“Missed!” muttered John Manning, “but he felt the bullet.”
“Hit!” cried Cyril excitedly, for all at once the bird’s wings closed, and it fell over and over and then dropped like a stone, crashing in among the trees about a hundred yards away.
The Indians had looked on at first incredulously, and several of them exchanged glances as the condor shot upward as if to escape unharmed; but the moment it turned over and began to fall, they set up a loud shout and rushed off to pick up the fallen bird, the whole crowd making for the dense patch of forest, and then walking back steadily, bearing the bird in triumph.
“Rather a risky thing to do, boys,” said the colonel, reloading as he spoke. “If I had missed, I should have done harm to the position we have made in these people’s estimation. But I felt that I could hit the bird, and now they will believe that I may prove a terrible enemy in anger.”
“Do it? Of course he could,” whispered John Manning. “I’ve known him take a rifle from one of our men lots of times, and pick off one of the Beloochees who was doing no end of mischief in our ranks up in the mountains.”
By this time the Indians were back, looking full of excitement, and ready almost to worship the white chief who had come amongst them, with such power of life and death in his hands—powers beside which their bows and arrows and poison-dealing blowpipes seemed to them to be pitiful in the extreme. They laid the body of the great bird, which was stone-dead, at his feet, and then looked at him wonderingly, as if to say, “What next?”
That shot had the effect which the colonel had intended to produce, for to a man the Indians felt the terrible power their white visitor held in his hand, and each felt that he might be the object of his vengeance if any attack was made.
But Colonel Campion felt that the effect was only likely to be temporary, and that he must gain the object for which he had made his perilous journey as quickly as possible, and begin to return before the impression had worn off.
Bidding Cyril then tell their guide that he should camp there for a few days, he sent the two men back for the mules, giving orders that they should take a couple of the Indians who had followed them to help.
His manner carried the day, and the party of four departed.