"You shoot him one time, sah! Give him to us and we done chop him!"
"It is the only possible verdict," Maxwell said with strange quietness. "One returns to primitive customs in this part of Africa; and it is more merciful that one should die than many. A curse upon the country! Must I turn executioner?--but for the sake of all those about us, there is no other way."
"What is your purpose?" Dane asked sharply, jumping to his feet.
Maxwell looked at him steadily with his lips firmly set and the color mottled a little in his face.
"Give him thirty seconds to reach the grass. I might miss; these others certainly would--and it will be a little easier that way. Do you understand me, interpreter? If he can reach the swamp alive no man shall harm him."
"You shall not do it!" Dane exclaimed hotly. "Heaven knows, the brute deserves it; but you can't go home with your hands fouled by that helpless wretch's blood! Pass him that rifle, and give me another, with fifty yards to commence at, if you can't think of anything better. The other is too much like murder!"
For a moment the returning color suffused Maxwell's forehead, and there was a flash of anger in his eyes, but he was generally master of his temper, and he answered calmly.
"I could not afford to lose you, Hilton. As I said, we have these men's lives to answer for; and while that fellow lives theirs and our own are equally in danger. That reminds me, I had forgotten something which may or may not surprise you further. You yonder, strike off his turban!"
A Kroo did it with the haft of his machet, and Dane gasped with astonishment, for there was a curiously shaped scar on the prisoner's forehead.
"The cross-marked man," said Maxwell. "The rascal who betrayed and sold poor Niven's carriers. He has, I think, one white man's death already to answer for."
Dane, stooping, laid a hand on each of the speaker's shoulders. Maxwell was a determined man, with virile brain and no lack of nervous energy; but Dane had the advantage in stature and muscular strength, and was glad that it was so. His leader was helpless in his grasp.
"You are perfectly right, Carsluith," he said stolidly. "If you were not, it would be useless for me to try to convince you; but I give you warning that the death of this man dissolves our partnership; and it will, at least, not be your rifle which fires the fatal shot."