'
I looked, and there, peering out of a hole in the trunk of the
banyan about five feet from the ground, I saw a pale face and
a pair of large mustachios, one clipped short and the other as
lamentably out of curl as the tail of a newly whipped pug. Then,
for the first time, I realized what I had suspected before --
namely, that Alphonse was an arrant coward. I walked up to him.
'Come out of that hole,' I said.
'Is it finished, monsieur?' he asked anxiously; 'quite finished?
Ah, the horrors I have undergone, and the prayers I have uttered!'
'Come out, you little wretch,' I said, for I did not feel amiable;
'it is all over.'
'So, monsieur, then my prayers have prevailed? I emerge,'
and he did.
As we were walking down together to join the others, who were
gathered in a group by the wide entrance to the kraal, which
now resembled a veritable charnel-house, a Masai, who had escaped
so far and been hiding under a bush, suddenly sprang up and charged
furiously at us. Off went Alphonse with a howl of terror, and
after him flew the Masai, bent upon doing some execution before
he died. He soon overtook the poor little Frenchman, and would
have finished him then and there had I not, just as Alphonse
made a last agonized double in the vain hope of avoiding the
yard of steel that was flashing in his immediate rear, managed
to plant a bullet between the Elmoran's broad shoulders, which
brought matters to a satisfactory conclusion so far as the Frenchman
was concerned.
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