“I fell almost at the heels of Aoodya’s enemy, upon a ledge along which he was swiftly running her down.  Hamid’s bullet had missed him, and before I could make the third in the chase he was forty yards ahead.  I saw his bare shoulders parting the creepers—­threading their way in and out like a bobbin, and jogging as the pace fell slower; for now we were all three in difficulties.  Perhaps Aoodya had missed the track; at any rate the ledge we were now following grew shallower as it curved over the corner of the beach and ran sheer over the water of the lake.  A jungle tree leaned out here, with a clear drop of a hundred feet.  As I closed on my man, he swerved and began to clamber out along the trunk; and over his shoulder I saw Aoodya, with the babe in the crick of her arm, upon a bough which swayed and sank beneath her.

“I clutched at his ankle.  He reached back with a hiss of his breath and jabbed his knife down on my left hand, cutting across the two middle fingers and pinning me through the small bones to the trunk.  I tell you, sir, I scarcely felt it.  My right went down to my waist and pulled out the kris there.  He was the man I had caught within the verandah three days before; these were the same eyes shining, like a cat’s, back into mine, and what I had promised him then I gave him now.  But it was Hamid who killed him.  For as my kris went into the flank of him, above the hip, Hamid’s second shot cut down through his neck.  His face at the moment rested sideways against the branch, and I suppose the bullet passed through to the bough and cost me Aoodya.  For as the Berbalang fell, the bough seemed to rip away from where his cheek had rested, and Aoodya, with my child in her arms, swung back under my feet and dropped like a stone into the lake.

“I can’t tell you, sir, how long I lay stretched out along that trunk, with the Berbalang’s knife still pinned through my hand.  I was staring down into the water.  Aoodya and my child never rose again; but the Berbalang came to the surface at once and floated, bobbing for a while on the ripple, his head thrown back, his brown chest shining up at me, and the blood spreading on the water around it.

“It was Hamid who unpinned me and led me away.  He had made shift to climb down, and while binding up my wounded hand pointed towards the beach.  It was empty.  The crowd of Berbalangs had disappeared.

“He found the track which Aoodya had missed, and as he led me up and out of the crater I heard him talking—­talking.  I suppose he was trying to comfort me—­he was a good fellow; but at the top I turned on him, and ‘Master,’ I said, ’you have tried to do me much kindness, but to-day I have bought my quittance.’  With that I left him standing and walked straight over the brow of the hill.  I never looked behind me until I reached the Spaniards’ compound, and called out at the gate to be let pass.

“Captain Marquinez was lying in a hammock in the cool of his verandah when the gate-keeper took me to him.  He was, I think, the weariest man I ever happened on.  ‘So you want to leave the island?’ said he when my tale was out.  ’Yes, yes, I believe you; I’ve learnt to believe anything of those devils up yonder.  But you must wait a fortnight, till the relief-boat arrives from Jola’—­”