160 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



Cautiously threading our way along the edge of the 

 swamp, we got within a hundred and fifty yards of the 

 buffalo before we were perceived. There were four bulls, 

 grazing close by the edge of the swamp, their black bodies 

 glistening in the early sun-rays, their massive horns show- 

 ing white, and the cow-herons perched on their backs. 

 They stared sullenly at us with out-stretched heads from 

 under their great frontlets of horn. The biggest of the four 

 stood a little out from the other three, and at him I fired, 

 the bullet telling with a smack on the tough hide and going 

 through the lungs. We had been afraid they would at once 

 turn into the papyrus, but instead of this they started 

 straight across our front directly for the open country. 

 This was a piece of huge good luck. Kermit put his first 

 barrel into the second bull, and I my second barrel into one 

 of the others, after which it became impossible to say which 

 bullet struck which animal, as the firing became general. 

 They ran a quarter of a mile into the open, and then the 

 big bull I had first shot, and which had no other bullet in 

 him, dropped dead, while the other three, all of which were 

 wounded, halted beside him. We walked toward them, 

 rather expecting a charge; but when we were still over two 

 hundred yards away they started back for the swamp, 

 and we began firing. The distance being long, I used 

 my Winchester. Aiming w r ell before one bull, he dropped 

 to the shot as if pole-axed, falling straight on his back with 

 his legs kicking; but in a moment he was up again and 

 after the others. Later I found that the bullet, a full- 

 metal patch, had struck him in the head but did not pene- 

 trate to the brain, and merely stunned him for the moment. 

 All the time we kept running diagonally to their line of flight. 

 They were all three badly wounded, and when they reached 

 the tall rank grass, high as a man's head, which fringed 

 the papyrus swamp, the two foremost lay down, while 

 the last one, the one I had floored with the Winchester, 

 turned, and with nose out-stretched began to come toward 

 us. He was badly crippled, however, and with a soft- 



