"You canna kill me, Dick," laughed Mackay. "I've come over to work a miracle to that effect."
Yet to all appearances it seemed as if the resourceful Scot was tempting Providence to too great a degree in the present instance. The blacks redoubled their clamour at his approach, and one false move on the part of Bentley at this juncture would assuredly have brought about his companion's doom, but he did not once turn his back on the truculent band.
"What wild idea have you got?" he cried over his shoulder. "I think I'll manage them all right. I'm telling them that the spirit of the thunder killed their brethren for their own misdeeds."
"That's good enough," said Mackay. "But you'd better tell them you've decided to slaughter me right off now, only that you're afraid Wangul, the maist powerful god in their calendar, will protect me, seein' I'm an auld friend o' his. Get my rifle from old Methuselah, Dick; let me load it, an' shoot me with the first cartridge. Savvy?"
Bentley pretended not to hear, but he spoke out several sentences rapidly, which evidently pleased the warriors mightily, then he signed to the king to fetch the rifles.
"The long-barrelled one's mine, Dick," cautioned Mackay. "Ah, that's right."
He seized his treasured weapon, and in a trice had inserted two cartridges, and closed the breech, leaving one in the barrel. Bentley received back the deadly firearm with evident trepidation, and once more addressed the multitude.
"Hear ye, O my people," he cried, in their own weird tongue. "The friend of Wangul, the mighty dweller in the waters, whose breath dries up the land and makes it desolate, stands before you and dares the strength of the big thunder. If it so be that he dies by the spirit which issueth forth when the thunder speaks, then shall you work your will upon the others. But if he lives and defies the spirit, then surely is he indeed in the guarding care of Wangul, and must be permitted to go unhurt with his brethren to partake of food with me in my home by the hillside."
Mackay smiled grimly as he gathered the text of the speech, but a great roar from the assembled blacks indicated that the arrangement met with their full approval. Bentley raised the rifle with an obvious effort, and at the action a wild cry of alarm broke from the lips of the little group in the rear, who had never dreamt that Mackay's promised miracle was to take on such a deadly aspect of reality. And now the withered old chief created a diversion. With a gurgle of joy he sprang forward and took the rifle from Bentley's unresisting hands, and levelling it almost against Mackay's broad chest, pulled the trigger. A terrific explosion followed, and Bentley uttered a groan of anguish. The miracle, as he had understood it, was to have been accomplished by his firing wide, and he had relinquished the firearm, never thinking that the wily king of the savages meant to do other than lay it aside with the others. To his intense astonishment, however, and to the amazement of the massed blacks, the "friend of Wangul" stood erect and smiling after the thunderous reverberation had died away.
A loud cheer from his comrades behind showed how truly thankful they were at his marvellous escape from what had looked like certain death, but the most astounded of all present was, undoubtedly, the dusky individual who had fired the shot; he pranced about with the reeking rifle still in his hands, shrieking out all sorts of incantations. Suddenly he stopped short, opened and closed the breech of the gun, thereby forcing another cartridge into position, and, with a crafty smile on his lips, directed the long tube at a stalwart savage standing near, and fired. The unoffending victim uttered a yell like a wounded dingo, and sprang several feet into the air, then subsided on the ground, and writhed in torment with a bullet-hole clean through his shoulder. That was enough. With droning wails of fear the natives drew back in alarm, gazing at the man who had withstood a similar shock with wild, staring eyes. Bentley knelt down and examined the wounded native, then, calling two of his brethren, who came forward reluctantly, he gave them some directions for his treatment. The king meanwhile was grovelling on the ground, his head beating the dust, and his voice raised in feeble lamentation; and, while he was thus prostrated, Jack crept stealthily up and gathered in the rifles lying near.