190 TWO YEAES IN THE JUNGLE. 



hills some twenty miles from Coimbatore, that I was going through 

 a foi'est with a party of Irulars, and suddenly started a young soh- 

 tary bull bison. After a long, stern chase we came up with him, 

 and saw him standing still and looking at us, eighty yards off. I 

 was armed with a .500 express rifle, and instantly fired at his nose ; 

 but, unluckily, he dropped his head as I fired, and the ball, instead 

 of penetrating his brain, passed through his palate and tongue. 

 It evidently severed some large blood-vessel, as the bushes were 

 covered with blood, and we had no difiiculty in tracking him. After 

 following him about a mile, we came suddenly upon him, climb- 

 ing a little, grassy hill some thirty paces above us. The instant 

 he caught sight of me he turned to charge, when I gave him both 

 barrels in the shoulder, which made him gallop madly off into 

 the forest. Tracking him on, I soon saw him standing still and 

 looking at me, some twenty yards off, and instantly gave him an- 

 other bullet behind the shoulder. He now went crashing down the 

 hill-side and apparently fell, as we heard him kicking, and then he 

 uttered a faint bellow. 



"When a bison bellows after being wounded it is almost al- 

 ways a certain sign of death, but in this instance it was not. 



" We followed the bull down the side of the hill, where he had 

 evidently rolled, and I was looking about trying to make out where 

 he could have gone, when I suddenly caught sight of his nose 

 not two feet fi'om me ! He had backed himself into a dense mass 

 of creepers, and was lying in wait for me ! Nothing was visible 

 but his nose, and the instant I saw it, I felt that I was caught. 



" In half a second, with a snort like a steam-engine, he sent me 

 flying through the aii\ I lit on my back, and was immediately 

 struck a blow on my ribs that made them spring inward as the 

 top of a hen-coop would with a heavy man sitting on it. I felt 

 that my last hour had come. He struck me with his head again 

 and again, sometimes on my breast, back, and sides, sometimes 

 on my thighs, while sometimes he struck the ground only in his 

 blind fury. The blood was pouring in a stream from his open 

 mouth, and the hot breath from his nostrils sent the blood in 

 sprays all over me. 



" I lay quite still, and he presently stopped and looked at me. 

 Imagining that I was dead, he walked slowly away a short dis- 

 tance, and stood there eying me. There was the stump of a huge 

 tree near me, and I thought that if I could only drag myself be- 

 hind it I would be safe. I began to draw myself along, bit by bit. 



