THE LAST SEFARI 420 
never, and if [I did not cripple him, that supremely 
cunning old ‘bull was lost to me. 
I tried very hard for a raking shot, that should avoid 
his fleshy rump where an expanding bullet could not kill 
him, but should take him high up in the ribs and range 
forward. As I fired I felt I was at least near the mark; 
and sure enough, with a fierce, loud whistling snort, he 
spun right around to the shot, facing me. Now he was 
head on, and I had no mark to shoot at, for nothing was 
visible above the tangle but the heavy black impenetrable. 
bosses of horn. He stood stamping and snorting for a 
moment, made but a half-hearted attempt to charge, and 
swung back into the dense bush fringing the edge of the 
donga. As he did so, I shot through the grass where I 
fancied his shoulder should be. We now had to go slowly 
and carefully, for our bull was an old solitary one, about the 
most dangerous beast, when wounded, that there is in 
Africa or any other land. I crept forward a foot at a time, 
parting the long grass in front of me with my rifle barrel, 
and tried to keep Brownie from pushing himself ahead of 
me, as he ever was inclined to do when he knew danger 
lay in the next bit of grass. It was impossible to see any 
sign of the wounded bull; but plentiful blood spattered 
the cover. The tangle was eight or ten feet high hereabout, 
but the precipitous donga was behind, and he could never 
get out of it again should he retreat into it, if, as I believed, 
he was severely wounded. This was no time to hurry, 
for danger lay in the terribly thick tangled grass. 
Foot by foot, for fully forty or fifty yards, we followed on. 
At last I made him out right in front of me only a few feet 
away, his head held low and looking very ugly indeed. 
The moment I made him out I shot and he sank down in 
his tracks, stone dead. We all breathed more freely, for 
it had been anxious work. Then we shook hands all round, 
and I bakshished the men, not forgetting the fine bit 
