"A-a-a-a!" ejaculated Simba, deeply astonished.
"We will use it but a little while longer," Kingozi concluded. "Then you shall have it again."
"But to give this specimen to a gun bearer!" cried Winkleman in English. "That is craziness! It is a museum piece."
"It belongs to him; and I have promised," said Kingozi.
Winkleman subsided with deep rumblings. After a moment he renewed his discussion.
Kingozi only half heard him. His mind was occupied by another, more human problem. The discovery that the atropin and not the pilocarpin had been destroyed agitated him profoundly; not, as might be believed, because it enabled him at a critical time to regain the use of his sight, but because it threw before him an insistent question. Did, or did not, Bibi-ya-chui know? He recalled the incident in all its little details--himself in his chair and Cazi Moto squatting before the three bottles set up before them, carefully tracing in the sand with a stick the characters on the labels; the Leopard Woman's sudden dash forward; the tinkle of smashed glass, and her voice panting with excitement: "I will read your labels for you now--the bottle you hold in your hand! It is atropin, atropin"--and her wild laugh.
Did she know, or was she guessing or bluffing?
It hurt him, hurt him inconceivably to think that she might have deceived him thus; might have broken the wrong bottle, and then deliberately have kept him in darkness with the very remedy at hand. That would seem the refinement of cruelty.
But he must be fair. She was then fighting, fighting with all her power against odds, for her sworn duty. Deceit was her natural weapon. And at that time such deceit seemed very likely to win for her her point. No, he could not blame her there; he could not consistently even feel hurt. The few moments' reasoning brought him to the point where he did not feel hurt. After a little he even admired the quickness of wit.
The instinctive depression vanished before this reasoning. He suddenly became light-hearted.