Jefferson, standing very straight, opened the breech of his pistol, ran a finger across the back of the chamber, and then closed it with a little snap which, though the pump was humming, sounded startlingly distinct. His lips were tightly set, and his face was very grim. The loathsome figure on the rope mowed and grinned at him.
"I suppose the thing was human—once," he said. "Still, we can't have it here. These complaints are contagious, one understands, but I wish it hadn't happened. He's too like a man."
He dropped the pistol to his side, as though his nerve had momentarily failed him, and Austin, who suddenly grasped his purpose, sprang forward as he raised it again.
"Hold on!" he said. "Do you realise what it is you propose to do?"
Jefferson turned to him slowly, and there was a curious stillness among those who watched them. Austin was glad of the hum of the big pump and the pounding of the engine, for he felt that silence would have made the tension unendurable. Then Jefferson smiled, a little wry smile.
"I know," he said, a trifle hoarsely, "it isn't nice to think of, but it's no more than happens to a superfluous kitten—and it's necessary. Heaven knows what the poor devil suffered before he came to this, and we don't want to. He's animate carrion without reason or sensibility now. It was only the light brought him here when Funnel-paint somehow sent him within sight of us."
Austin saw that this was true. There was no glimmer of human intelligence in the creature's wandering gaze, but he still bore the shape of a man, and that counted for a good deal, after all.
"Jefferson," he said, "it can't be done!"
His comrade looked at him with half-closed eyes. "Would you wish to live if you looked like that, or do you want the rest of us to find out what he went through? I'm responsible for those men yonder—and it's only antedating the thing a month or two. The life is almost rotted out of him. Stand clear! We must get it over!"
It was evident that the Spaniards understood what he meant to do, and a murmur of concurrence rose from them, for they knew a little about the more loathsome forms of skin diseases. Men who might have escaped from the sepulchre walk abroad in the hot Southern countries, where restraint is unknown and salt fish is a staple food, but, though they have often themselves to blame, the innocent also suffer in Western Africa, and none of those who stood by, tense and strung up, had ever seen a man who looked quite as this one did.