I was over him instantly heaving away the hunk of stone. But I did not attempt to lift the little mangled body. I saw he was numbed by the shock; I knew he was dying. He lay there and smiled, as I bent above his tiny form. He made no motion with hand or head, but when I placed my finger in his wee palm, he closed his baby-like grip upon it and gave me the fondest look I have ever beheld.
The Blacks could have swooped upon me, the earth could have quivered with agony and death, but I should have known nothing of it all, nor have cared. All the pangs of wrenched affection darted through my breast. I was smitten dumb to see that human look of love, gratitude and hope. The homely little face became transfigured with a look of inward beauty; the promise of a dawning, evolving human being was there, glowing like the life in a spark. The wistful eyes burned with that singular light which makes us hope for things supernal.
On my finger the tiny grip fluttered. I felt myself breaking down like a woman.
The little chap’s lip quivered a second; his fleeting breath came forth lightly.
“Man,” he whispered in the stillness, and smiling, closed his tired little eyes—forever.
CHAPTER XXXIII
KING AT LAST
There was a cloud over my heart; there was a pall of smoke and fumes drawing slowly off from the scene of devastation. It seemed as if the chasm in the hill-side were a ghastly wound of colossal proportions, for not only was the earth torn raggedly, but blood was about, and the slope was strewn with mangled remains.
I felt no exultation; I was ill at the sight, and weak and quite subdued. It was a pitiful, dreadful picture, with the two elephants like mounds of butchery, looming large in the middle distance, while down below were numerous wounded creatures creeping away toward the jungle. And the dying made sounds of moaning.
Not far from where I had fallen, lay part of a long, red arm—Grin’s. The bombs had flung it nearly to the camp he had sought to betray. He must have been among the foremost of the Links who drove the elephants up the hill. I conjured back my vision of the charging force, at the second when the explosion created its havoc. I remembered the huge wild animals most distinctly, their trunks uplifted, their feet in awkward, active motion, while to right and left and almost on their heels, the Blacks surged up in their dance of death. I knew then that the destruction among them must have been tremendous, for the whole length of the trench had been covered thickly by their numbers, and the lateral force of the bursting mines, especially down the hill, had evidently swept the slope for rods.
I shook my head as I realised the narrowness of my own escape.