Hunter Quatermain's
Story by H. Rider Haggard
Sir
Henry Curtis, as everybody acquainted with him knows, is one of the most
hospitable men on earth. It was in the course of the enjoyment of his
hospitality at his place in Yorkshire the
other day that I heard the hunting story which I am now about to transcribe.
Many of those who read it will no doubt have heard some of the strange rumours
that are flying about to the effect that Sir Henry Curtis and his friend Captain
Good, R.N., recently found a vast treasure of diamonds out in the heart of
Africa, supposed to have been hidden by the Egyptians, or King Solomon, or some
other antique people. I first saw the matter alluded to in a paragraph in one
of the society papers the day before I started for Yorkshire
to pay my visit to Curtis, and arrived, needless to say, burning with
curiosity; for there is something very fascinating to the mind in the idea of
hidden treasure. When I reached the Hall, I at once asked Curtis about it, and
he did not deny the truth of the story; but on my pressing him to tell it he
would not, nor would Captain Good, who was also staying in the house.
"You
would not believe me if I did," Sir Henry said, with one of the hearty
laughs which seem to come right out of his great lungs. "You must wait
till Hunter Quatermain comes; he will arrive here from Africa
to-night, and I am not going to say a word about the matter, or Good either,
until he turns up. Quatermain was with us all through; he has known about the
business for years and years, and if it had not been for him we should not have
been here to-day. I am going to meet him presently."
I
could not get a word more out of him, nor could anybody else, though we were
all dying of curiosity, especially some of the ladies. I shall never forget how
they looked in the drawing-room before dinner when Captain Good produced a
great rough diamond, weighing fifty carats or more, and told them that he had
many larger than that. If ever I saw curiosity and envy printed on fair faces,
I saw them then.
It
was just at this moment that the door was opened, and Mr. Allan Quatermain
announced, whereupon Good put the diamond into his pocket, and sprang at a
little man who limped shyly into the room, convoyed by Sir Henry Curtis
himself.
"Here
he is, Good, safe and sound," said Sir Henry, gleefully. "Ladies and
gentlemen, let me introduce you to one of the oldest hunters and the very best
shot in Africa , who has killed more elephants
and lions than any other man alive."
Everybody
turned and stared politely at the curious-looking little lame man, and though
his size was insignificant, he was quite worth staring at. He had short
grizzled hair, which stood about an inch above his head like the bristles of a
brush, gentle brown eyes, that seemed to notice everything, and a withered
face, tanned to the colour of mahogany from exposure to the weather. He spoke,
too, when he returned Good's enthusiastic greeting, with a curious little
accent, which made his speech noticeable.
It
so happened that I sat next to Mr. Allan Quatermain at dinner, and, of course,
did my best to draw him; but he was not to be drawn. He admitted that he had
recently been a long journey into the interior of Africa with Sir Henry Curtis
and Captain Good, and that they had found treasure, and then politely turned
the subject and began to ask me questions about England , where he had never been
before--that is, since he came to years of discretion. Of course, I did not
find this very interesting, and so cast about for some means to bring the
conversation round again.
Now,
we were dining in an oak-panelled vestibule, and on the wall opposite to me
were fixed two gigantic elephant tusks, and under them a pair of buffalo horns,
very rough and knotted, showing that they came off an old bull, and having the
tip of one horn split and chipped. I noticed that Hunter Quatermain's eyes kept
glancing at these trophies, and took an occasion to ask him if he knew anything
about them.
"I
ought to," he answered, with a little laugh; "the elephant to which
those tusks belonged tore one of our party right in two about eighteen months
ago, and as for the buffalo horns, they were nearly my death, and were the end
of a servant of mine to whom I was much attached. I gave them to Sir Henry when
he left Natal
some months ago;" and Mr. Quatermain sighed and turned to answer a
question from the lady whom he had taken down to dinner, and who, needless to
say, was also employed in trying to pump him about the diamonds.
Indeed,
all round the table there was a simmer of scarcely suppressed excitement,
which, when the servants had left the room, could no longer be restrained.
"Now,
Mr. Quatermain," said the lady next him, "we have been kept in an
agony of suspense by Sir Henry and Captain Good, who have persistently refused
to tell us a word of this story about the hidden treasure till you came, and we
simply can bear it no longer; so, please, begin at once."
"Yes,"
said everybody, "go on, please."
Hunter
Quatermain glanced round the table apprehensively; he did not seem to
appreciate finding himself the object of so much curiosity.
"Ladies
and gentlemen," he said at last, with a shake of his grizzled head,
"I am very sorry to disappoint you, but I cannot do it. It is this way. At
the request of Sir Henry and Captain Good I have written down a true and plain
account of King Solomon's Mines and how we found them, so you will soon be able
to learn all about that wonderful adventure for yourselves; but until then I
will say nothing about it, not from any wish to disappoint your curiosity, or
to make myself important, but simply because the whole story partakes so much
of the marvellous, that I am afraid to tell it in a piecemeal, hasty fashion,
for fear I should be set down as one of those common fellows of whom there are
so many in my profession, who are not ashamed to narrate things they have not
seen, and even to tell wonderful stories about wild animals they have never
killed. And I think that my companions in adventure, Sir Henry Curtis and Captain
Good, will bear me out in what I say."
"Yes,
Quatermain, I think you are quite right," said Sir Henry. "Precisely
the same considerations have forced Good and myself to hold our tongues. We did
not wish to be bracketed with--well, with other famous travellers."
There
was a murmur of disappointment at these announcements.
"I
believe you are all hoaxing us," said the young lady next Mr. Quatermain,
rather sharply.
"Believe
me," answered the old hunter, with a quaint courtesy and a little bow of
his grizzled head; "though I have lived all my life in the wilderness, and
amongst savages, I have neither the heart, nor the want of manners, to wish to
deceive one so lovely."
Whereat
the young lady, who was pretty, looked appeased.
"This
is very dreadful," I broke in. "We ask for bread and you give us a
stone, Mr. Quatermain. The least that you can do is to tell us the story of the
tusks opposite and the buffalo horns underneath. We won't let you off with
less."
"I
am but a poor story-teller," put in the old hunter, "but if you will
forgive my want of skill, I shall be happy to tell you, not the story of the
tusks, for that is part of the history of our journey to King Solomon's Mines,
but that of the buffalo horns beneath them, which is now ten years old."
"Bravo,
Quatermain!" said Sir Henry. "We shall all be delighted. Fire away!
Fill up your glass first."
The
little man did as he was bid, took a sip of claret, and began:-- "About
ten years ago I was hunting up in the far interior of Africa, at a place called
Gatgarra, not a great way from the Chobe
River
"Accordingly
on the following morning we started, and on the evening of the next day reached
the spot where the elephants were reported to be. But here again we were met by
ill luck. That the elephants had been there was evident enough, for their spoor
was plentiful, and so were other traces of their presence in the shape of
mimosa trees torn out of the ground, and placed topsy-turvy on their flat
crowns, in order to enable the great beasts to feed on their sweet roots; but
the elephants themselves were conspicuous by their absence. They had elected to
move on. This being so, there was only one thing to do, and that was to move
after them, which we did, and a pretty hunt they led us. For a fortnight or
more we dodged about after those elephants, coming up with them on two
occasions, and a splendid herd they were-- only, however, to lose them again.
At length we came up with them a third time, and I managed to shoot one bull,
and then they started off again, where it was useless to try and follow them.
After this I gave it up in disgust, and we made the best of our way back to the
camp, not in the sweetest of tempers, carrying the tusks of the elephant I had
shot.
"It
was on the afternoon of the fifth day of our tramp that we reached the little
koppie overlooking the spot where the waggon stood, and I confess that I climbed
it with a pleasurable sense of home-coming, for his waggon is the hunter's
home, as much as his house is that of the civilized person. I reached the top
of the koppie, and looked in the direction where the friendly white tent of the
waggon should be, but there was no waggon, only a black burnt plain stretching
away as far as the eye could reach. I rubbed my eyes, looked again, and made
out on the spot of the camp, not my waggon, but some charred beams of wood.
Half wild with grief and anxiety, followed by Hans and Mashune, I ran at full
speed down the slope of the koppie, and across the space of plain below to the
spring of water, where my camp had been. I was soon there, only to find that my
worst suspicions were confirmed.
"The
waggon and all its contents, including my spare guns and ammunition, had been
destroyed by a grass fire.
"Now
before I started, I had left orders with the driver to burn off the grass round
the camp, in order to guard against accidents of this nature, and here was the
reward of my folly: a very proper illustration of the necessity, especially
where natives are concerned, of doing a thing one's self if one wants it done
at all. Evidently the lazy rascals had not burnt round the waggon; most
probably, indeed, they had themselves carelessly fired the tall and resinous
tambouki grass near by; the wind had driven the flames on to the waggon tent,
and there was quickly an end of the matter. As for the driver and leader, I
know not what became of them: probably fearing my anger, they bolted, taking
the oxen with them. I have never seen them from that hour to this.
"I
sat down on the black veldt by the spring, and gazed at the charred axles and
disselboom of my waggon, and I can assure you, ladies and gentlemen, I felt
inclined to weep. As for Mashune and Hans they cursed away vigorously, one in
Zulu and the other in Dutch. Ours was a pretty position. We were nearly 300
miles away from Bamangwato, the capital of Khama's country, which was the
nearest spot where we could get any help, and our ammunition, spare guns,
clothing, food, and everything else, were all totally destroyed. I had just
what I stood in, which was a flannel shirt, a pair of 'veldt-schoons,' or shoes
of raw hide, my eight-bore rifle, and a few cartridges. Hans and Mashune had
also each a Martini rifle and some cartridges, not many. And it was with this
equipment that we had to undertake a journey of 300 miles through a desolate
and almost uninhabited region. I can assure you that I have rarely been in a
worse position, and I have been in some queer ones. However, these things are
the natural incidents of a hunter's life, and the only thing to do was to make
the best of them.
"Accordingly,
after passing a comfortless night by the remains of my waggon, we started next
morning on our long journey towards civilization. Now if I were to set to work
to tell you all the troubles and incidents of that dreadful journey I should
keep you listening here till midnight; so I will, with your permission, pass on
to the particular adventure of which the pair of buffalo horns opposite are the
melancholy memento.
"We
had been travelling for about a month, living and getting along as best we
could, when one evening we camped some forty miles from Bamangwato. By this
time we were indeed in a melancholy plight, footsore, half starved, and utterly
worn out; and, in addition, I was suffering from a sharp attack of fever, which
half blinded me and made me weak as a babe. Our ammunition, too, was exhausted;
I had only one cartridge left for my eight-bore rifle, and Hans and Mashune,
who were armed with Martini Henrys, had three between them. It was about an
hour from sundown when we halted and lit a fire--for luckily we had still a few
matches. It was a charming spot to camp, I remember. Just off the game track we
were following was a little hollow, fringed about with flat-crowned mimosa
trees, and at the bottom of the hollow, a spring of clear water welled up out
of the earth, and formed a pool, round the edges of which grew an abundance of
watercresses of an exactly similar kind to those which were handed round the
table just now. Now we had no food of any kind left, having that morning
devoured the last remains of a little oribé antelope, which I had shot two days
previously. Accordingly Hans, who was a better shot than Mashune, took two of
the three remaining Martini cartridges, and started out to see if he could not
kill a buck for supper. I was too weak to go myself.
"Meanwhile
Mashune employed himself in dragging together some dead boughs from the mimosa
trees to make a sort of 'skerm,' or shelter for us to sleep in, about forty
yards from the edge of the pool of water. We had been greatly troubled with
lions in the course of our long tramp, and only on the previous night have very
nearly been attacked by them, which made me nervous, especially in my weak
state. Just as we had finished the skerm, or rather something which did duty
for one, Mashune and I heard a shot apparently fired about a mile away.
"'Hark
to it!' sung out Mashune in Zulu, more, I fancy, by way of keeping his spirits
up than for any other reason--for he was a sort of black Mark Tapley, and very
cheerful under difficulties. 'Hark to the wonderful sound with which the
"Maboona" (the Boers) shook our fathers to the ground at the Battle of the Blood
River
"And
so he went on talking nonsense till I told him to stop, because he made my head
ache with his empty words.
"Shortly
after we heard the shot the sun sank in his red splendour, and there fell upon
earth and sky the great hush of the African wilderness. The lions were not up
as yet, they would probably wait for the moon, and the birds and beasts were
all at rest. I cannot describe the intensity of the quiet of the night: to me
in my weak state, and fretting as I was over the non-return of the Hottentot
Hans, it seemed almost ominous--as though Nature were brooding over some
tragedy which was being enacted in her sight.
"It
was quiet--quiet as death, and lonely as the grave.
"'Mashune,'
I said at last, 'where is Hans? my heart is heavy for him.'
"'Nay,
my father, I know not; mayhap he is weary, and sleeps, or mayhap he has lost
his way.'
"'Mashune,
art thou a boy to talk folly to me?' I answered. 'Tell me, in all the years
thou hast hunted by my side, didst thou ever know a Hottentot to lose his path
or to sleep upon the way to camp?'
"'Nay,
Macumazahn' (that, ladies, is my native name, and means the man who 'gets up by
night,' or who 'is always awake'), 'I know not where he is.'
"But
though we talked thus, we neither of us liked to hint at what was in both our
minds, namely, that misfortunate had overtaken the poor Hottentot.
"'Mashune,'
I said at last, 'go down to the water and bring me of those green herbs that
grow there. I am hungered, and must eat something.'
"'Nay,
my father; surely the ghosts are there; they come out of the water at night,
and sit upon the banks to dry themselves. An Isanusi[*] told it me.'
[*]
/Isanusi/, witch-finder.
"Mashune
was, I think, one of the bravest men I ever knew in the daytime, but he had a
more than civilized dread of the supernatural.
"'Must
I go myself, thou fool?' I said, sternly.
"'Nay,
Macumazahn, if thy heart yearns for strange things like a sick woman, I go,
even if the ghosts devour me.'
"And
accordingly he went, and soon returned with a large bundle of watercresses, of
which I ate greedily.
"'Art
thou not hungry?' I asked the great Zulu presently, as he sat eyeing me eating.
"'Never
was I hungrier, my father.'
"'Then
eat,' and I pointed to the watercresses.
"'Nay,
Macumazahn, I cannot eat those herbs.'
"'If
thou dost not eat thou wilt starve: eat, Mashune.'
"He
stared at the watercresses doubtfully for a while, and at last seized a handful
and crammed them into his mouth, crying out as he did so, 'Oh, why was I born
that I should live to feed on green weeds like an ox? Surely if my mother could
have known it she would have killed me when I was born!' and so he went on
lamenting between each fistful of watercresses till all were finished, when he
declared that he was full indeed of stuff, but it lay very cold on his stomach,
'like snow upon a mountain.' At any other time I should have laughed, for it
must be admitted he had a ludicrous way of putting things. Zulus do not like
green food.
"Just
after Mashune had finished his watercress, we heard the loud 'woof! woof!' of a
lion, who was evidently promenading much nearer to our little skerm than was
pleasant. Indeed, on looking into the darkness and listening intently, I could
hear his snoring breath, and catch the light of his great yellow eyes. We
shouted loudly, and Mashune threw some sticks on the fire to frighten him,
which apparently had the desired effect, for we saw no more of him for a while.
"Just
after we had had this fright from the lion, the moon rose in her fullest
splendour, throwing a robe of silver light over all the earth. I have rarely
seen a more beautiful moonrise. I remember that sitting in the skerm I could
with ease read faint pencil notes in my pocket- book. As soon as the moon was
up game began to trek down to the water just below us. I could, from where I
sat, see all sorts of them passing along a little ridge that ran to our right,
on their way to the drinking place. Indeed, one buck--a large eland--came
within twenty yards of the skerm, and stood at gaze, staring at it
suspiciously, his beautiful head and twisted horns standing out clearly against
the sky. I had, I recollect, every mind to have a pull at him on the chance of
providing ourselves with a good supply of beef; but remembering that we had but
two cartridges left, and the extreme uncertainty of a shot by moonlight, I at
length decided to refrain. The eland presently moved on to the water, and a
minute or two afterwards there arose a great sound of splashing, followed by
the quick fall of galloping hoofs.
"'What's
that, Mashune?' I asked.
"'That
dam lion; buck smell him,' replied the Zulu in English, of which he had a very
superficial knowledge.
"Scarcely
were the words out of his mouth before we heard a sort of whine over the other
side of the pool, which was instantly answered by a loud coughing roar close to
us.
"'By
Jove!' I said, 'there are two of them. They have lost the buck; we must look
out they don't catch us.' And again we made up the fire, and shouted, with the
result that the lions moved off.
"'Mashune,'
I said, 'do you watch till the moon gets over that tree, when it will be the
middle of the night. Then wake me. Watch well, now, or the lions will be
picking those worthless bones of yours before you are three hours older. I must
rest a little, or I shall die.'
"'Koos!'
(chief), answered the Zulu. 'Sleep, my father, sleep in peace; my eyes shall be
open as the stars; and like the stars watch over you.'
"Although
I was so weak, I could not at once follow his advice. To begin with, my head
ached with fever, and I was torn with anxiety as to the fate of the Hottentot
Hans; and, indeed, as to our own fate, left with sore feet, empty stomachs, and
two cartridges, to find our way to Bamangwato, forty miles off. Then the mere
sensation of knowing that there are one or more hungry lions prowling round you
somewhere in the dark is disquieting, however well one may be used to it, and,
by keeping the attention on the stretch, tends to prevent one from sleeping. In
addition to all these troubles, too, I was, I remember, seized with a dreadful
longing for a pipe of tobacco, whereas, under the circumstances, I might as
well have longed for the moon.
"At last, however, I fell
into an uneasy sleep as full of bad dreams as a prickly pear is of points, one
of which, I recollect, was that I was setting my naked foot upon a cobra which
rose upon its tail and hissed my name, 'Macumazahn,' into my ear. Indeed, the
cobra hissed with such persistency that at last I roused myself.
"'/Macumazahn,
nanzia, nanzia!/' (there, there!) whispered Mashune's voice into my drowsy
ears. Raising myself, I opened my eyes, and I saw Mashune kneeling by my side
and pointing towards the water. Following the line of his outstretched hand, my
eyes fell upon a sight that made me jump, old hunter as I was even in those
days. About twenty paces from the little skerm was a large ant-heap, and on the
summit of the ant-heap, her four feet rather close together, so as to find
standing space, stood the massive form of a big lioness. Her head was towards
the skerm, and in the bright moonlight I saw her lower it and lick her paws.
"Mashune
thrust the Martini rifle into my hands, whispering that it was loaded. I lifted
it and covered the lioness, but found that even in that light I could not make
out the foresight of the Martini. As it would be madness to fire without doing
so, for the result would probably be that I should wound the lioness, if,
indeed, I did not miss her altogether, I lowered the rifle; and, hastily
tearing a fragment of paper from one of the leaves of my pocket-book, which I
had been consulting just before I went to sleep, I proceeded to fix it on to
the front sight. But all this took a little time, and before the paper was
satisfactorily arranged, Mashune again gripped me by the arm, and pointed to a
dark heap under the shade of a small mimosa tree which grew not more than ten
paces from the skerm.
"'Well,
what is it?' I whispered; 'I can see nothing.'
"'It
is another lion,' he answered.
"'Nonsense!
thy heart is dead with fear, thou seest double;' and I bent forward over the
edge of the surrounding fence, and stared at the heap.
"Even
as I said the words, the dark mass rose and stalked out into the moonlight. It
was a magnificent, black-maned lion, one of the largest I had ever seen. When
he had gone two or three steps he caught sight of me, halted, and stood there
gazing straight towards us;--he was so close that I could see the firelight
reflected in his wicked, greenish eyes.
"'Shoot,
shoot!' said Mashune. 'The devil is coming--he is going to spring!'
"I
raised the rifle, and got the bit of paper on the foresight, straight on to a
little path of white hair just where the throat is set into the chest and
shoulders. As I did so, the lion glanced back over his shoulder, as, according
to my experience, a lion nearly always does before he springs. Then he dropped
his body a little, and I saw his big paws spread out upon the ground as he put
his weight on them to gather purchase. In haste I pressed the trigger of the
Martini, and not a moment too soon; for, as I did so, he was in the act of
springing. The report of the rifle rang out sharp and clear on the intense
silence of the night, and in another second the great brute had landed on his
head within four feet of us, and rolling over and over towards us, was sending
the bushes which composed our little fence flying with convulsive strokes of
his great paws. We sprang out of the other side of the 'skerm,' and he rolled
on to it and into it and then right through the fire. Next he raised himself
and sat upon his haunches like a great dog, and began to roar. Heavens! how he
roared! I never heard anything like it before or since. He kept filling his
lungs with air, and then emitting it in the most heart- shaking volumes of
sound. Suddenly, in the middle of one of the loudest roars, he rolled over on
to his side and lay still, and I knew that he was dead. A lion generally dies
upon his side.
"With
a sigh of relief I looked up towards his mate upon the ant-heap. She was
standing there apparently petrified with astonishment, looking over her
shoulder, and lashing her tail; but to our intense joy, when the dying beast
ceased roaring, she turned, and, with one enormous bound, vanished into the
night.
"Then
we advanced cautiously towards the prostrate brute, Mashune droning an
improvised Zulu song as he went, about how Macumazahn, the hunter of hunters,
whose eyes are open by night as well as by day, put his hand down the lion's stomach
when it came to devour him and pulled out his heart by the roots, &c.,
&c., by way of expressing his satisfaction, in his hyperbolical Zulu way,
at the turn events had taken.
"There
was no need for caution; the lion was as dead as though he had already been
stuffed with straw. The Martini bullet had entered within an inch of the white
spot I had aimed at, and travelled right through him, passing out at the right
buttock, near the root of the tail. The Martini has wonderful driving power,
though the shock it gives to the system is, comparatively speaking, slight,
owing to the smallness of the hole it makes. But fortunately the lion is an
easy beast to kill.
"I
passed the rest of that night in a profound slumber, my head reposing upon the
deceased lion's flank, a position that had, I thought, a beautiful touch of
irony about it, though the smell of his singed hair was disagreeable. When I
woke again the faint primrose lights of dawn were flushing in the eastern sky.
For a moment I could not understand the chill sense of anxiety that lay like a
lump of ice at my heart, till the feel and smell of the skin of the dead lion
beneath my head recalled the circumstances in which we were placed. I rose, and
eagerly looked round to see if I could discover any signs of Hans, who, if he
had escaped accident, would surely return to us at dawn, but there were none.
Then hope grew faint, and I felt that it was not well with the poor fellow.
Setting Mashune to build up the fire I hastily removed the hide from the flank of
the lion, which was indeed a splendid beast, and cutting off some lumps of
flesh, we toasted and ate them greedily. Lions' flesh, strange as it may seem,
is very good eating, and tastes more like veal than anything else.
"By
the time we had finished our much-needed meal the sun was getting up, and after
a drink of water and a wash at the pool, we started to try and find Hans,
leaving the dead lion to the tender mercies of the hyænas. Both Mashune and
myself were, by constant practice, pretty good hands at tracking, and we had
not much difficulty in following the Hottentot's spoor, faint as it was. We had
gone on in this way for half-an-hour or so, and were, perhaps, a mile or more
from the site of our camping-place, when we discovered the spoor of a solitary
bull buffalo mixed up with the spoor of Hans, and were able, from various
indications, to make out that he had been tracking the buffalo. At length we
reached a little glade in which there grew a stunted old mimosa thorn, with a
peculiar and overhanging formation of root, under which a porcupine, or an
ant-bear, or some such animal, had hollowed out a wide-lipped hole. About ten
or fifteen paces from this thorn- tree there was a thick patch of bush.
"'See,
Macumazahn! see!' said Mashune, excitedly, as we drew near the thorn; 'the
buffalo has charged him. Look, here he stood to fire at him; see how firmly he
planted his feet upon the earth; there is the mark of his crooked toe (Hans had
one bent toe). Look! here the bull came like a boulder down the hill, his hoofs
turning up the earth like a hoe. Hans had hit him: he bled as he came; there
are the blood spots. It is all written down there, my father--there upon the
earth.'
"'Yes,'
I said; 'yes; but /where is Hans?/'
"Even
as I said it Mashune clutched my arm, and pointed to the stunted thorn just by
us. Even now, gentlemen, it makes me feel sick when I think of what I saw.
"For
fixed in a stout fork of the tree some eight feet from the ground was Hans
himself, or rather his dead body, evidently tossed there by the furious
buffalo. One leg was twisted round the fork, probably in a dying convulsion. In
the side, just beneath the ribs, was a great hole, from which the entrails
protruded. But this was not all. The other leg hung down to within five feet of
the ground. The skin and most of the flesh were gone from it. For a moment we
stood aghast, and gazed at this horrifying sight. Then I understood what had
happened. The buffalo, with that devilish cruelty which distinguishes the
animal, had, after his enemy was dead, stood underneath his body, and licked
the flesh off the pendant leg with his file-like tongue. I had heard of such a
thing before, but had always treated the stories as hunters' yarns; but I had
no doubt about it now. Poor Hans' skeleton foot and ankle were an ample proof.
"We
stood aghast under the tree, and stared and stared at this awful sight, when
suddenly our cogitations were interrupted in a painful manner. The thick bush
about fifteen paces off burst asunder with a crashing sound, and uttering a
series of ferocious pig-like grunts, the bull buffalo himself came charging out
straight at us. Even as he came I saw the blood mark on his side where poor
Hans' bullet had struck him, and also, as is often the case with particularly
savage buffaloes, that his flanks had recently been terribly torn in an
encounter with a lion.
"On
he came, his head well up (a buffalo does not generally lower his head till he
does so to strike); those great black horns--as I look at them before me,
gentlemen, I seem to see them come charging at me as I did ten years ago,
silhouetted against the green bush behind;--on, on!"
"With
a shout Mashune bolted off sideways towards the bush. I had instinctively
lifted my eight-bore, which I had in my hand. It would have been useless to
fire at the buffalo's head, for the dense horns must have turned the bullet;
but as Mashune bolted, the bull slewed a little, with the momentary idea of
following him, and as this gave me a ghost of a chance, I let drive my only
cartridge at his shoulder. The bullet struck the shoulder-blade and smashed it
up, and then travelled on under the skin into his flank; but it did not stop
him, though for a second he staggered.
"Throwing
myself on to the ground with the energy of despair, I rolled under the shelter
of the projecting root of the thorn, crushing myself as far into the mouth of
the ant-bear hole as I could. In a single instant the buffalo was after me.
Kneeling down on his uninjured knee --for one leg, that of which I had broken
the shoulder, was swinging helplessly to and fro--he set to work to try and
hook me out of the hole with his crooked horn. At first he struck at me
furiously, and it was one of the blows against the base of the tree which
splintered the tip of the horn in the way that you see. Then he grew more
cunning, and pushed his head as far under the root as possible, made long
semicircular sweeps at me, grunting furiously, and blowing saliva and hot
steamy breath all over me. I was just out of reach of the horn, though every
stroke, by widening the hole and making more room for his head, brought it
closer to me, but every now and again I received heavy blows in the ribs from
his muzzle. Feeling that I was being knocked silly, I made an effort and
seizing his rough tongue, which was hanging from his jaws, I twisted it with
all my force. The great brute bellowed with pain and fury, and jerked himself
backwards so strongly, that he dragged me some inches further from the mouth of
the hole, and again made a sweep at me, catching me this time round the
shoulder-joint in the hook of his horn.
"I
felt that it was all up now, and began to holloa.
"'He
has got me!' I shouted in mortal terror. '/Gwasa, Mashune, gwasa!/' ('Stab, Mashune, stab!').
"One
hoist of the great head, and out of the hole I came like a periwinkle out of
his shell. But even as I did so, I caught sight of Mashune's stalwart form
advancing with his 'bangwan,' or broad stabbing assegai, raised above his head.
In another quarter of a second I had fallen from the horn, and heard the blow
of the spear, followed by the indescribable sound of steel shearing its way
through flesh. I had fallen on my back, and, looking up, I saw that the gallant
Mashune had driven the assegai a foot or more into the carcass of the buffalo,
and was turning to fly.
"Alas!
it was too late. Bellowing madly, and spouting blood from mouth and nostrils,
the devilish brute was on him, and had thrown him up like a feather, and then
gored him twice as he lay. I struggled up with some wild idea of affording
help, but before I had gone a step the buffalo gave one long sighing bellow,
and rolled over dead by the side of his victim.
"Mashune
was still living, but a single glance at him told me that his hour had come.
The buffalo's horn had driven a great hole in his right lung, and inflicted
other injuries.
"I
knelt down beside him in the uttermost distress, and took his hand.
"'Is
he dead, Macumazahn?' he whispered. 'My eyes are blind; I cannot see.'
"'Yes,
he is dead.'
"'Did
the black devil hurt thee, Macumazahn?'
"'No,
my poor fellow, I am not much hurt.'
"'Ow!
I am glad.'
"Then
came a long silence, broken only by the sound of the air whistling through the
hole in his lung as he breathed.
"'Macumazahn,
art thou there? I cannot feel thee.'
"'I
am here, Mashune.'
"'I
die, Macumazahn--the world flies round and round. I go--I go out into the dark!
Surely, my father, at times in days to come--thou wilt think of Mashune who
stood by thy side--when thou killest elephants, as we used--as we used----'
"They
were his last words, his brave spirit passed with him. I dragged his body to
the hole under the tree, and pushed it in, placing his broad assegai by him,
according to the custom of his people, that he might not go defenceless on his
long journey; and then, ladies--I am not ashamed to confess--I stood alone
there before it, and wept like a woman."
