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Hunter Quatermain's Story...............................................................................................................................1

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

"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

tonight, 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

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 drawingroom 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

"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

Everybody turned and stared politely at the curiouslooking 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 beforethat 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

Now, we were dining in an oakpanelled 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

Indeed, all round the table there was a simmer of scarcely suppressed excitement, which, when the servants

"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

Hunter Quatermain glanced round the table apprehensively; he did not seem to appreciate finding himself the

"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 withwell, with other famous

"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

"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

"I am but a poor storyteller," 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,

"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. I had with me four

native servants, namely, a driver and voorlooper, or leader, who were natives of Matabeleland, a Hottentot

named Hans, who had once been the slave of a Transvaal Boer, and a Zulu hunter, who for five years had

accompanied me upon my trips, and whose name was Mashune. Now near Gatgarra I found a fine piece of

healthy, parklike country, where the grass was very good, considering the time of year; and here I made a

little camp or headquarter settlement, from whence I went expeditions on all sides in search of game,

especially elephant. My luck, however, was bad; I got but little ivory. I was therefore very glad when some

natives brought me news that a large herd of elephants were feeding in a valley about thirty miles away. At

first I thought of trekking down to the valley, waggon and all, but gave up the idea on hearing that it was

infested with the deadly 'tsetse' fly, which is certain death to all animals, except men, donkeys, and wild

game. So I reluctantly determined to leave the waggon in the charge of the Matabele leader and driver, and to

start on a trip into the thorn country, accompanied only by the Hottentot Hans, and Mashune.

"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 topsyturvy 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 homecoming, 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

"The waggon and all its contents, including my spare guns and ammunition, had been destroyed by a grass

"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

"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 'veldtschoons,' or shoes of raw hide, my eightbore

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

"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 eightbore 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 firefor 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 flatcrowned 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 orib� 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

"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

"'Hark to it!' sung out Mashune in Zulu, more, I fancy, by way of keeping his spirits up than for any other

reasonfor 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.

We are hungry now, my father; our stomachs are small and withered up like a dried ox's paunch, but they will

soon be full of good meat. Hans is a Hottentot, and an "umfagozan," that is, a low fellow, but he shoots

straightah! he certainly shoots straight. Be of a good heart, my father, there will soon be meat upon the

"And so he went on talking nonsense till I told him to stop, because he made my head ache with his empty

"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 nonreturn of the Hottentot Hans, it seemed almost ominousas though

"'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

"But though we talked thus, we neither of us liked to hint at what was in both our minds, namely, that

"'Mashune,' I said at last, 'go down to the water and bring me of those green herbs that grow there. I am

"'Nay, my father; surely the ghosts are there; they come out of the water at night, and sit upon the banks to

"Mashune was, I think, one of the bravest men I ever knew in the daytime, but he had a more than civilized

"'Nay, Macumazahn, if thy heart yearns for strange things like a sick woman, I go, even if the ghosts devour

"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.

"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,

"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 bucka large elandcame 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

"'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,

"'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

"'Koos!' (chief), answered the Zulu. 'Sleep, my father, sleep in peace; my eyes shall be open as the stars; and

"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 antheap, and on the summit of the

antheap, 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 pocketbook, 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

"'Nonsense! thy heart is dead with fear, thou seest double;' and I bent forward over the edge of the

"Even as I said the words, the dark mass rose and stalked out into the moonlight. It was a magnificent,

blackmaned 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

"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 antheap. 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, 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.

"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

"By the time we had finished our muchneeded 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 hy�nas.

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 halfanhour or

so, and were, perhaps, a mile or more from the site of our campingplace, 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 antbear,

or some such animal, had hollowed out a widelipped hole. About ten or fifteen paces from this thorn tree

"'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

"Even as I said it Mashune clutched my arm, and pointed to the stunted thorn just by us. Even now,

"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 filelike 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

"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 piglike 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

"On he came, his head well up (a buffalo does not generally lower his head till he does so to strike); those

great black hornsas I look at them before me, gentlemen, I seem to see them come charging at me as I did

"With a shout Mashune bolted off sideways towards the bush. I had instinctively lifted my eightbore, 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

shoulderblade and smashed it up, and then travelled on under the skin into his flank; but it did not stop him,

"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 antbear 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 frohe 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 shoulderjoint in the hook of his

"'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

"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

"Mashune was still living, but a single glance at him told me that his hour had come. The buffalo's horn had

"Then came a long silence, broken only by the sound of the air whistling through the hole in his lung as he

"'I die, Macumazahnthe world flies round and round. I goI go out into the dark! Surely, my father, at

times in days to comethou wilt think of Mashune who stood by thy sidewhen thou killest elephants, as

"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, ladiesI am not ashamed to confessI stood alone there before