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The flying figure
leaped high in the air, and then sprawled out and was suddenly still
and inert. The guinea-hens set up a deafening potracking, and the
cooped fowls squawked and flapped. Above all the noise they made
rose the bloodhound's note.
It was done so quickly, it was so inevitable, that Peter could only
stand and blink. He thought, sickly, that the very earth should
shudder away from the soiling touch of that appalling carrion. But
the earth was the one thing that would receive Jake unprotestingly.
He lay on his face, his arms outflung, and from the gaping hole
between his shoulders a dark stream welled. The indifferent earth,
the uncaring grass, received it. The wind came out of the swamp
on mincing feet and danced over him, and fluttered his torn
shirt-sleeve.
Stonily, voicelessly, Neptune stood in the cabin door, staring at
that which lay in the pathway. Then he lowered the smoking gun, and
leaned on it. His bald head drooped until his gray beard swept his
breast, and his throat rattled like a dying man's.


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