He felt that he must fight for his life, and that after all the odds were fair.
His enemy was a full-grown, sturdy savage, doubtless well armed, while he was only a boy, but he had the help of one of civilised man's most deadly weapons to balance matters.
Then he felt that there was no balance in the matters for the black had his weapons ready, while he had left his gun out of his reach.
"Only let me escape this time," thought Nic, in a despairing way, "and I'll never do such a foolish thing again." The sun beat down upon him, the air around quivered in the heat, and the locusts kept up a loud chirruping, jarring note which grew maddening.
Then from far away there came faintly the melancholy _baa_ of a sheep calling plaintively to its missing companions, and directly after what Nic took to be the call of some wild bird in the distance--_coo-way_--_coo-way_--and this was answered faintly from farther off.
The next moment Nic had grasped the fact that it was no bird-call; for the black's face was puckered up, his eyes nearly closed as his mouth opened, and he repeated the cry in a wild, shrill, ringing tone twice more, and then his mouth shut with an audible snap, and he remained perfectly still again, watching the boy.
But Nic could bear no more.

This brought matters to a crisis.

It was the savage's _cooey_, and it meant that others were coming to join this man.

So the boy felt that he must either attack or retreat.
To retreat meant to invite attack, and in his desperation Nic determined that the braver plan and the one more likely to prove successful was to take the initiative, and to do this he began slowly and cautiously to stretch out one hand towards his gun.
In an instant the black's eyes twinkled, and there was a movement in the grass as of some animal gliding through it.
"Getting his spear," thought Nic, with his heart beating frantically, as he drew himself sidewise toward the piece.
As he expected, the black moved too, but only as shown by the motion of the herbage.

In fact, there were moments before the boy began to exert himself when it seemed to him that there was that fierce black head before him and nothing more, and that the whole scene was nightmare-like and unreal.
But with the action all became terribly substantial.