For a second I regretted that Fatty had not batted off his head, for I felt as if I should drop from weakness. But when he dug his nails in my arm the smart aroused such a rage that my strength came flooding upward, like a gush of something hot in my blood. I had warded off many of his lunges and was waiting for an opening as if I had been engaged in boxing. The chance presented itself now. He was leaping toward me viciously when I “slugged” him with all my might, fairly in the pit of the stomach. My fist actually seemed to sink into the fellow’s body. He was lifted off his feet, but before he could fall I fetched him a right-hander under the chin that jolted his head backward abruptly. He fell like an effigy, arms outstretched, so that the back of his skull was the first thing to strike the ground. There he lay, limp as a snake and motionless as a stone, while a referee could have “counted him out” for the next twenty minutes. A great howl of satisfaction greeted this performance, which placed me again on my pedestal of incomprehensible power. The truth of the matter was, however, that I was ready to fall over, myself, so severe had been the strain and the injury done to my weakened frame. By the greatest of efforts I walked away and washed myself at the spring. Grin, when at last he again assumed a perpendicular, was dizzy on his legs, ill and altogether a sorrowful object. I knew his head was aching and that his stomach would be morbidly sensitive for several days. He was hooted and picked upon also, having been utterly defeated, so that he was glad to retire from active service, muttering no end of what I supposed were threats and maledictions. I was of precious little account to myself, or to any of the tribe, that day, but on the morrow I was mending rapidly again, and beginning to pick up various threads of the plans I had fashioned before our fateful day of battle with the Blacks. It was long since anyone from the camp had visited the boat, but my thoughts had been there much of the time. I had feared, daily, another invasion by the enemy, whom I knew to be revengeful and who now understood the nature of our fortifications and means of defense. This feeling of alarm increased. Should they come, with a force still greater than the last, and find us armed with blunt arrows only, our resistance would be short indeed. I dared not contemplate undertaking my exploration of the lake, much less my escape, while we were possibly threatened with another attack and while I was weaponless myself, excepting for my trusty knife. Being almost wholly fit again I determined to make an immediate excursion to our old cave-camp for the purpose of securing a supply of chalcedony pebbles. CHAPTER XXIII NEEDED MUNITIONS GATHERED