My second pistol missed fire.  In crossing the stream I must have damped the priming.

What happened next is all confusion in my mind.  I dodged the fall of the knife, and struck hard with my pistol butt at the uplifted arm.  I felt no fear, only intense anger at my folly in not having looked better to my priming.  But the shock of the man’s charge upset me, and the next I knew of it we were wrestling on the ground.

I had his right arm by the wrist, but I was no match for him in suppleness, and in the position in which we lay I could not use the weight of my shoulders.  The most I could do was to keep him from striking, and to effect that my strength was stretched to its uttermost.  My eyes filmed with weariness, and my breath came in gasps, for, remember, I had been up all night, and that day had already travelled many miles.  I remember yet the sickly smell of his greasy skin and the red hate of his eyes.  As we struggled I could see Ringan holding the mouth of the ravine with his sword.  One of his foes he had shot, and the best blade in the Five Seas was now engaged with three Indian knives.  I heard his happy whistling, and a grunt now and then from a wounded foe.  He had enough to do, and could give me no aid.  And as I realized this I felt the grip of my arms growing slacker, and knew that in a second or two I should feel that long Indian steel.

I made a desperate effort, and swung round so that I got my left shoulder on his knife arm.  That brought my right shoulder close to his mouth, and he bit me to the bone.  The wound did me good, for it maddened me, and I got a knee loose, and forced it into his loins.  For a moment I dreamed of victory, but I had not counted on the wiles of a savage.  He lay quite limp for a second, and, as I relaxed my effort a little, seized the occasion to slip from beneath me and let me roll into the burn.  The next instant he was above me, and I saw the knife against the sky.

I thought that all was over.  He pushed back his hair from his eyes, and the steel quivered.  And then something thrust between me and the point, there was a leap and a shudder, and I was gazing at emptiness.

I lay gazing, for I seemed bereft of wits.  Then a voice cried, “Are you hurt, Andrew?” and I got to my feet.

My enemy lay in the pool of the burn, with a hole through his throat from Ringan’s sword.  A little farther off lay the savage I had shot.  At the mouth of the ravine lay three dead Indians.  The last of the six must have fled.

Ringan had sheathed his blade, and was looking at me with a queer smile on his face.

“Yon was a merry bout, Andrew,” he said, and his voice sounded very far away.  Then he swayed into my arms, and I saw that his vest was dark with blood.

“What is it?” I cried in wild fear.  “Are you hurt, Ringan?” I laid him on a bed of moss, and opened his shirt.  In his breast was a gaping wound from which the bright blood was welling.