“All gone dam,” said Félix. And volumes would not have expressed the situation more graphically. Then the savage, having contemplated the scene for a moment, rushed forward to a heap of stuff—broken boxes and what not—dragged something from it and gave a shout.
It was the big elephant rifle, with its cartridge-bag attached. The stock was split, but the thing was practically intact. Félix waved it over his head and laughed and whooped.
“Gun!” yelled Félix.
Adams beckoned to him, and he came like a black devil in the moonlight—a black devil with filed teeth and flashing eyeballs—and Adams pointed to the tree and motioned him to leave the gun there and follow him. Félix obeyed, and Adams started in the direction in which he had seen Berselius flung.
It was not far to walk, and they had not far to search. A hundred yards took them to a break in the ground, and there in the moonlight, with arms extended, lay the body of the once powerful Berselius, the man who had driven them like sheep, the man whose will was law. The man of wealth and genius, great as Lucifer in evil, yet in courage and heroism tremendous. God-man or devil-man, or a combination of both, but great, incontestably great and compelling.
Adams knelt down beside the body, and the Zappo Zap stood by with incurious eyes looking on.
Berselius was not dead. He was breathing; breathing deeply and stertorously, as men breathe in apoplexy or after sunstroke or ruinous injury to the brain. Adams tore open the collar of the hunting shirt; then he examined the limbs.
Berselius, flung like a stone from a catapult, had, unfortunately for himself, not broken a limb. That might have saved him. His head was the injured part, and Adams, running his fingers through the hair, matted with blood, came on the mischief. The right parietal bone was dented very slightly for a space nearly as broad as a penny. The skin was broken, but the bone itself, though depressed slightly, was not destroyed. The inner table of the skull no doubt was splintered, hence the brain mischief.
There was only one thing to be done—trephine. And that as swiftly as possible.
Everything needful was in the instrument-case, but had it escaped destruction?