s; and a small flow of blood
had made the ground below his feet dark.

Peter Halket looked up at him; the man seemed dead. He touched him
softly on the arm, then shook it slightly.

The man opened his eyes slowly, without raising his head; and looked at
Peter from under his weary eyebrows. Except that they moved they might
have been the eyes of a dead thing.

Peter put up his fingers to his own lips--"Hus-h! hus-h!" he said.

The man hung torpid, still looking at Peter.

Quickly Peter Halket knelt down and took the knife from his belt. In an
instant the riems that bound the feet were cut through; in another he
had cut the riems from the waist and neck: the riems dropped to
the ground from the arms, and the man stood free. Like a dazed dumb
creature, he stood, with his head still down, eyeing Peter.

Instantly Peter slipped the red bundle from his arm into the man's
passive hand.

"Ari-tsemaia! Hamba! Loop! Go!" whispered Peter Halket; using a word
from each African language he knew. But the black man still stood
motionless, looking at him as one paralysed.

"Hamba! Sucka! Go!" he whispered, motioning his hand.

In an instant a gleam of intelligence shot across the face; then a wild
transport. Without a word, without a sound, as the tiger leaps when the
wild dogs are on it, with one long, smooth spring, as though unwounded
and unhurt, he turned and disappeared into the grass. It closed behind
him; but as he went the twigs and leaves cracked under his tread.

The Captain threw back the door of his tent. "Who is there?" he cried.

Peter Halket stood below the tree with the knife in his hand.

The noise roused the whole camp: the men on guard came running; guns
were fired: and the half-sleeping men came rushing, grasping their
weapons. There was a sound of firing at the little tree; and the cry
went round the camp, "The Mashonas are releasing the spy!"

When the men got to the Captain's tent, they saw that the nigger was
gone; and Peter Halket was lying on his face at the foot of the tree;
with his head turned towards the Captain's door.

There was a wild confusion of voices. "How many were there?" "Where have
they gone to now?" "They've shot Peter Halket!"--"The Captain saw them
do it"--"Stand ready, they may come back any time!"

When the Englishman came, the other men, who knew he had been a medical
student, made way for him. He knelt down by Peter Halket.

"He's dead," he said, quietly.

When they ha