There was no time for speech-making nor tactics, so we just jumped at one another, and I had no sooner fired my carbine than I saw a big native with his tongue protruding and the whites of his eyes turned up spring at me through the smoke, twirling a long-handled tomahawk around his head, as if it had been a shillelagh in the hands of one of my own countrymen at home, and moreover had barely time to throw up my carbine, so as to guard a swashing cut he was good enough to deliver at the left side of my head. Troth and it was no fool of a cut either, for it drove my carbine in until the muzzle of it came against my left shoulder, which fortunately prevented my guard from being quite broken, though the razor-edged blade at the business end of the six-foot flexible manuka handle, whipping over my carbine barrel, cut my left ear in two, scarred my cheek, and gashed my eyebrow so deeply that the flap of the wound fell over, which besides deluging me with blood quite obstructed the sight of my left eye, so much so that I thought I was blinded. This thought transmogrified me into a raging fiend, so I let go my carbine, and, without even pausing to say damn your soul, flew at his throat like a wild cat, which I was fortunate enough to get a firm hold of with my right hand. Well was it for me at that moment that I had devoted so many hours of my young life to the gymnasium and _salle d’armes_, and that my great natural strength had been increased by culture to an almost phenomenal extent, for now it was to be tried to its very utmost, and my wiry, well-trained thews and sinews tested to their breaking point. Well was it, also, for me, that by the quick fury of my wild-cat attack I had at once made good my hold on his bull throat, a hold I swore to maintain till death parted us. Gad, I was very angry, for the thought of having lost my eye was more than I could tolerate, and I saw scarlet. My opponent was a big, powerful fellow, standing fully six feet and well proportioned, who, although inclined to run to flesh, was still very active, and a most formidable antagonist for a young man who measured only five feet seven inches and weighed under eleven stone. He was, moreover, a noted warrior and a past master in the use of native hand-to-hand weapons. Therefore, failing firearms, it was the very best thing I could have done to grapple with him, and it was to my immense advantage having caught the first hold. The moment I had closed with him he dropped his long-handled weapon and strove with all his might to tear away my grip on his throat with his left hand, while with his right he attempted to seize mine, but I successfully guarded it and, although he repeatedly struck me with his right hand, we were too closely locked for him to do me much harm, while I was surely if slowly choking him.