After devoting our attention to the human beings, we then turned to the beast.
The boar had received François's two bullets, but the one shot broadwise had been flattened against its thigh, almost without breaking the skin; the other, fired in front, had glided over its skull, in which it had dug a deep wound; whilst Moinat's ball had caught the animal in the small of the shoulder and had killed it stone dead.
The dogs were given their usual portion; then the beast was put on the shoulders of two foresters to be carried to la Maison-Neuve,—as the messengers of Moses brought the bunch of grapes from the Promised Land,—and hunting began again as though nothing had happened, without any prevision of the much more terrible event than the one we have related that was to come to pass before the day's end.
The third attack took place in Moinat's preserve, adjacent to the one in which Bobino had been decorated, three days before: it was reached after three-quarters of an hour's walking. The same precautions were taken as in the preceding battues; a ring was formed, and this time I was placed between M. Deviolaine and Berthelin; then, as Moinat had found the beast, it was his turn to go inside the enclosure to rout it out.
The barking of his dog announced in five minutes' time that the boar had been started.
Everyone was on the alert to have a shot at it as it passed, when suddenly we heard the report of a gun, and, at the same time, I saw a piece of rock, which was about forty paces from me, burst into splinters; then I heard a cry of pain on my right. I turned my head, and saw Berthelin clinging to the branch of a tree with one hand, pressing the other against his side, whence the blood gushed out between his fingers. Gradually he became too faint to hold himself up, bent over double, and sank to the ground with a heavy groan.
"Help! help!" I cried; "Berthelin is wounded."
I ran to him, followed by M. Deviolaine, while the whole string of huntsmen came rapidly up to us.
Berthelin had lost consciousness. We held him in our arms, the blood flowing in torrents from a wound in his left hip: the ball was lodged in his body.
We were all standing round the dying man, questioning each other with our eyes to know who had fired the shot, when we saw Choron, capless, issue out of the underwood, pale as a ghost, holding his gun, which was still smoking, in his hand, and shouting:—