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To all such was Alexander Paulvitch immune. A sneer curled his bearded lip as
his forefinger closed upon the trigger of his revolver. There was a loud report. A
little hole appeared above the heart of the sleeping boy, a little hole about which
lay a blackened rim of powder-burned flesh.
The youthful body half rose to a sitting posture. The smiling lips tensed to the
nervous shock of a momentary agony which the conscious mind never
apprehended, and then the dead sank limply back into that deepest of slumbers
from which there is no awakening.
The killer dropped quickly into the skiff beside the killed. Ruthless hands seized
the dead boy heartlessly and raised him to the low gunwale. A little shove, a
splash, some widening ripples broken by the sudden surge of a dark, hidden body
from the slimy depths, and the coveted canoe was in the sole possession of the
white man--more savage than the youth whose life he had taken.
Casting off the tie rope and seizing the paddle, Paulvitch bent feverishly to the
task of driving the skiff downward toward the Ugambi at top speed.
Night had fallen when the prow of the bloodstained craft shot out into the current
of the larger stream. Constantly the Russian strained his eyes into the increasing
darkness ahead in vain endeavour to pierce the black shadows which lay between
him and the anchorage of the Kincaid.
Was the ship still riding there upon the waters of the Ugambi, or had the ape-
man at last persuaded himself of the safety of venturing forth into the abating
storm? As Paulvitch forged ahead with the current he asked himself these
questions, and many more beside, not the least disquieting of which were those
which related to his future should it chance that the Kincaid had already steamed
away, leaving him to the merciless horrors of the savage wilderness.
In the darkness it seemed to the paddler that he was fairly flying over the water,
and he had become convinced that the ship had left her moorings and that he
had already passed the spot at which she had lain earlier in the day, when there
appeared before him beyond a projecting point which he had but just rounded
the flickering light from a ship's lantern.
Alexander Paulvitch could scarce restrain an exclamation of triumph. The Kincaid
had not departed! Life and vengeance were not to elude him after all.
He stopped paddling the moment that he descried the gleaming beacon of hope
ahead of him. Silently he drifted down the muddy waters of the Ugambi,
occasionally dipping his paddle's blade gently into the current that he might
guide his primitive craft to the vessel's side.
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