280 AN INTERESTING POSITION. 



appear to be looking straight at us. When the head 

 of the beast was thus up we lay without motion, but when 

 he lowered his head we crawled gently on again to 

 meet him. 



The next time we paused for rest and a view of the 

 game, we found ourselves close upon the bull, certainly 

 within forty yards of the great and gently moving mass 

 of hair, which, when the head was lowered, looked in 

 shape like a gigantic bee-hive. Still and still the bull 

 came stem on, as a sailor would say, and still he offered 

 to our rifles nothing but, as it were, woolsacks of hair, or 

 the top of his shoulders and his hump. Bayard insisted 

 that it would be useless to shoot at his forehead, for that 

 the hair there was in such a matted and a tangled mass 

 as to be ball proof against any rifle that ever was made. 

 We were thus obliged to lie flat on our faces, and flat as we 

 could lie, from our chins we now saw the top of the hump, 

 looming more largely into view as the beast came on upon 

 us. " He'll tread on us soon," I whispered to Bayard, 

 "and we shall have to fire up his nose!" and when I 

 looked at the bull again, and then at myself and Bayard, 

 I could not help thinking what mere frogs we were in the 

 grass when compared to our giant foe. And supposing he 

 took it into his head at once to charge, what would then 

 become of us ? I had scarcely made this last observation, 

 when his companion bison, some hundred yards' distance, 

 who had observed the herd to which they belonged mov 

 ing away, walked off, and our game lifted his head, not 

 above twenty yards from us, to look at him. " He 's 

 going to turn," whispered Bayard ; and accordingly the 

 bison did turn, with an evident intention of walking after 

 his companion, when at that moment, and with steady 

 aim, our rifles were fired, and then together we fell flat 



