He said this with a strange solemnity of voice, and picking up the arrow he handed it to one of the blacks.
“That thing went right through my hair, Joe Carstairs,” he continued. “It’s making me wild.”
I hesitated no longer, but as the great savage rose up once more I took a quick aim and fired just as he was drawing his bow.
The smoke obscured my sight for a few moments, during which there was a furious yelling, and then, just as the thin bluish vapour was clearing off, there was another puff, and an echoing volley dying off in the distance, for Jack Penny had also fired.
“I don’t know whether I hit him,” he answered; “but he was climbing up there like t’other chap was, and I can’t see him now.”
In the excitement of the fight the terrible dread of injuring a fellow creature now seemed to have entirely passed away, and I watched one savage stealing from bush to bush, and from great stone to stone with an eagerness I could not have believed in till I found an opportunity of firing at him, just as he too had reached a dangerous place and had sent his first arrow close to my side.
I fired and missed him, and the savage shouted defiance as my bullet struck the stones and raised a puff of dust. The next moment he had replied with a well-directed arrow that made me wince, it was so near my head.
By this time I had reloaded and was taking aim again with feverish eagerness, when all at once a great stone crashed down from above and swept the savage from the ledge where he knelt.
I looked on appalled as the man rolled headlong down in company with the mass of stone, and then lay motionless in the bottom of the little valley.
“Who is it throwing stones?” drawled Jack slowly. “That was a big one, and it hit.”