nded, and we followed its
blood-spoor. We found Mr. Barrington's horse gored by the antelope's
horns. He himself had gone forward on foot. We tracked him to a little
stream, but the opposite bank was trampled, and we lost all sign of
him." This is what the boy said though his language is translated.

Norris remained upon this encampment for a fortnight. Blue
wildebeests, koodoos, elands, and gems-bok were plentiful, and once he
got a shot at a wart-hog boar. At the end of the fortnight he walked
round the ant-heap early one morning, and of a sudden plumped down
full length in the grass. Straight in front of him he saw a herd of
buffaloes moving in his direction down a glade of the forest a quarter
of a mile away. Norris cast a glance backwards; the camp was hidden
from the herd by the intervening ant-heap. He looked again towards the
forest; the buffaloes advanced slowly, pasturing as they moved. Norris
crawled behind the ant-heap on his hands and knees, ran thence into
the camp, buckled on a belt of cartridges, snatched up a 450-bore
Metford rifle, and got back to his position just as the first of the
herd stepped into the open. It turned to the right along the edge of
the wood, and the others followed in file. Norris wriggled forward
through the grass, and selecting a fat bull in the centre of the line,
aimed behind its shoulder and fired. The herd stampeded into the
forest, the bull fell in its tracks.

Norris sprang forward with a shout; but he had not run more than
thirty yards before the bull began to kick. It kneeled upon its
forelegs, rose thence on to its hind legs, and finally stood up.
Norris guessed what had happened. He had hit the bull in the neck
instead of behind the shoulders, and had broken no bones. He fired
his second barrel as the brute streamed away in an oblique line
southeastwards from the wood, and missed. Then he ran back to camp,
slapped a bridle on to his swiftest horse, and without waiting to
saddle it, sprang on its back and galloped in pursuit. He rode as it
were along the base of a triangle, whereas the bull galloped from the
apex, and since his breakfast was getting hot behind him, he wished
to make that triangle an isosceles. So he jammed his heels into his
horse's ribs, and was fast drawing within easy range, when the buffalo
got his wind and swerved on the instant into a diagonal course due
southwest.

The manoeuvre left Norris directly behind his quarry, and with a long,
stern ch