We raised our rifles together and aimed carefully. Arthur's rifle flashed, and mine an instant later. We heard a choking, beastlike cry, and the figure toppled and fell.
[CHAPTER VII.]
A STRANGE ALLY.
Evan rushed out from the interior of the house, rifle in hand.
"What's up? The natives?"
"We've got the gorilla, I think," said Arthur quietly.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flash light. The three of us started down the steps and approached the fallen figure cautiously. As we drew near, we could hear it moaning. The moans were curiously human. I glanced up at the sky. The last wisp of the cloud was just passing before the face of the moon, and when I looked down again, the figure was outlined in the pitiless glare of the moonlight.
Evan uttered an exclamation. The moaning figure was not that of the gorilla. It was a man, a black man, in the monkey skin of a juju priest, with all the amulets and charms of his calling strung about him. Evan started forward and shot out a string of questions in the local dialect. I could not catch a word, but Evan's voice was stern and angry. The moaning witch doctor spoke feebly, his voice growing weaker and weaker, and his words interrupted by gasps of pain. At last he choked and coughed weakly and was still.
Evan turned to us in a towering passion.
"Those damned natives are going to try to rush us at dawn! The witch doctor came to put a spell on us so they'd succeed. Oh, when I get at the black animals——"