Maxwell walked straight on until he turned and glanced over his shoulder; then he shook the moisture from his jacket, and in doing so, let his hand slip from its lower corner to his revolver holster. He turned again, with death, as it were, suspended above his head; and Amadu gasped as he approached the thicker clump of cane. There was now no sign of an enemy's presence in all the jungle; only the splashing and panting of the carriers behind.
Suddenly the white man's hand swept out level with his shoulder, and almost at the same instant a bright flash blazed from the cane. Then the quick ringing of a rifle broke through the dull thud of the flintlock and the pistol's second crack, and Maxwell, reeling a little, hurled himself into the thicket.
With a roar to those who followed, Amadu plunged in too, a score of clamorous black men with naked blades hard behind, and was just in time to spring upon a naked man who strove to clear an entangled foot from the creeper withes. The short blade twice passed through him; and wrenching it free with an exultant laugh, Amadu floundered on. For a space he and his followers smashed through that strip of jungle, but found only a smoking rifle and one flintlock gun; then calling off the rest, he led them back to the path. Maxwell was sitting there in a pool of water.
"Send those boys back," he said thickly. "One of those brutes missed me, the other did not. One can't always guess aright, Amadu, and I thought there were at least a score of them."
Amadu groaned. He could see that his master was hard stricken, for he looked faint and cold, and did not usually converse with his subordinates in that kind of English. Still, he understood the first sentence, and drove the curious black men back beyond the corner before he stooped over the speaker. Maxwell's face was distorted and clammy. There was a stain on the side of his jacket, and it plainly cost him an effort to speak.
"Did you lib for chop them bush boy, Amadu?"
"One of him, sah," was the grim answer. "He done leave them rifle."
"Let me see," said Maxwell. "That is an old chassepot. Rideau had a number of them. You don't quite follow? Well, you got the wrong man, Amadu. Don't stand there, but slit up this jacket. Chop them doff piece up the side of him."
Amadu did it with the still wet blade, and groaned again when Maxwell, turning his head a little, looked down at the slow, red trickle from his right side, then passed his hand across his lips and nodded when he saw what there was upon it.
"Take them lil' silver bottle out of my pocket and pull the top off him," he said very slowly; and when Amadu had done so he gulped down a draught of lukewarm brandy before he spoke again.