第6章

"By the time we had finished our much-needed meal the sun was getting up,and after a drink of water and a wash at the pool,we started to try and find Hans,leaving the dead lion to the tender mercies of the hy?nas.Both Mashune and myself were,by constant practice,pretty good hands at tracking,and we had not much difficulty in following the Hottentot's spoor,faint as it was.We had gone on in this way for half-an-hour or so,and were,perhaps,a mile or more from the site of our camping-place,when we discovered the spoor of a solitary bull buffalo mixed up with the spoor of Hans,and were able,from various indications,to make out that he had been tracking the buffalo.At length we reached a little glade in which there grew a stunted old mimosa thorn,with a peculiar and overhanging formation of root,under which a porcupine,or an ant-bear,or some such animal,had hollowed out a wide-lipped hole.About ten or fifteen paces from this thorn-tree there was a thick patch of bush.

"'See,Macumazahn!see!'said Mashune,excitedly,as we drew near the thorn;'the buffalo has charged him.Look,here he stood to fire at him;see how firmly he planted his feet upon the earth;there is the mark of his crooked toe (Hans had one bent toe).Look!here the bull came like a boulder down the hill,his hoofs turning up the earth like a hoe.Hans had hit him:he bled as he came;there are the blood spots.It is all written down there,my father--there upon the earth.'

"'Yes,'I said;'yes;but /where is Hans?/'

"Even as I said it Mashune clutched my arm,and pointed to the stunted thorn just by us.Even now,gentlemen,it makes me feel sick when Ithink of what I saw.

"For fixed in a stout fork of the tree some eight feet from the ground was Hans himself,or rather his dead body,evidently tossed there by the furious buffalo.One leg was twisted round the fork,probably in a dying convulsion.In the side,just beneath the ribs,was a great hole,from which the entrails protruded.But this was not all.The other leg hung down to within five feet of the ground.The skin and most of the flesh were gone from it.For a moment we stood aghast,and gazed at this horrifying sight.Then I understood what had happened.

The buffalo,with that devilish cruelty which distinguishes the animal,had,after his enemy was dead,stood underneath his body,and licked the flesh off the pendant leg with his file-like tongue.I had heard of such a thing before,but had always treated the stories as hunters'yarns;but I had no doubt about it now.Poor Hans'skeleton foot and ankle were an ample proof.

"We stood aghast under the tree,and stared and stared at this awful sight,when suddenly our cogitations were interrupted in a painful manner.The thick bush about fifteen paces off burst asunder with a crashing sound,and uttering a series of ferocious pig-like grunts,the bull buffalo himself came charging out straight at us.Even as he came I saw the blood mark on his side where poor Hans'bullet had struck him,and also,as is often the case with particularly savage buffaloes,that his flanks had recently been terribly torn in an encounter with a lion.

"On he came,his head well up (a buffalo does not generally lower his head till he does so to strike);those great black horns--as I look at them before me,gentlemen,I seem to see them come charging at me as Idid ten years ago,silhouetted against the green bush behind;--on,on!""With a shout Mashune bolted off sideways towards the bush.I had instinctively lifted my eight-bore,which I had in my hand.It would have been useless to fire at the buffalo's head,for the dense horns must have turned the bullet;but as Mashune bolted,the bull slewed a little,with the momentary idea of following him,and as this gave me a ghost of a chance,I let drive my only cartridge at his shoulder.