Already a spear was couched.
Trent's revolver flashed out in the sunlight.
"Cut that cord!" he ordered again.
The fetish man poised his knife.

Trent hesitated no longer, but shot him deliberately through the heart.

He jumped into the air and fell forward upon his face with a death-cry which seemed to find an echo from every hut and from behind every tree of Bekwando.

It was like the knell of their last hope, for had he not told them that he was fetish, that his body was proof against those wicked fires and that if the white men came, he himself would slay them! And now he was dead! The last barrier of their superstitious hope was broken down.

Even the drunken King sat up and made strange noises.
Trent stooped down and, picking up the knife, cut the bonds which had bound the boy.