just time to climb into it when the buffalo
struck it like a battering-ram, hard enough almost to have split both
head and tree. It paused a few seconds, drew back several paces, glared
savagely at Antonio, and then charged again and again, as if resolved
either to shake him out of the tree, or give itself a splitting
headache, but another shell from Harold, who could hardly take aim for
laughing, stretched the huge animal dead upon the ground. Altogether,
it took two shells and five large solid rifle-balls to finish him.

"That wos a pretty good spurt," said Disco, panting, as he joined Harold
beside the fallen beast. "It's well-known that a starn chase is a long
'un, but this would have been an exception to the rule if you hadn't
shot him, sir. He pretty nigh made short work o' _me_. He was a'most
aboard of me w'en you fired."

"True," said Harold; "and had that tree not grown where it stands, and
grown tough, too, I suspect he would have made short work of Antonio
too."

"Bah!" said the interpreter, with affected carelessness, "him was but a
slow brute, after all."

Disco looked at Jumbo, who was none the worse of his ducking, and shut
his right eye smartly. Jumbo opened his cavernous mouth, and exploded
so violently that his double row of brilliant teeth must have been blown
out and scattered on the ground, had they not been miraculously strong.

"Come, now," said Kambira, who had just given orders to some of his
followers to remain behind and look after the carcase, "we go to find
elephants."

"Have we much chance of findin' them?" inquired Disco.

Kambira thought they had, because fresh traces had been recently seen in
the neighbourhood, whereupon Disco said that he would prefer to go after
lions, but Kambira assured him that these animals were not so easy to
find, and much more dangerous when attacked. Admitting the force of
this, though still asserting his preference of lions to elephants, the
bloodthirsty son of Neptune shouldered his rifle and followed his
leader.

While the main party of hunters were thus successfully pushing along,
the other bands were not idle, though, possessing no fire-arms, they
were less noisy. In fact their proceedings were altogether of the
cat-catty. One fellow, as black as a coal, as lithe as an eel, and as
long--according to Disco's standard--as a fathom of pump-water, having
come upon a herd of buffalo unseen by them, and being armed with a small
bow and quiver