362 The Hunting IVasps 



though struck by Hghtning : procumhit humi bos, 

 as we used to say in those days. 



I fled from the place Hke one possessed. After- 

 wards I wondered how it was possible, with a 

 knife almost identical with that which I used 

 for prizing open my walnuts and taking the 

 skin off my chestnuts, with that insignificant 

 blade, to kill an Ox and kill him so suddenly. 

 No gaping wound, no blood spilt, not a bellow 

 from the animal. The man feels with his finger, 

 gives a jab and the thing is done : the Bullock's 

 legs double up under him. 



This instantaneous death, this lightning- 

 stroke, remained an awesome mystery to me. 

 It was only later, very much later, that I learnt 

 the secret of the slaughter-house, at a time 

 when, in the course of my promiscuous reading, 

 I was picking up a smattering of anatomy. 

 The man had cut through the spinal marrow 

 where it leaves the skull ; he had severed what 

 our physiologists have called the vital cord. 

 To-day I might say that he had operated in the 

 manner of the Wasps, whose lancet plunges 

 into the nerve-centres. 



Let us watch this spectacle a second time, 

 under more exciting conditions : I mean, in 

 the saladeiros of South America, those immense 

 establishments for killing and treating meat, 

 where they slaughter as many as twelve hundred 



