aughed and whooped.

"Gun!" yelled Felix.

Adams beckoned to him, and he came like a black devil in the moonlight--a
black devil with filed teeth and flashing eyeballs--and Adams pointed to
the tree and motioned him to leave the gun there and follow him. Felix
obeyed, and Adams started in the direction in which he had seen Berselius
flung.

It was not far to walk, and they had not far to search. A hundred yards
took them to a break in the ground, and there in the moonlight, with arms
extended, lay the body of the once powerful Berselius, the man who had
driven them like sheep, the man whose will was law. The man of wealth and
genius, great as Lucifer in evil, yet in courage and heroism tremendous.
God-man or devil-man, or a combination of both, but great, incontestably
great and compelling.

Adams knelt down beside the body, and the Zappo Zap stood by with
incurious eyes looking on.

Berselius was not dead. He was breathing; breathing deeply and
stertorously, as men breathe in apoplexy or after sunstroke or ruinous
injury to the brain. Adams tore open the collar of the hunting shirt; then
he examined the limbs.

Berselius, flung like a stone from a catapult, had, unfortunately for
himself, not broken a limb. That might have saved him. His head was the
injured part, and Adams, running his fingers through the hair, matted with
blood, came on the mischief. The right parietal bone was dented very
slightly for a space nearly as broad as a penny. The skin was broken, but
the bone itself, though depressed slightly, was not destroyed. The inner
table of the skull no doubt was splintered, hence the brain mischief.

There was only one thing to be done--trephine. And that as swiftly as
possible.

Everything needful was in the instrument-case, but had it escaped
destruction?

He raised Berselius by the shoulders. Felix took the feet, and between
them they carried the body to the tree, where they laid it down.

Before starting to hunt for the instruments, Adams bled Berselius with his
penknife. The effect was almost instantaneous. The breathing became less
stertorous and laboured. Then he started to search hither and thither for
the precious mahogany case which held the amputating knives, the
tourniquets and the trephine. The Zappo Zap was no use, as he did not know
anything about the stores, and had never even seen the instrument case, so
Adams had to conduct the search alone, in a hurry, and over half an acre
of groun