"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 o