I threw my arms about to keep steady, and the whole lot rolled

free of me and shot down as I went up--"



He paused.



"I saw young Sanders's face, over a naked black shoulder, and a spear

driven clean through his neck, and out of his mouth and neck what

looked like spirts of pink smoke in the water. And down they went

clutching one another, and turning over, and both too far gone

to leave go. And in another second my helmet came a whack, fit

to split, against the niggers' canoe. It was niggers! Two canoes full.



"It was lively times, I tell you! Overboard came Always with three

spears in him. There was the legs of three or four black chaps

kicking about me in the water. I couldn't see much, but I saw

the game was up at a glance, gave my valve a tremendous twist,

and went bubbling down again after poor Always, in as awful a state

of scare and astonishment as you can well imagine. I passed young

Sanders and the nigger going up again and struggling still a bit,

and in another moment I was standing in the dim again on the deck

of the Ocean Pioneer.



"'Gummy,' thinks I, 'here's a fix!' Niggers? At first I couldn't see

anything for it but Stifle below or Stabs above. I didn't properly

understand how much air there was to last me, but I didn't feel like

standing very much more of it down below. I was hot and frightfully

heady--quite apart from the blue funk I was in. We'd never repined

with these beastly natives, filthy Papuan beasts. It wasn't any good,

coming up where I was, but I had to do something. On the spur

of the moment, I clambered over the side of the brig and landed

among the weeds, and set off through the darkness as fast as I could.

I just stopped once and knelt, and twisted back my head in the helmet

and had a look up. It was a most extraordinary bright green-blue above,

and the two canoes and the boat floating there very small and distant

like a kind of twisted H. And it made me feel sick to squint up at it,

and think what the pitching and swaying of the three meant.



"It was just about the most horrible ten minutes I ever had, blundering

about in that darkness, pressure something awful, like being buried

in sand, pain across the chest, sick with funk, and breathing nothing

as it seemed but the smell of rum and mackintosh. Gummy! After a bit,

I found myself going up a steepish sort of slope. I had another

squint to see if anything was visible of the canoes and boats,

and then kept on. I stopped with my head a foot from the surface,

and tried to see where I was going, but, of course, nothing was

to be seen but the reflection of the bottom. Then out I dashed like

knocking my head through a mirror. Directly I got my eyes out of

the water, I saw I'd come up a kind of beach near the forest. I had a

look round, but the natives and the brig were both hidden by a big,

hummucky heap of twisted lava, the born fool in me suggested a run



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