He broke the stock and examined the chambers.
“This is what is the trouble,” he said, as he saw that the chambers were empty. “It can’t shoot if there’s nothing in there to shoot. You didn’t have it fully loaded.”
“But it was loaded when I left the white man’s camp!” Bomba replied. Then he remembered that he had been tempted to try his marksmanship on a tree the day before and had thus disposed of three of his cartridges.
His relief was great at this solution of the mystery, and he reloaded the weapon forthwith, mentally recording a vow that never again would he go to sleep or sally forth into the jungle without the revolver containing the full five missiles, any one of which might spell the difference between life and death.
A sudden thought occurred to him as he shoved the bodies of the vampires out of the door.
“Perhaps one of them had been here before,” he said to Casson, “and that is what made him come back with others to-night.”
“What makes you think that?” asked the old man, looking at him with some surprise.
“Because you were so weak when I found you in the hut,” replied Bomba. “The bat may have been sucking your blood when you lay asleep. Then the fire came and the smoke frightened the bat away. But he had taken so much of your blood that you had no strength left to get outside the door.”
“I hadn’t thought of that; but it may be so,” replied Casson. “I know I never felt so weak before. I felt as if I could not move hand or foot. And perhaps that is the reason I could not help you to-night. I wanted to. I tried to. I would have given my life to get to your side. But I could not.”
Though he could hardly drag one foot after the other, Bomba went to the stream back of the hut and washed his wounds thoroughly. Then he got out a salve that had great soothing and curative qualities and applied it on every place where he had been bitten. This done, he fell rather than lay down, and reclined there utterly exhausted till the break of day.