第25章 Chapter II.(6)

Peter put up his fingers to his own lips--"Hus-h! hus-h!" he said.

The man hung torpid, still looking at Peter.

Quickly Peter Halket knelt down and took the knife from his belt. In an instant the riems that bound the feet were cut through; in another he had cut the riems from the waist and neck: the riems dropped to the ground from the arms, and the man stood free. Like a dazed dumb creature, he stood, with his head still down, eyeing Peter.

Instantly Peter slipped the red bundle from his arm into the man's passive hand.

"Ari-tsemaia! Hamba! Loop! Go!" whispered Peter Halket; using a word from each African language he knew. But the black man still stood motionless, looking at him as one paralysed.

"Hamba! Sucka! Go!" he whispered, motioning his hand.

In an instant a gleam of intelligence shot across the face; then a wild transport. Without a word, without a sound, as the tiger leaps when the wild dogs are on it, with one long, smooth spring, as though unwounded and unhurt, he turned and disappeared into the grass. It closed behind him; but as he went the twigs and leaves cracked under his tread.

The Captain threw back the door of his tent. "Who is there?" he cried.

Peter Halket stood below the tree with the knife in his hand.

The noise roused the whole camp: the men on guard came running; guns were fired: and the half-sleeping men came rushing, grasping their weapons.

There was a sound of firing at the little tree; and the cry went round the camp, "The Mashonas are releasing the spy!"

When the men got to the Captain's tent, they saw that the nigger was gone; and Peter Halket was lying on his face at the foot of the tree; with his head turned towards the Captain's door.

There was a wild confusion of voices. "How many were there?" "Where have they gone to now?" "They've shot Peter Halket!"--"The Captain saw them do it"--"Stand ready, they may come back any time!"

When the Englishman came, the other men, who knew he had been a medical student, made way for him. He knelt down by Peter Halket.

"He's dead," he said, quietly.

When they had turned him over, the Colonial knelt down on the other side, with a little hand-lamp in his hand.

"What are you fellows fooling about here for?" cried the Captain. "Do you suppose it's any use looking for foot marks after all this tramping! Go, guard the camp on all sides!"

"I will send four coloured boys," he said to the Englishman and the Colonial, "to dig the grave. You'd better bury him at once; there's no use waiting. We start first thing in the morning."

When they were alone, the Englishman uncovered Peter Halket's breast.

There was one small wound just under the left bosom; and one on the crown of the head; which must have been made after he had fallen down.

"Strange, isn't it, what he can have been doing here?" said the Colonial;

"a small wound, isn't it?"

"A pistol shot," said the Englishman, closing the bosom.

"A pistol--"

The Englishman looked up at him with a keen light in his eye.

"I told you he would not kill that nigger.--See--here--" He took up the knife which had fallen from Peter Halket's grasp, and fitted it into a piece of the cut leather that lay on the earth.