It was a shot of forty yards, and he doubted his skill. But the affair was desperate. If they went up or down stream, and swam across, there were still eight to their two, and, in a hand to hand rush, he could not doubt the termination.
Taking very careful aim, he at last fired, and fancied he heard the bullet strike. He could even see the man's face, which was turned towards him.
He noticed in that brief space of time that Big Jack dropped his spear and put his hand to his heart. An expression of futile rage passed over him as he staggered. He made an effort to keep his balance, but, failing, fell on his knees. He rose again, grasping his spear, but as he endeavoured to hurl it towards the quarter whence his unseen death had come, he staggered again, fell headlong, and rolled into the river.
And after one moment, in which the rest stood as though they were carved figures, they broke, ran up the bank, and burst into the scrub like startled kangaroos. Smith heard them breaking through it for a long minute, and when the noise died away in the distance, he returned to the canoe. He found the Baker looking greatly distressed, for the girl was on the bank with the dead man's head upon her knees, and she was sobbing terribly.
"She says she doesn't think Bill meant any 'arm," said the Baker, "and for all I know, she's right, for she says him and his brother never 'it it off. And perhaps 'e just meant to tell us to lie low."
And the Baker broke down and cried too.
"I feel just like a murderer," he said.
Smith, as he looked on the man stretched out upon the bank, could not help thinking that he was as magnificent dead as he had been alive, and far more like an ordinary human being who was not degenerate or an unparalleled reversion. For, in the quiet sleep of death, much of the ferocity natural to a savage had disappeared, and there was a calmness on his face which gave him an air of peculiar and strong serenity. He looked still like some ancient warrior, but centuries had dropped away from him; instead of a savage of the Stone Age, clad in skins, he might have been a Viking slain in some uncommon adventure. His hair was now drawn backwards from his forehead by the girl who mourned him, and she had separated his long golden moustache from the deeper brown of his curly beard, and wiped away the bloody froth from his lips. He looked like a man, sufficient to himself in life or in death, brave, enduring, and now, almost wise. Smith turned away with a sigh.
"I'm sorry for this," he said. "What shall we do now? What do you do with the dead in your tribe, Kitty?" he asked.
"They are given to the ants," she said.