind of savage admiration. In my dying condition, lying helpless in his grip, I seemed to lose my own selfish personality; and, in that brief moment, looking at things from his standpoint, I admitted I was in the wrong, and found time to wish at least that I had not fired that last bullet.
We were now on the margin of the lake swaying about. Suddenly a low moan escaped his lips. His fingers relaxed. He fell back against the cavern wall. Before he fell, however, he gave me a violent push which sent me reeling into the lake.
In the second that elapsed before I reached the water I may have taken in some air. I do not remember doing so, for I was almost gone; but I think I must have got some oxygen into my lungs, for, to a certain extent, consciousness revived as I felt myself going down in the tumultuous depths. Aided considerably by the water welling up from the bottom I arrested my descent and darted upwards again, but on reaching the surface and gasping for air, I found myself in a current. Oh! horror of horrors! I felt I must be going down into the abyss. My mother’s sweet, sad face rose in the darkness before me, and I called on God as all men do in their last extremity. For some time—I could not say how long—I struggled against that current with the strength of despair, but, wildly as I strained every nerve and sinew, I felt I was being gradually sucked in. I reached out to catch some point of rock, but there was nothing. Then with a feeling of blackest horror I realised all was over. But the horror gave way, and, as I swept down, I felt myself smiling up at my mother’s face like a child dropping off to sleep. There was a stunning crash as my head struck against some rock in the descent, and then I fell down, down for ever and ever into the black abyss of unconsciousness.
CHAPTER X.
KAHIKATEA AND HIS STRANGE BELIEF.
When a man wakes suddenly in the night, he may imagine that the head of his bed is where the foot should be. When he wakes from a deep swoon he is willing to admit that he may be anywhere. But imagine the feelings of a man, whose last recollection was that of being swept over the brink of an abyss, waking up and finding himself lying on his back on a mossy bank, with a well-known face bending over him.
Such was my case, and I thought the whole thing was so impossible that I gave it up, and, closing my eyes, continued my downward career through the blackness of darkness, wondering when the final crash would come.