The doctor seemed to have made up his mind; for he interrupted this flow of words, saying in his kindest voice,—­

“Calm yourself, my friend.  There is a test which will clearly establish your innocence.  The ball that has struck Lieut.  Champcey is still in the wound; and I am the man who is going to take it out, I promise you.  We all here have rifles with conical balls; you are the only one who has an ordinary shot-gun with round balls, so there is no mistake possible.  I do not know if you understand me?”

Yes, he understood, and so well, that his pale face turned livid, and he looked all around with frightened glances.  For about six seconds he hesitated, counting his chances; then suddenly falling on his knees, his hands folded, and beating the ground with his forehead, he cried out,—­

“I confess!  Yes, it may be I who have hit the officer.  I heard the bushes moving in his direction, and I fired at a guess.  What a misfortune!  O God, what a misfortune!  Ah! I would give my life to save his if I could.  It was an accident, gentlemen, I swear.  Such accidents happen every day in hunting; the papers are full of them.  Great God! what an unfortunate man I am!”

The doctor had stepped back.  He now ordered the two sailors who had arrested the man, to make sure of him, to bind him, and carry him to Saigon to prison.  One of the gentlemen, he said, would write a few lines, which they must take with them.  The man seemed to be annihilated.

“A misfortune is not a crime,” he sighed out.  “I am an honest mechanic.”

“We shall see that in Saigon,” answered the surgeon.

And he hastened away to see if all the preparations had been made to carry the wounded man.  In less than twenty minutes, and with that marvellous skill which is one of the characteristic features of good sailors, a solid litter had been constructed; the bottom formed a real mattress of dry leaves; and overhead a kind of screen had been made of larger leaves.  When they put Daniel in, the pain caused him to utter a low cry of pain.  This was the first sign of life he had given.

“And now, my friends,” said the doctor, “let us go!  And bear in mind, if you shake the lieutenant, he is a dead man.”

It was hardly eight in the morning when the melancholy procession started homeward; and it was not until between two and three o’clock on the next morning that it entered Saigon, under one of those overwhelming rains which give one an idea of the deluge, and of which Cochin China has the monopoly.  The sailors who carried the litter on which Daniel lay had walked eighteen hours without stopping, on footpaths which were almost impassable, and where every moment a passage had to be cut through impenetrable thickets of aloes, cactus, and jack-trees.  Several times the officers had offered to take their places; but they had always refused, relieving each other, and taking all the time as ingenious precautions as a mother might devise for her dying infant.  Although, therefore, the march lasted so long, the dying man felt no shock; and the old doctor said, quite touched, to the officers who were around him,—­