“How can I hesitate? As if a life like mine was worth the trouble of
protecting it against danger!”
When they arrived on the following day on the hunting ground, he, as
well as the other hunters, received their instructions, and had their
posts assigned them by the leader. He found himself placed between two
of his comrades, in front of a thicket, and facing a narrow ravine,
through which all the game must necessarily pass as it was driven down
by a crowd of Annamites.
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.
“Where did you find him?” asked the surgeon of the men.
“Down there, commandant, behind that big bush, to the right of Lieut.
Champcey, and a little behind him.”
“Why do you accuse him?”
“Why? We have good reasons, I should think. He was hiding. When we saw
him, he was lying flat on the ground, trembling with fear; and we said
at once, ‘Surely, there is the man who fired that shot.’”
The man had, in the meantime, raised himself, and assumed an air of
almost provoking assurance.
“They lie!” he exclaimed. “Yes, they lie, the cowards!”
This insult would have procured him a sound drubbing, but for the old
surgeon, who held the arm of the first sailor who made the attack. Then,
continuing his interrogatory, he asked,--
“Why did you hide?”
“I did not hide.”
“What were you doing there, crouching in the bush?”
“I was at my post, like the others. Do they require a permit to carry
arms in Cochin China? I was not invited to your hunting party, to be
sure; but I am fond of game; and I said to myself, ‘Even if I were to
shoot two or three head out of the hundreds their drivers will bring
down, I would do them no great harm.’”
The doctor let him talk on for some time, observing him closely with his
sagacious eye; then, all of a sudden, he broke in, saying,--
“Give me your gun!”
The man turned so visibly pale, that all the officers standing around
noticed it. Still he did what he was asked to do, and said,--
“Here it is. It’s a gun one of my friends has lent me.”
The doctor examined the weapon very carefully; and, after having
inspected the lock, he said,--
“Both barrels of your gun are empty; and they have not been emptied more
than two minutes ago.”
“That is so; I fired both barrels at an animal that passed me within
reach.”
“One of the balls may have gone astray.”
“That cannot be. I was aiming in the direction of the prairie; and,
consequently, I was turning my back to the place where the officer was
standing.”
To the great surprise of everybody, the doctor’s face, ordinarily crafty
enough, now looked all benevolent curiosity,--so much so, that the two
sailors who had captured the man were furious, and said aloud,--
“Ah! don’t believe him, commandant, the dirty dog!”
But the man, evidently encouraged by the surgeon’s apparent kindliness,
asked,--
“Am I to be allowed to defend myself, or not?”