He approached them—and drew back a pace—then suddenly raised the gun to his shoulder.
Two shots, following in quick succession, echoed through the ravine! Gebhr fell to the ground like a bag of sand. Chamis leaned forward in his saddle and struck the horse’s neck with his bloody forehead.
The two Bedouins screamed with fright, and springing from their horses, rushed at Stasch. The bend in the ravine was directly behind them, and had they fled there, as Stasch ardently hoped, they would have been able to escape death. But blinded by fear and rage, they thought to reach the boy and stab him before he had time to reload. Fools! They had scarcely gone a few steps when the trigger clicked again. The ravine rang with the echoes of the shots and both men fell face downward to the ground, wriggling like fish out of water.
One of them was shot in the throat and not very dangerously wounded; he rose again and supported himself on his hands, but at the same moment Saba buried his teeth in his neck.
Dead silence ensued.
This was interrupted by groans from Kali, who on his knees with outstretched hands screamed in disjointed Ki-swahili sentences:
“Bwana Kubwa![[16]] Kill the lion! Kill the bad people! But do not kill Kali!”
Stasch did not listen to his cries. For a while he stood there as in a daze. Then he saw Nell’s pale little face and her frightened, wide-open, wondering eyes. Springing toward her, he cried:
“Don’t be afraid, Nell! We are free, Nell!”
True, they were free, but free in the midst of a wild, uninhabited solitude, lost in the heart of the black country.