y blade, and as he fell dragged me half down with him. I
staggered up, and tugging the metal from him turned on the next.

At that moment the cause of all the turmoil, roused by the fighting,
came to herself, and sitting up on the piled plunder in the boat stared
round for a moment with a childish horror at the barbarians whose prize
she was, then at me, then at the dead man at my feet whose blood was
welling in a red tide from the wound in his breast. As the full
meaning of the scene dawned upon her she started to her feet, looking
wonderfully beautiful amongst those dusky forms, and extending her
hands to me began to cry in the most piteous way. I sprang forward,
and as I did so saw an ape-man clap his hairy paw over her mouth and
face--it was like an eclipse of the moon by a red earth-shadow, I
thought at the moment--and drag her roughly back, but that was about
the last I remembered. As I turned to hit him standing on the slippery
thwart, another rogue crept up behind and let drive with a club he had
in hand. The cudgel caught me sideways on the head, a glancing shot.
I can recall a blaze of light, a strange medley of sounds in my ears,
and then, clutching at a pile of stuffs as I fell, a tall bower of
spray rising on either hand, and the cool shock of the blue sea as I
plunged headlong in--but nothing after that!

How long after I know not, but presently a tissue of daylight crept
into my eyes, and I awoke again. It was better than nothing perhaps,
yet it was a poor awakening. The big sun lay low down, and the day was
all but done; so much I guessed as I rocked in that light with an
undulating movement, and then as my senses returned more fully,
recognised with a start of wonder that I was still in the water,
floating on a swift current into the unknown on an air-filled pile of
silken stuffs which had been pulled down with me from the boat when I
got my ganging from yonder rascal's mace. It was a wet couch, sodden
and chilly, but as the freshening evening wind blew on my face and the
darkening water lapped against my forehead I revived more fully.

Where had we come to? I turned an aching neck, and all along on both
sides seemed to stretch steep, straight coasts about a mile or so
apart, in the shadow of the setting sun black as ebony. Between the
two the hampered water ran quickly, with, away on the right, some
shallow sandy spits and islands covered with dwarf bushes--chilly,
inhospitable-looking plac