These half-civilized creatures had been cast right back into savagery by some influence beyond their control. Sru had not been the influence, but he had worked it, just as a sorcerer might raise a devil.
Sru had not yet made his appearance. Schumer asked for him, and the reply came that he was dead and lying over somewhere in the grove near the house. One of the stray shots fired by Floyd while the brushwood was being placed against the house wall had found Sru and sent him to his last account.
"Well," said Schumer, "that's the best news we have had yet. It clears up everything. You don't want to punish these fellows, do you? Seems to me you have given them a pretty good grueling already, three dead and several wounded."
"I don't want to punish them," said Floyd. "You can tell them I call it quits. Sru was the man most to blame, and now he is dead. But there is one man I have a grudge against—Timau—and I don't see him here."
"Timau," said Schumer. "Which one is that?"
"He's a fellow whose life I saved at a great deal of risk and trouble. He stepped into one of those big clamshells and got seized, and I managed to free him, but he's not here."
Schumer turned to the natives and asked them where Timau was; then he translated to Floyd.
"It seems he wouldn't take part in the business because you had brought him back from the dead."
"So I did, with artificial respiration."
"Just so—and Sru bound him and put him in one of the tents. He's there now. We had better go and loose him."