's illness. If
Wuntoo died without the others taking full vengeance on the one who had
bewitched him, the old man's spirit would haunt the camp and bring
terrible disaster upon it. Therefore, if Wuntoo died, Stobart must die
too. So the white man was kept a close prisoner, and was even obliged
to keep inside his cave. No one had sufficient courage to harm him,
though all their former admiration for him was turned to fear and
hatred; but, by sheer force of numbers, they made it impossible for him
to escape.

One night Wuntoo was evidently dying. All the men of the tribe who
were not actually guarding the prisoner were sitting in a circle with
the women, making noisy lamentation. They beat their naked thighs with
their open palms, and mournful chants rose from low weird mutterings to
high shrill screams as they tried to frighten the evil spirits out of
the dying man. A big fire was blazing and sending sparks and smoke
high into the darkness, and lightening up the excited faces of the men
and women all around.

Suddenly in the middle of the wildest demonstration of grief Coiloo
appeared--Coiloo, whom Stobart had saved from death, and whom Mick had
treated with such cruelty. He was in a shocking state. The
brand-marks had started to fester, and there were burns all over his
body. He had come at a critical time. The wailing warraguls looked at
his wounds and their excitement got more and more intense. They vowed
terrible vengeance against the white man who had done this; against all
white men; against Stobart who was at their mercy. If Coiloo himself
had not prevented them they would have rushed off immediately to the
cave and carried out their designs while the heat of the moment gave
them courage. He craftily pointed out that it was far better to kill
the white man to appease the spirit of the dead Wuntoo than to kill him
before the old man died. The savages listened, hesitated, and then
agreed, and returned to the interrupted ceremony of mourning. And all
this time the emaciated figure of Wuntoo lay out flat on the sand, lit
weirdly by the leaping flames, his chest rising and falling with great
effort, and his eyes rolling round with pain.

In the middle of all this excitement Yarloo escaped. He realized that
he could do no good for his master by staying in the blacks' camp; so
when he gathered from the excited shouts that three white men and some
horses were camped out on the plains not far away, he s