shield his face.  I sprang upon him at the same instant I threw my hat, and so was able to reach him before he opened his eyes.  I had well calculated his movements, and had made no mistake.  As I reached him his head was bent downward and forward to let the hat pass over him.  His position could not have been better for my purpose.  I “swung on him,” as we used to say at the gymnasium, catching him under his protruded jaw, not far from the region of the carotid artery.  The blow was well placed, and desperation lent me phenomenal strength.  It raised him bodily off his feet, and hurled him backward out of the cave, where he lay motionless.  He was now in my power.  I seized his knife and bent over him.  Words cannot express the hatred, the loathing I felt for him then and always.  Between me and the light of my happiness he had ever stood, an impenetrable black mass.  Twice had he sought my life, yet now, when he was in my power, I could not plunge his weapon into his heart.  Would it not be just, I thought, to drag him into the cave, and hurl him down the abyss he had intended for me?  Yes; he certainly merited it; yet I could not do that either.  I wished the snake a thousand times dead, yet I could not stamp it into the earth.

He was beginning to slightly move now, and something must be done.  It was useless to run, for the way was long, and he could easily overtake me.  You may wonder why I did not take to the thicket, but if you had ever had any experience with Indian jungles you would know that, without the use of fire and axe, they are practically impenetrable.  Professor Haeckel, botanising near that same spot, spent an hour in an endeavour to force his way into one of these jungles, but only succeeded in advancing a few steps into the thicket, when, stung by mosquitoes, bitten by ants, his clothing torn from his bleeding arms and legs, wounded by the thousands of sharp thorns of the calamus, hibiscus, euphorbias, lantanas, and myriad other jungle plants, he was obliged, utterly discomfited, to desist.  If this were the result of his efforts, made in broad daylight, and with deliberation, what might I expect rushing into the thicket at night, as a refuge from a pursuer far my superior in physical strength and fleetness of foot, and who, moreover, had known the jungle from his boyhood?  Once overtaken by my enemy, the long knife in my hands would be of no avail against a stick in his.  I saw all this clearly, and realised that he must be prevented from following me.

There was no time to be lost, for he was rapidly recovering possession of his powers.  I seized a large rock and hurled it with all the force I could command upon his left foot and ankle.  Notwithstanding his immense strength his hands and feet were scarcely larger than a woman’s, and the small bones cracked like pipe-stems.  Though I had not the will to kill him, my own safety demanded that I should maim him as the only other means of making good my escape.