Berselius had not asked a single question as to the catastrophe. His own misfortune had banished for him, doubtless, all interest in everything else.

Adams had said to him nothing of FÉlix, his horrible deeds or his theft of the rifle. FÉlix, though he had vanished from Adams’s life completely and forever, had not vanished from the face of the earth. He was very much alive and doing, and his deeds and his fate are worth a word, for they formed a tragedy well fitting the stage of this merciless land.

The Zappo Zap, having secured the gun and its ammunition, revelling in the joy of possession and power, went skipping on his road, which lay to the northeast. Six miles from the camp he flung himself down by a bush, and, with the gun covered by his arm, slept, and hunted in his sleep, like a hound, till dawn.

Then he rose and pursued his way, still travelling northeast, his bird-like eyes skimming the land and horizon. He sang as he pursued his way, and his song fitted his filed teeth to a charm. If a poisoned arrow could sing or a stabbing spear, it would sing what FÉlix sang as he went, his long morning shadow stalking behind him; he as soulless and as heartless as it.

What motive of attachment had driven him to follow Verhaeren to Yandjali from the Bena Pianga country heaven knows, for the man was quite beyond the human pale. The elephants were far, far above him in power of love and kindness; one had to descend straight to the alligators to match him, and even then one found oneself at fault.

He was not. Those three words alone describe this figure of india-rubber that could still walk and talk and live and lust, and to whom slaying and torture were amongst the Æsthetics of life.

An hour before noon, beyond and above a clump of trees, he sighted a moving object. It was the head of a giraffe.

It was the very same bull giraffe that had fled with the elephant herd and then wheeled away south from it. It was wandering devious now, feeding by itself, and the instant FÉlix saw the tell-tale head, he dropped flat to the ground as if he had been shot. The giraffe had not seen him, for the head, having vanished for a moment, reappeared; it was feeding, plucking down small branches of leaves, and FÉlix, lying on his side, opened the breech of the rifle, drew the empty cartridge case, inserted a cartridge in each barrel, and closed the breech. Now, unknown to Adams, when he had fired the gun the day before, there was a plug of clay in the left-hand barrel about two inches from the muzzle; just an inconsiderable wad of clay about as thick as a gun wad; the elephant folk had done this when they had mishandled the gun, and, though the thing could have been removed with a twig, Puck himself could not have conceived a more mischievous obstruction. He certainly never would have conceived so devilish a one.

Adams had, fortunately for himself, fired the right-hand barrel; the concussion had not broken up the plug, for it was still moist, being clay from the trodden-up edge of the pool. It was moist still, for the night dew had found it.

The Zappo Zap knew nothing of the plug. He knew nothing, either, of the tricks of these big, old-fashioned elephant guns, for he kept both barrels full cock, and it is almost three to two that if you fire one of these rifles with both barrels full cock, both barrels will go off simultaneously, or nearly so, from the concussion.

With the gun trailing after him—another foolish trick—the savage crawled on his belly through the long grass to within firing distance of the tree clump.

Then he lay and waited.

He had not long to wait.

The giraffe, hungry and feeding, was straying along the edge of the clump of trees, picking down the youngest and freshest leaves, just as a gourmet picks the best bits out of a salad.

In a few minutes his body was in view, the endless neck flung up, the absurd head and little, stumpy, useless horns prying amidst the leaves, and every now and then slewing round and sweeping the country in search of danger.

FÉlix lay motionless as a log; then, during a moment when the giraffe’s head was hidden in the leaves, he flung himself into position and took aim.

A tremendous report rang out, the giraffe fell, squealing, and roaring and kicking, and FÉlix, flung on his back, lay stretched out, a cloud of gauzy blue smoke in the air above him.

The breech of the rifle had blown out. He had fired the right-hand barrel, but the concussion had sprung the left-hand cock as well.

It seemed to the savage that a great black hand struck him in the face and flung him backward. He lay for a moment, half-stunned; then he sat up, and, behold! the sun had gone out and he was in perfect blackness.

He was blind, for his eyes were gone, and where his nose had been was now a cavity. He looked as though he had put on a red velvet domino, and he sat there in the sun with the last vestige of the blue smoke dissolving above him in the air, not knowing in the least what had happened to him.

He knew nothing of blindness; he knew little of pain. An Englishman in his wounded state would have been screaming in agony; to FÉlix the pain was sharp, but it was nothing to the fact that the sun had “gone down.”

He put his hand to the pain and felt his ruined face, but that did not tell him anything.

This sudden black dark was not the darkness which came from shutting one’s eyes; it was something else, and he scrambled on his feet to find out.

He could feel the darkness now, and he advanced a few steps to see if he could walk through it; then he sprang into the air to see if it was lighter above, and dived on his hands and knees to see if he could slip under it, and shouted and whooped to see if he could drive it away.

But it was a great darkness, not to be out-jumped, jumped he as high as the sun, or slipped under, were he as thin as a knife, or whooped away, though he whooped to everlasting.

He walked rapidly, and then he began to run. He ran rapidly, and he seemed to possess some instinct in his feet which told him of broken ground. The burst gun lay where he had left it in the grass, and the dead giraffe lay where it had fallen by the trees; the wind blew, and the grass waved, the sun spread his pyramid of light from horizon to horizon, and in the sparkle above a black dot hung trembling above the stricken beast at the edge of the wood.

The black figure of the man continued its headlong course. It was running in a circle of many miles, impelled through the nothingness of night by the dark soul raging in it.

Hours passed, and then it fell, and lay face to the sky and arms outspread. You might have thought it dead. But it was a thing almost indestructible. It lay motionless, but it was alive with hunger.

During all its gyrations it had been followed and watched closely. It had not lain for a minute when a vulture dropped like a stone from the sky and lit on it with wings outspread.

Next moment the vulture was seized, screeching, torn limb from limb, and in the act of being devoured!

But the sentence of the desert on the blind is death, trap vultures as cunningly as you will, and devour them as ferociously. The eye is everything in the battle of the strong against the weak. And so it came about that two days later a pair of leopards from the woods to the northeast fought with the figure, which fought with teeth and hands and feet, whilst the yellow-eyed kites looked on at a battle that would have turned with horror the heart of Flamininus.