He hem’d and haw’d a little at Squat’s proposal, and then got out of it by saying, “That is not necessary.  I can shoot it from here.”

“It is too far,” objected Blacky.

“Too far!  This is an Enfield rifle.  I could kill the poor beast at three times that distance.”

Blacky was amazed.  “An Enfield rifle,” said he, in the soft musical murmur of his tribe, which is the one charm of the poor Hottentot; “and shoot three times so far.”

“Yes,” said Christopher.  Then, seeing his companion’s hesitation, he conceived a hope.  “If I kill that eland from here, will you give me the diamond for my horse and the wonderful rifle?—­no Hottentot has such a rifle.”

Squat became cold directly.  “The price of the diamond is two hundred pounds.”

Staines groaned with disappointment, and thought to himself with rage, “Anybody but me would club the rifle, give the obstinate black brute a stunner, and take the diamond—­God forgive me!”

Says the Hottentot cunningly, “I can’t think so far as white man.  Let me see the eland dead, and then I shall know how far the rifle shoot.”

“Very well,” said Staines.  But he felt sure the savage only wanted his meal, and would never part with the diamond, except for the odd money.

However, he loaded his left barrel with one of the explosive projectiles Falcon had given him; it was a little fulminating shell with a steel point.  It was with this barrel he had shot the murcat overnight, and he had found he shot better with this barrel than the other.  He loaded his left barrel then, saw the powder well up, capped it and cut away a strip of the acacia with his knife to see clear, and lying down in volunteer fashion, elbow on ground, drew his bead steadily on an eland who presented him her broadside, her back being turned to the wood.  The sun shone on her soft coat, and never was a fairer mark, the sportsman’s deadly eye being in the cool shade, the animal in the sun.

He aimed long and steadily.  But just as he was about to pull the trigger, Mind interposed, and he lowered the deadly weapon.  “Poor creature!” he said, “I am going to take her life—­for what? for a single meal.  She is as big as a pony; and I am to lay her carcass on the plain, that we may eat two pounds of it.  This is how the weasel kills the rabbit; sucks an ounce of blood for his food, and wastes the rest.  So the demoralized sheep-dog tears out the poor creature’s kidneys, and wastes the rest.  Man, armed by science with such powers of slaying, should be less egotistical than weasels and perverted sheep-dogs.  I will not kill her.  I will not lay that beautiful body of hers low, and glaze those tender, loving eyes that never gleamed with hate or rage at man, and fix those innocent jaws that never bit the life out of anything, not even of the grass she feeds on, and does it more good than harm.  Feed on, poor innocent.  And you be blanked; you and your diamond, that I begin to wish I had never seen; for it would corrupt an angel.”