w hound is fresh, and in fact a better dog than the first one.
He presses the quarry very close and needs not the encouraging shouts
of his master, who has leaped forth from his concealment immediately
upon unleashing him. For a few moments the pace is even, _then it
decreases_. The buck seemed doomed.

And, indeed, such is the case anyhow. For, held in waiting at a given
point, ready to be let slip if necessary, is a third dog. Such is the
Kafir method of hunting. The best dog ever whelped is not quite equal,
either in speed or staying power, to running down a full-grown buck in
the open _veldt_, but by adopting the above means of hunting in relays,
the chance are equalised. To be more accurate, the quarry has no chance
at all.

On speeds the chase; the new dog, a tall white grey-hound of surprising
endurance and speed, gaining rapidly; the other, lashed into a final
spurt by the spirit of emulation, not far behind. The two Kafirs,
stimulating their hounds with yells of encouragement, are straining
every nerve to be in at the death.

The buck--terror and demoralisation in its soft, lustrous eyes--is
heading straight for the spectator's hiding place. The latter raises
his piece, with the intention of sending a bullet through the first dog
as soon as it shall come abreast of his position; the shot barrel will
finish off the other.

But he does not fire. The fact is, the man is simply shaking with rage.
Grinding his teeth, he recognises his utter inability to hit a haystack
at that moment, let alone a swiftly coursing grey-hound.

The chase sweeps by within seventy yards of his position--buck, dog, and
Kafirs. Then another diversion occurs.

Two more natives rise, apparently out of the ground itself. One of
these, poising himself erect with a peculiar springy, quivering motion,
holds his kerrie ready to hurl. The buck is barely thirty yards
distant, and going like the wind.

"Whigge--woof!" The hard stick hurls through the air--aimed nearly as
far ahead of the quarry as the latter is distant from the marksman.
There is a splintering crash, and a shrill, horrid scream--then a
reddish brown shape, writhing and rolling in agony upon the ground. The
aim of the savage has been true. All four of the buck's legs are
snapped and shattered like pipe-stems.

The two hounds hurl themselves upon the struggling carcase, their savage
snarls mingling with the sickening, half-human yell emitted by the
terrified a