Joan and Sheldon
heard the twanging thrum and saw Koogoo throw out his arms, at the same
time dropping his rifle, stumble forward, and sink down on his hands and
knees. Between his naked shoulders, low down and to the left, appeared
the bone-barbed head of an arrow. He had been shot through and through.
Cocked rifles swept the bush with nervous apprehension. But there was no
rustle, no movement; nothing but the humid oppressive silence.
"Bushmen he no stop," Binu Charley called out, the sound of his voice
startling more than one of them. "Allee same damn funny business. That
fella Koogoo no look 'm eye belong him. He no savvee little bit."
Koogoo's arms had crumpled under him, and he lay quivering where he had
fallen. Even as Binu Charley came to the front the stricken black's
breath passed from him, and with a final convulsive stir he lay still.
"Right through the heart," Sheldon said, straightening up from the
stooping examination. "It must have been a trap of some sort."
He noticed Joan's white, tense face, and the wide eyes with which she
stared at the wreck of what had been a man the minute before.
"I recruited that boy myself," she said in a whisper. "He came down out
of the bush at Poonga-Poonga and right on board the _Martha_ and offered
himself.
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