Page:A Good Woman (1927).pdf/64

 dust. She lay there praying hysterically. He fired. He heard Lady Millicent firing. He saw one black man after another pitch forward and fall. She was (he thought) an excellent shot. The voice of Naomi praying wildly rose above the noise, the shots and the wild cries of the attacking niggers. Then all at once, those who remained alive turned and ran for the forest. He took careful aim, and one of them fell, kicking grotesquely. There was another report beside him, and the second fell on the edge of the forest. He saw the last of them turn and fire his musket. Then something struck him on the head like the blow of a club.

He heard a great voice calling, "I want to live! I want to live!" and all the world about him exploded with a great flash of light. 

He wakened with the acrid tang of smoke in his nostrils, conscious of a slow, gliding motion, to find himself being carried on the back of Swanson. They were moving along a narrow path bordered by tall dry grass. At the head marched Ali followed by Lady Millicent, her rifle pressed against his trembling spine, her salvaged bathtub slung across her flat shoulders; and close behind came Naomi, still in her wide hat of thatched grass, her long, grotesque calico skirts muddy and wet to the waist from wading some stream. They had escaped with Lady Millicent's arsenal of ammunition and the clothes on their backs. The sun had slipped below the distant mountains and they walked through a twilight dimmed by the clouds of smoke borne toward them by a rising wind. 