"I clutched at his ankle. He reached back with a hiss of his breath and jabbed his knife down on my left hand, cutting across the two middle fingers and pinning me through the small bones to the trunk. I tell you, sir, I scarcely felt it. My right went down to my waist and pulled out the _kris_ there. He was the man I had caught within the verandah three days before; these were the same eyes shining, like a cat's, back into mine, and what I had promised him then I gave him now. But it was Hamid who killed him. For as my _kris_ went into the flank of him, above the hip, Hamid's second shot cut down through his neck. His face at the moment rested sideways against the branch, and I suppose the bullet passed through to the bough and cost me Aoodya. For as the Berbalang fell, the bough seemed to rip away from where his cheek had rested, and Aoodya, with my child in her arms, swung back under my feet and dropped like a stone into the lake. "I can't tell you, sir, how long I lay stretched out along that trunk, with the Berbalang's knife still pinned through my hand. I was staring down into the water. Aoodya and my child never rose again; but the Berbalang came to the surface at once and floated, bobbing for a while on the ripple, his head thrown back, his brown chest shining up at me, and the blood spreading on the water around it. "It was Hamid who unpinned me and led me away. He had made shift to climb down, and while binding up my wounded hand pointed towards the beach. It was empty. The crowd of Berbalangs had disappeared. "He found the track which Aoodya had missed, and as he led me up and out of the crater I heard him talking--talking. I suppose he was trying to comfort me--he was a good fellow; but at the top I turned on him, and 'Master,' I said, 'you have tried to do me much kindness, but to-day I have bought my quittance.' With that I left him standing and walked straight over the brow of the hill. I never looked behind me until I reached the Spaniards' compound, and called out at the gate to be let pass. "Captain Marquinez was lying in a hammock in the cool of his verandah when the gate-keeper took me to him. He was, I think, the weariest man I ever happened on. 'So you want to leave the island?' said he when my tale was out. 'Yes, yes, I believe you; I've learnt to believe anything of those devils up yonder. But you must wait a fortnight, till the relief-boat arrives from Jola'--" Here the story-teller broke off as a rider upon a grey horse came at a foot-pace round the slope of Burrator below us and passed on without seeing. It was the Rajah, returning solitary from the hunt, and his eyes were still fastened ahead of him. "Ah, great man! England is a weary hole for the likes of you and me. It's here they talk of the East, but we have loved it and hated it and known it, and remember. Our eyes have seen--our eyes have seen."