His advice was needed. In more than one instance some desperate savage, mortally and otherwise disabled, gripped his assegai in a feigned death grip to strike a last blow at any who should be unwary enough to approach him. But Sapazani was found not to be dead, though his days were numbered not by hours, but by minutes.
He, as they surrounded him, opened his eyes, but made no act of aggression, although by an effort he might have reached his broad assegai. Verna’s bullet had drilled through his chest, narrowly missing the heart, and, being a Dum-dum, had torn away a gaping and ghastly hole beneath the shoulder where it had come out. As they propped him up against the body of one of his slain followers the rush of blood was enough to have ended the life of any one but a savage then and there.
“Whau!” he ejaculated feebly. “It is U’ Ben. And we were friends.”
“Were, yes,” answered the trader shortly. “No one knows better than Sapazani why we are so no longer.”
This, of course, was “dark” talking to Bray and the police. However, they supposed it referred to some trading transaction between these two. And at the same time a very uncomfortable misgiving came into Ben Halse’s mind. What if the dying chief, out of sheer malignity, were to “give away,” for the benefit of the police, some very awkward, not to say incriminating transactions in which he had been mixed up. But Sapazani’s next words were—
“Where is Izibu? for something tells me I died by her stroke. I would fain see her again to say farewell.”
Ben Halse’s face hardened, knowing what he did and what the others did not. He hesitated, but as he did so a clear, hard voice struck upon his ear—upon the ears of all of them.
“Here is Izibu.” And Verna, who had been approaching unseen, joined the group.
“It is well,” said the dying chief. “I am content. We have been friends.”
There was a world of pathetic dignity about the man as he sat there, his large, powerful frame thrilling in every nerve with bodily anguish, his fine face wet with the dews of death, as he turned his lustrous but fading eyes upon one or the other of the group.