r him,
shouting such things in English. But I was no match for him over the
roots and mud.

I had a preposterous idea. "He mustn't get away and tell them!"

And with that instantly I brought both feet together, raised my gun,
aimed quite coolly, drew the trigger carefully and shot him neatly in
the back.

I saw, and saw with a leap of pure exaltation, the smash of my bullet
between his shoulder blades. "Got him," said I, dropping my gun and down
he flopped and died without a groan. "By Jove!" I cried with note of
surprise, "I've killed him!" I looked about me and then went forward
cautiously, in a mood between curiosity and astonishment, to look at
this man whose soul I had flung so unceremoniously out of our common
world. I went to him, not as one goes to something one has made or done,
but as one approaches something found.

He was frightfully smashed out in front; he must have died in the
instant. I stooped and raised him by his shoulder and realised that. I
dropped him, and stood about and peered about me through the trees. "My
word!" I said. He was the second dead human being--apart, I mean, from
surgical properties and mummies and common shows of that sort--that I
have ever seen. I stood over him wondering, wondering beyond measure.

A practical idea came into that confusion. Had any one heard the gun?

I reloaded.

After a time I felt securer, and gave my mind again to the dead I had
killed. What must I do?

It occurred to me that perhaps I ought to bury him. At any rate, I ought
to hide him. I reflected coolly, and then put my gun within easy reach
and dragged him by the arm towards a place where the mud seemed soft,
and thrust him in. His powder-flask slipped from his loin-cloth, and I
went back to get it. Then I pressed him down with the butt of my rifle.

Afterwards this all seemed to me most horrible, but at the time it was
entirely a matter-of-fact transaction. I looked round for any other
visible evidence of his fate, looked round as one does when one packs
one's portmanteau in an hotel bedroom.

When I got my bearings, and carefully returned towards the ship. I had
the mood of grave concentration of a boy who has lapsed into poaching.
And the business only began to assume proper proportions for me as I
got near the ship, to seem any other kind of thing than the killing of a
bird or rabbit.

In the night, however, it took on enormous and portentous forms. "By
God!" I cried suddenly, starting