uld have astonished him not a little. Jerry almost fainted
with the fright the brute had given him, but he very speedily recovered,
and then we looked round to see what sort of a place we were on. We
found that it was, fortunately, inaccessible on all sides; so we
returned with much greater composure to watch the proceedings of our
bovine enemies. The other bulls had now come up, with their tails in
the air, bellowing at the top of their voices, and tearing the ground up
on all sides, and throwing the grass over their heads. They appeared
for some reason to be fearfully enraged against us. There were seven
bulls altogether. Placed in the convenient position we were, we agreed
that we could easily shoot them, and thus raise the siege; but on
examining the contents of our pockets, we found that we had only got
five bullets between us. Now, supposing every bullet to have had in
this case its billet, and to have mortally wounded an animal, that would
have left two unprovided for; and even with two we had no desire to
contend on the level ground. Still we determined to do what we could;
so I loaded and took a steady aim at the beast which had led on the
attack. The bullet struck him on the head; but his skull was thick, and
though it wounded him severely, it did not enter his brain. The pain
made him tear up the ground more furiously, and bellow louder than
before. Jerry said he would try the next time; so I loaded, and he took
the gun. I thought he was going to make a good shot, but he was
nervous, and the bullet only struck the beast's shoulder, nor did it
increase the sweetness of his temper. We had thus only three bullets,
and all our enemies as vicious as ever. The most important thing we
agreed to be done was to get rid of the leader; so I took the gun again,
and carefully loading, waited till he made a tilt right up to the face
of the rock, really looking as if he had been going to try and leap up
at us. I tried to be perfectly cool, and fired. The bullet struck him,
I was certain of that, but it did not kill him, so I supposed that it
had glanced off over his head.

"I won't miss again," I cried, loading as rapidly as I could. "One of
our last two bullets must do the deed."

Our enemy, on receiving his last wound, turned off and made a rapid
circuit round the rock, to discover, we concluded, if there was any
place by which he could get up at us. Finding none, he returned. As
soon as he appeared, I