THE PINJIH EHINO. 41 



rush, can settle down to so silent a walk that a man 

 may be pardoned for imagining it to be standing still, 

 whereas it is really rapidly putting a lot of ground 

 between it and its pursuer. Praying, therefore, that 

 the rhinoceros might really have remained stationary 

 after the rush we had heard, I moved as rapidly 

 and as noiselessly as possible round to the right, in 

 the hope of cutting him off, and after a detour of a 

 few hundred yards, had the extraordinarily good luck 

 of finding myself close behind him. The wind was 

 in my favour, and I was able to get within some 

 twenty-five yards. He was looking down the path 

 he had come up, and I had made an exact semicircle 

 in my detour, and was diametrically behind him. I 

 had misjudged him when I had thought a few 

 minutes before that he would not allow me to come 

 to close quarters, for now his every attitude meant 

 fighting. Hustled and harried for the last two days, 

 poor brute, he could stand it no longer, and was 

 now determined to run no farther. Malias, crouching 

 close on my heels, urged me in whisper to shoot at 

 the leg, and aim to break the bone. But I hoped for 

 a better chance than that, and squatted down to 

 await developments. Then a slant of our wind must 

 have reached the rhinoceros, for he very slowly began 

 to slew round. The huge hideous head lifted high in 

 the air and swung slowly over the shoulder, the 

 dumpy squat horn showed black, the short hairy ears 

 pricked forward, and a little gleam showed in the 

 small yellow eyes ; the nostrils were wrinkled high, 

 and the upper lip curled right back over the gums, 

 as he sought to seek the source of the tainted air. 



