Horns 



closer. I must state here that Kaiiig had my 

 small "303 and his own axe, a weapon carried by 

 all these local jungle tribes and from which they 

 never part, and I noticed as I left him that he had 

 laid the rifle on the ground, as also the axe, and was 

 crouching down with eyes fixed on the bison. His 

 lips moved, but I did not catch what he said. Nor 

 was it material. I crept silently up the little drain, 

 here widened out slightly, till I found myself 

 within eighteen paces of the bison ; and as he 

 loomed suddenly upon me, with only the tussocky 

 grass between us, his enormous bulk took my 

 breath away. I had seen them before in the forest, 

 but never at such close quarters as this. How- 

 ever, there was no time for thought now. Raising 

 the rifle I took careful aim ; it would have been 

 impossible to miss the immense mass — it looked 

 like an elephant — and pulled the trigger. Click ! 

 A missfire! And brand-new modified cordite 

 cartridges (my -500 is a Holland and Holland 

 black-powder rifle), purchased by myself the week 

 before at the Army and Navy in Calcutta ! 

 Throwing open the breech and keeping one eye 

 on the bison, I rapidly extracted the useless 

 cartridge, crammed another in, closed the breech, 

 and hurriedly sighted again on my great target. 

 The -500 has an easy, a too easy, pull on the right 

 trigger, and for all my coolness the missfire must 

 have shaken me a little, for the first shot went too 

 high. I felt it, and rapidly fired a second, and then 



J55 



