All at once he heard the other push his chair back; and he leaped to his feet with extreme facility.  He listened and got confused.  Must run again!  Right or left?  He heard footsteps.  He darted to the left, grasping his revolver, and at the very same instant, as it seemed to him, they came into violent collision.  Both shouted with surprise.  A loud explosion took place between them; a roar of red fire, thick smoke; and Kayerts, deafened and blinded, rushed back thinking:  “I am hit—­it’s all over.”  He expected the other to come round—­to gloat over his agony.  He caught hold of an upright of the roof—­“All over!” Then he heard a crashing fall on the other side of the house, as if somebody had tumbled headlong over a chair—­then silence.  Nothing more happened.  He did not die.  Only his shoulder felt as if it had been badly wrenched, and he had lost his revolver.  He was disarmed and helpless!  He waited for his fate.  The other man made no sound.  It was a stratagem.  He was stalking him now!  Along what side?  Perhaps he was taking aim this very minute!

After a few moments of an agony frightful and absurd, he decided to go and meet his doom.  He was prepared for every surrender.  He turned the corner, steadying himself with one hand on the wall; made a few paces, and nearly swooned.  He had seen on the floor, protruding past the other corner, a pair of turned-up feet.  A pair of white naked feet in red slippers.  He felt deadly sick, and stood for a time in profound darkness.  Then Makola appeared before him, saying quietly:  “Come along, Mr. Kayerts.  He is dead.”  He burst into tears of gratitude; a loud, sobbing fit of crying.  After a time he found himself sitting in a chair and looking at Carlier, who lay stretched on his back.  Makola was kneeling over the body.

“Is this your revolver?” asked Makola, getting up.

“Yes,” said Kayerts; then he added very quickly, “He ran after me to shoot me—­you saw!”

“Yes, I saw,” said Makola.  “There is only one revolver; where’s his?”

“Don’t know,” whispered Kayerts in a voice that had become suddenly very faint.

“I will go and look for it,” said the other, gently.  He made the round along the verandah, while Kayerts sat still and looked at the corpse.  Makola came back empty-handed, stood in deep thought, then stepped quietly into the dead man’s room, and came out directly with a revolver, which he held up before Kayerts.  Kayerts shut his eyes.  Everything was going round.  He found life more terrible and difficult than death.  He had shot an unarmed man.

After meditating for a while, Makola said softly, pointing at the dead man who lay there with his right eye blown out—­

“He died of fever.”  Kayerts looked at him with a stony stare.  “Yes,” repeated Makola, thoughtfully, stepping over the corpse, “I think he died of fever.  Bury him to-morrow.”

And he went away slowly to his expectant wife, leaving the two white men alone on the verandah.