ough a Burmese child of four can drive them
with a twig. I grabbed Joyce's hand and pulled her up, and then I saw he
was coming for us and no mistake, with his nose up in that absurd
fashion, and his great horns sticking out. We made a bolt for the
nearest tree just as the buffalo plunged across the place we had been,
like a runaway motor-car. Then he stopped and looked funny. All at once
he caught sight of my topee, which had fallen off and rolled away a bit,
and up went his nose again, and when he reached it down went his head
and into it like a battering-ram; and didn't he make the clods fly as he
spiked his horns into it. The trees were not very high, and had smooth
stems so far up, and then a lot of branches. If we could get up there
we'd be all right.

[Illustration: ALL AT ONCE HE CAUGHT SIGHT OF MY TOPEE.]

"Get up the tree, Joyce," I whispered. "I'll boost you."

So I did, shoving her up for all I was worth, and she hung on as high as
she could reach, and there she stuck; even the best girls aren't quite
like boys.

"Swarm up it," I urged.

"I can't," she said in an agonised voice, and I saw it was true, her
petticoats were to blame, of course; any boy would have been up before
you could say "knife."

Down she came again with a thud, and old Mr. Buffalo heard it and made
for us like a fiend. We ran for the next tree and dodged him round it;
it was a bit too exciting! He made rushes at us dead straight, and we
tried always to keep the trunk of the tree between us and him as if it
were the leader in Fox and Geese. When he came past like a bolt we ran
the other side, but once or twice he nearly spiked us, and if he had
knocked one of us down, or we had stumbled, it would have been all up
with us. It was exhausting too. I was fearfully out of breath myself;
being on a steamer a fellow can't keep in training, and as for Joyce,
she was panting so that she couldn't speak.

Then I noticed that across the road was a jungly thicket; it was not
open ground, as it was on the side we had come from, and I thought if we
could reach that we might perhaps lose the gentleman, or he would lose
us.

So I explained to Joyce in gasps that the next time he charged we must
run behind his back and bolt across the road; she nodded and clutched my
hand tighter than ever.

So we did it and were half-way over the road--it was very wide--before
he found it out.

All the time, I must tell you, he had been making a funny little n