They had been firing for an hour, when Daniel’s neighbors saw him suddenly let go his rifle, turn over, and fall.

They hurried up to catch him; but he fell, face forward, to the ground, saying aloud, and very distinctly,—­

“This time they have not missed me!”

At the outcry raised by the two neighbors of Daniel, other hunters had hastened up, and among them the chief surgeon of “The Conquest,” one of those old “pill-makers,” who, under a jovial scepticism, and a rough, almost brutal outside, conceal great skill and an almost feminine tenderness.  As soon as he looked at the wounded man, whom his friends had stretched out on his back, making a pillow of their overcoats, and who lay there pale and inanimate, the good doctor frowned, and growled out,—­

“He won’t live.”

The officers were thunderstruck.

“Poor Champcey!” said one of them, “to escape the Kamboja fevers, and to be killed here at a pleasure party!  Do you recollect, doctor, what you said on the occasion of his second accident,—­’Mind the third’?”

The old doctor did not listen.  He had knelt down, and rapidly stripped the coat off Daniel’s back.  The poor man had been struck by a shot.  The ball had entered on the right side, a little behind; and between the fourth and the fifth rib, one could see a round wound, the edges drawn in.  But the most careful examination did not enable him to find the place where the projectile had come out again.  The doctor rose slowly, and, while carefully dusting the knees of his trousers, he said,—­

“All things considered, I would not bet that he may not escape.  Who knows where the ball may be lodged?  It may have respected the vital parts.

“Projectiles often take curious turns and twists.  I should almost be disposed to answer for M. Champcey, if I had him in a good bed in the hospital at Saigon.  At all events, we must try to get him there alive.  Let one of you gentlemen tell the sailors who have come with us to make a litter of branches.”

The noise of a struggle, of fearful oaths and inarticulate cries, interrupted his orders.  Some fifteen yards off, below the place where Daniel had fallen, two sailors were coming out of the thicket, their faces red with anger, dragging out a man with a wretched gun, who hurled out,—­

“Will you let me go, you parcel of good-for-nothings!  Let me go, or I’ll hurt you!”

He was so furiously struggling in the arms of the two sailors, clinging with an iron grip to roots and branches and rocks, turning and twisting at every step, that the men at last, furious at his resistance, lifted him up bodily, and threw him at the chief surgeon’s feet, exclaiming,—­

“Here is the scoundrel who has killed our lieutenant!”

It was a man of medium size, with a dejected air, and lack-lustre eyes, wearing a mustache and chin-beard, and looking impudent.  His costume was that of an Annamite of the middle classes,—­a blouse buttoned at the side, trousers made in Chinese style, and sandals of red leather.  It was, nevertheless, quite evident that the man was a European.