"Oh, Steve!" she called; "there's the most romantic-looking savage!
Come quick and tell me what his name is."
She led me out of the veranda.
"There he is," she said, naïvely pointing. Arms folded, haughty head
thrown back, stood Senecoza.
Ludtvik, who was talking to him, paid no attention to the girl until he
had completed his business with the fetish-man; and then, turning, he
took her arm and they went into the house together.
Again I was face to face with the savage; but this time he was not
looking at me. With a rage amounting almost to madness, I saw that he
was gazing after the girl. There was an expression in his serpentlike
eyes----
On the instant my gun was out and leveled. My hand shook like a leaf
with the intensity of my fury. Surely I must shoot Senecoza down like
the snake he was, shoot him down and riddle him, shoot him into a
shredded heap!
The fleeting expression left his eyes and they were fixed on me.
Detached they seemed, inhuman in their sardonic calm. And I could not
pull the trigger.
For a moment we stood, and then he turned and strode away, a
magnificent figure, while I glared after him and snarled with helpless
fury.
I sat down on the veranda. What a man of mystery was that savage! What
strange power did he possess? Was I right, I wondered, in interpreting
the fleeting expression as he gazed after the girl? It seemed to me,
in my youth and folly, incredible that a black man, no matter what his
rank, should look at a white woman as he did. Most astonishing of all,
why could I not shoot him down?