Part 47 (1/2)
when I felt two hands at my throat, my head bent back, a knee forced into my chest, and there in that black darkness I lay for a few minutes quite stupid, calling myself all the fools I could think of for helping someone on board that I knew now was not you.
”That was rather ticklish work, being choked as I was, Mas'r Harry,”
said Tom, with his pale face flus.h.i.+ng up, and his eyes brightening with the recollection; ”but above all things, I couldn't help feeling then that, if I did get a p.r.i.c.k with a knife, I deserved it for being such a donkey. Then I got thinking about Sally Smith, and wis.h.i.+ng that we had parted better friends; then about you and Miss Lilla, and about how all the gold would be lost; and then I turned savage, and seemed to see blood, as I made up my mind that, if you didn't have the treasure, the Don shouldn't, for I'd upset the canoe and sink it all first for the crockydiles.
”I don't know what I said, and I don't much recollect what I did, only that fox ever so long there was a reg'lar struggle going on, which made that little canoe rock so that I expected every moment it would be overset; but I s'pose we both meant that it shouldn't: and at last we were lying quite still on the gold, with all round us black and quiet as my lord's vault in the old churchyard at home. Garcia had got tight hold of my hands, and I kept him by that means so that he couldn't use his sting--I mean his knife--you know, Mas'r Harry.
”It seemed to me at last that my best plan was to lie still and wait till he give me a chance; for after one or two struggles I only found that I was nowhere, and ever so much weaker; so I did lie still, waiting for a chance, and wondering that Mas'r Landell didn't come and lend me a hand.
”All at once there came a horrible thought to me, and that was--ah!
there were two horrible thoughts--that you had missed the canoe and had gone down, and that the raft had broke away from the gold canoe while we were jerking and rocking about, and that I was left alone here on this big river, with the Don waiting for a chance to send that knife of his through me.
”Now, you needn't go thinking it was because I cared anything about you, Mas'r Harry,” continued Tom in a sulky voice, ”for it wasn't that: it was only just because I was a weak great b.o.o.by, and got a wondering what your poor mother would say when I got home, and then, I couldn't help it, if I didn't get crying away like a great girl kep' in at school, for I don't know how long, and the canoe gliding away all the time on the river.
”Getting rid of all that warm water made me less soft; and when Mas'r Garcia got struggling again I give him two or three such wipes on the head as must have wound him up a bit; and then, after nearly having the boat over again, there we lay for hour after hour in the thick darkness, getting stiff as stiff, as we kep' one another from doing mischief. And then at last came the light, with the fog hanging over the river, thick as the old washus at home when Sally Smith took off the copper-lid and got stirring up the clothes. Then the sun came cutting through the mist, chopping it up like golden wires through a cake of soap. There was the green stuff like a hedge on both sides of the river, the parrots a-screaming, the crockydiles crawling on to the mud-banks or floating down, the birds a-fis.h.i.+ng, and all looking as bright as could be, while my heart was black as a furnace-hole, Mas'r Harry, and that black-looking Don was close aside me.
”I ain't of a murderous disposition, Mas'r Harry, but I felt very nasty then, in that bright, clear morning, though all the time I was thinking what a nice place this world would be if it wasn't for wild beasts, and men as makes themselves worse; for there was that Don's eye saying as plain as could be:--
”'There ain't room enough in this here canoe for both of us, young man!'
”'Then it's you as must go out of it, Don Spaniard,' says my eyes.
”'No; it's you as must go out of it, you beggarly little soap-boiling Englishman,' says his eyes.
”'It's my Mas'r Harry's gold, and if he's gone to the crockydiles I'll save the treasure for his Miss Lilla and the old folks--so now, then!'
says my eyes.
”And all this, you know, was without a word being spoke; when all at once if he didn't make a sort of a jump, and before I knew where we were he was at one end of the canoe and I was at the other.
”Well, you may say that was a good thing. But it wasn't; for as I scrambled up there he was with both guns at his end, and me with nothing but my fisties.
”I saw through his dodge now, but it was too late; and in the next few moments I thought three things:--
”'Shall I sit still like a man and let him shoot me?'
”'Shall I rock the canoe over and let it sink?'
”'Shall I go at him?'
”I hadn't pluck enough to sit still and be shot, Mas'r Harry, for you know what a cur I always was; and I thought it a pity to sink the canoe in case you, if you were alive, or Mas'r Landell, might come back to look for it. So I made up my mind to the last, being bristly, and, with my monkey up, I dashed at him.
”_Bang_! He got a shot at me, and I felt just as if some one had hit me a blow with a stick hard enough to make me savage; but it didn't stop me a bit, for I reached at him such a crack with my double fist just as he struck his knife into me; and then we were overboard and struggling together in the sunlit water, making it splash up all around.
”'It's all over with you, Tom!' I said to myself; for as we rose to the surface after our plunge he got one arm free, his knife was lifted, and I looked him full in the face as I felt, though I didn't say it--'You cowardly beggar! why can't you fight like a man with your fists?'
”The next moment he must have struck that knife into me again, when I never see such a horrible change in my life as come over his face--from savage joy to fear--for in a flash he let go the knife, shrieked horribly, and half-forced himself out of the water, leaving me free, when, with a terrible fear on me that the crockydiles were at him, I swum for the canoe; and how, I don't know, I managed to get in, with hundreds of tiny little fish leaping and darting at me like a shoal of gudgeons, only they nipped pieces out of my hands and feet, which were bare; and if I hadn't been quick they'd have had me to pieces.
”No sooner was I in the canoe than I turned, for Garcia was shrieking horribly in a way that nearly drove me mad to hear him, as he beat, and splashed, and tore about in the water--now down, now up, now fighting this way, now that--wild with fear and despair, for those tiny fish were at him by the thousand; his face and hands were streaming with blood, and I could see that it would be all over with him directly, when, catching up a paddle, I sent the canoe towards him, to pa.s.s close by his hand just as he sank.