and the barrel of a gun with the other,
when a thought struck me--

"`Why, surely Mas'r Harry hadn't his gun with him?'

"But it was no time, I thought, for bothering about trifles, with the
night black as ink, and the Indians collected together upon the bank; so
I did the best I could to help you, and the next minute there you was in
the gold canoe, and not without nearly oversetting it, heavy-laden as
she was--when I whispers, `You'd best take a paddle here, Mas'r Harry,'
when I felt two hands at my throat, my head bent back, a knee forced
into my chest, and there in that black darkness I lay for a few minutes
quite stupid, calling myself all the fools I could think of for helping
someone on board that I knew now was not you.

"That was rather ticklish work, being choked as I was, Mas'r Harry,"
said Tom, with his pale face flushing up, and his eyes brightening with
the recollection; "but above all things, I couldn't help feeling then
that, if I did get a prick with a knife, I deserved it for being such a
donkey. Then I got thinking about Sally Smith, and wishing that we had
parted better friends; then about you and Miss Lilla, and about how all
the gold would be lost; and then I turned savage, and seemed to see
blood, as I made up my mind that, if you didn't have the treasure, the
Don shouldn't, for I'd upset the canoe and sink it all first for the
crockydiles.

"I don't know what I said, and I don't much recollect what I did, only
that fox ever so long there was a reg'lar struggle going on, which made
that little canoe rock so that I expected every moment it would be
overset; but I s'pose we both meant that it shouldn't: and at last we
were lying quite still on the gold, with all round us black and quiet as
my lord's vault in the old churchyard at home. Garcia had got tight
hold of my hands, and I kept him by that means so that he couldn't use
his sting--I mean his knife--you know, Mas'r Harry.

"It seemed to me at last that my best plan was to lie still and wait
till he give me a chance; for after one or two struggles I only found
that I was nowhere, and ever so much weaker; so I did lie still, waiting
for a chance, and wondering that Mas'r Landell didn't come and lend me a
hand.

"All at once there came a horrible thought to me, and that was--ah!
there were two horrible thoughts--that you had missed the canoe and had
gone down, and that the raft had broke away from the gold canoe while we
were jerking and