With the gun trailing after him—another foolish trick—the savage crawled on his belly through the long grass to within firing distance of the tree clump.
Then he lay and waited.
He had not long to wait.
The giraffe, hungry and feeding, was straying along the edge of the clump of trees, picking down the youngest and freshest leaves, just as a gourmet picks the best bits out of a salad.
In a few minutes his body was in view, the endless neck flung up, the absurd head and little, stumpy, useless horns prying amidst the leaves, and every now and then slewing round and sweeping the country in search of danger.
Félix lay motionless as a log; then, during a moment when the giraffe’s head was hidden in the leaves, he flung himself into position and took aim.
A tremendous report rang out, the giraffe fell, squealing, and roaring and kicking, and Félix, flung on his back, lay stretched out, a cloud of gauzy blue smoke in the air above him.
The breech of the rifle had blown out. He had fired the right-hand barrel, but the concussion had sprung the left-hand cock as well.
It seemed to the savage that a great black hand struck him in the face and flung him backward. He lay for a moment, half-stunned; then he sat up, and, behold! the sun had gone out and he was in perfect blackness.
He was blind, for his eyes were gone, and where his nose had been was now a cavity. He looked as though he had put on a red velvet domino, and he sat there in the sun with the last vestige of the blue smoke dissolving above him in the air, not knowing in the least what had happened to him.