The Pools of Silence

by H. De Vere Stacpoole

Berselius had not asked a single question as to the catastrophe. His own misfortune had banished for him, doubtless, all interest in everything else.

Adams had said to him nothing of Félix, his horrible deeds or his theft of the rifle. Félix, though he had vanished from Adams’s life completely and forever, had not vanished from the face of the earth. He was very much alive and doing, and his deeds and his fate are worth a word, for they formed a tragedy well fitting the stage of this merciless land.

The Zappo Zap, having secured the gun and its ammunition, revelling in the joy of possession and power, went skipping on his road, which lay to the northeast. Six miles from the camp he flung himself down by a bush, and, with the gun covered by his arm, slept, and hunted in his sleep, like a hound, till dawn.

Then he rose and pursued his way, still travelling northeast, his bird-like eyes skimming the land and horizon. He sang as he pursued his way, and his song fitted his filed teeth to a charm. If a poisoned arrow could sing or a stabbing spear, it would sing what Félix sang as he went, his long morning shadow stalking behind him; he as soulless and as heartless as it.

What motive of attachment had driven him to follow Verhaeren to Yandjali from the Bena Pianga country heaven knows, for the man was quite beyond the human pale. The elephants were far, far above him in power of love and kindness; one had to descend straight to the alligators to match him, and even then one found oneself at fault.

He was not. Those three words alone describe this figure of india-rubber that could still walk and talk and live and lust, and to whom slaying and torture were amongst the æsthetics of life.

An hour before noon, beyond and above a clump of trees, he sighted a moving object. It was the head of a giraffe.

It was the very same bull giraffe that had fled with the elephant herd and then wheeled away south from it. It was wandering devious now, feeding by itself, and the instant Félix saw the tell-tale head, he dropped flat to the ground as if he had been shot. The giraffe had not seen him, for the head, having vanished for a moment, reappeared; it was feeding, plucking down small branches of leaves, and Félix, lying on his side, opened the breech of the rifle, drew the empty cartridge case, inserted a cartridge in each barrel, and closed the breech. Now, unknown to Adams, when he had fired the gun the day before, there was a plug of clay in the left-hand barrel about two inches from the muzzle; just an inconsiderable wad of clay about as thick as a gun wad; the elephant folk had done this when they had mishandled the gun, and, though the thing could have been removed with a twig, Puck himself could not have conceived a more mischievous obstruction. He certainly never would have conceived so devilish a one.

Adams had, fortunately for himself, fired the right-hand barrel; the concussion had not broken up the plug, for it was still moist, being clay from the trodden-up edge of the pool. It was moist still, for the night dew had found it.

The Zappo Zap knew nothing of the plug. He knew nothing, either, of the tricks of these big, old-fashioned elephant guns, for he kept both barrels full cock, and it is almost three to two that if you fire one of these rifles with both barrels full cock, both barrels will go off simultaneously, or nearly so, from the concussion.