One glance he gave—but one; then, springing to his feet, fairly palpitating with excitement, he almost screamed, “I knew it, I knew it. Zero! Zero! by the Living God!” and as if it were a sombre echo of his words, a rifle spirted its vivid jet of flame from the outer gloom beyond the camp fire, and one of the native guides sitting just behind Kenyon sprang into the air with a bullet through his brain, and fell to the ground a corpse.
Instantly the whole party sought cover, but no further attempt of any kind was made to molest them, and when morning dawned they could nowhere find a trace of the dastard who had fired the fatal shot, and all that remained for them to do was to bury the body of their poor, unoffending servant, and choose out a safer camping ground where they might, perhaps, obtain immunity from such unpleasant nocturnal visitors.
Through the livelong night the thoughts of both Leigh and Kenyon had, as may well be imagined, been very busy; but whilst Leigh was entirely absorbed in the one idea of avenging his murdered wife and child, the purposes of the American went deeper. He, too, had a righteous act of retribution to perform, but he had also first, in the execution of his duty, to find Grenville alive, and release him, if it could be done; and then, again, vengeance, according to his idea, would not be consummated by a bullet wound or a spear-thrust: he simply yearned to get his hated enemy in his clutches, and to make him ignominiously expiate the countless crimes of his villainous life under the hands of the public executioner, but feared that such a triumph would be utterly unobtainable, for, setting aside all other considerations, and glancing at Leigh’s stern, set countenance, Kenyon felt that the common enemy would receive but short shrift so far as the Englishman was concerned if once he fell into the power of the little band.
Clearly, however, it was little use as yet planning the cooking of a hare which appeared much more likely to catch them than to allow the reverse to happen, and until they knew how and where the enemy was posted it was absolutely necessary to exercise the greatest discretion, which, in vulgar parlance, meant “making themselves scarce,” which they accordingly did without further loss of time, giving the place leg-bail, and putting five-and-twenty miles between themselves and the kloof ere they again halted for the night.
Chapter Four.
The Mouth of Hell.
Leigh had naturally asked Kenyon for an explanation of his wild excitement consequent upon the production of the treasured scrap of paper, and for information concerning the murderer whom he designated as “Zero,” and these details the American had promised to give him the moment he was absolutely sure that the man whom he now knew to be, without a doubt, responsible for the deaths of Lady Drelincourt and her infant son, was identical with the slaver for whom their party was searching. Of this last he felt morally certain, for his deductions had, all through, proved much too correct to turn out utterly wrong in their final act: still it was a methodical and praiseworthy habit of his, born of his wide experience amongst criminals of every class, to impute nothing and to infer nothing which he could not prove up to the very hilt, and there were, moreover, personal facts arising from the explanation, facts of which his whole soul abhorred the revelation, and of which nothing short of the iron hand of stern necessity would persuade him to speak, even to Leigh.
By the camp fire that night the white men consulted long and earnestly, whilst their sable followers crouched near them in the gloom, in abject fear of the arrival of another unwelcome messenger from the mysterious rifles of their unseen foes.