Without more ado he lifted his gun and fired straight at Hernan Pereira, who sank slowly to the ground and lay there groaning. Just then I grew aware that horsemen were advancing upon us, a great number of horsemen, though whence they came at that time I did not know. One of these I recognised even in my half-drunken state, for he had impressed himself very vividly upon my mind. He was the dark-browed commandant who had tried and condemned me to death. He dismounted, and, staring at the two figures that lay upon the ground, said in a loud and terrible voice: “What is this? Who are these men, and why are they shot? Explain, Henri Marais.” “Men!” wailed Henri Marais, “they are not men. One is a woman—my only child; and the other is a devil, who, being a devil, will not die. See! he will not die. Give me another gun that I may make him die.” The commandant looked about him wildly, and his eye fell upon the Vrouw Prinsloo. “What has chanced, vrouw?” he asked. “Only this,” she replied in a voice of unnatural calm. “Your murderers whom you set on in the name of law and justice have made a mistake. You told them to murder Allan Quatermain for reasons of your own. Well, they have murdered his wife instead.” Now the commandant struck his hand upon his forehead and groaned, and I, half awakened at last, ran forward, shaking my fists and gibbering. “Who is that?” asked the commandant. “Is it a man or a woman?” “It is a man in woman’s clothing; it is Allan Quatermain,” answered the vrouw, “whom we drugged and tried to hide from your butchers.” “God above us!” exclaimed the commandant, “is this earth or hell?” Then the wounded Pereira raised himself upon one hand. “I am dying,” he cried; “my life is bleeding away, but before I die I must speak. All that story I told against the Englishman is false. He never plotted with Dingaan against the Boers. It was I who plotted with Dingaan. Although I hated him because he found me out, I did not wish Retief and our people to be killed. But I did wish Allan Quatermain to be killed, because he had won her whom I loved, though, as it happened, all the others were slain, and he alone escaped. Then I came here and learned that Marie was his wife—yes, his wife indeed—and grew mad with hate and jealousy. So I bore false witness against him, and, you fools, you believed me and ordered me to shoot him who is innocent before God and man. Then things went wrong. The woman tricked me again—for the last time. She dressed herself as the man, and in the dawnlight I was deceived. I killed her, her whom I love alone, and now her father, who loved her also, has killed me.” By this time I understood all, for my drugged brain had awakened at last. I ran to the brute upon the ground; grotesque in my woman’s garments all awry, I leaped on him and stamped out the last of his life. Then, standing over his dead body, I shook my fists and cried: “Men, see what you have done. May God pay you back all you owe her and me!”