ops running on his face like ants, and even Felix swallowed like a
man who is trying to choke down something nauseous. It was a magnificent
exhibition of daring and self-restraint and cool assurance.

At twenty-five yards or a little under, the cordite rang out. The brute
seemed to trip, just as the other had done, over some invisible
taut-stretched wire, and skidding with its own impetus, squealing,
striking out and tearing up the grass, it came right up to Berselius's
feet before stiffening in death. Like the great automaton it was, it had
scented the human beings just as the bull had scented them, "fussed" just
as he had fussed, charged as he had charged, and died as he had died.

And now from the camp rose a great outcry, "Nyama, nyama! (Meat, meat!)."
From the soldiers, from the gun-bearers, from the porters it came. There
were no longer soldiers, or gun-bearers, or porters; every distinction was
forgotten; they were all savages, voicing the eternal cry of the jungle,
"Nyama, nyama! (Meat, meat!)."

In the last rays of the sunset the two gigantic forms lay stretched
forever in death. They lay as they had composed themselves after that long
stiff stretch which every animal takes before settling itself for eternal
sleep; and Adams stood looking at the great grinning masks tipped with the
murderous horns, whilst Berselius, with his gun butt resting on his boot,
stood watching with a brooding eye as the porters and gun-bearers swarmed
like ants around the slain animals and proceeded, under his direction, to
cut them up. Then the meat was brought into camp. The tails and the best
parts of the carcasses, including the kidneys, were reserved for the white
men, and the rations from the rest of the meat were served out; but a
dozen porters who had been last in the line, and who were accountable for
letting the boy drop behind, got nothing.

It was pitiable to see their faces. But they deserved their punishment,
notwithstanding the fact that in the middle of the meat distribution the
missing boy limped into camp. He had a thorn half an inch long in his
foot, which Adams extracted. Then the camp went to bed.

Adams in his tent under the mosquito net slept soundly and heard and knew
nothing of the incidents of the night. Berselius was also sleeping soundly
when, at about one o'clock in the morning, Felix aroused him.

One of the porters had been caught stealing some of the meat left over
from the distribution of the night