"Oh, beware, Inkoosi," cried Saduko in a frightened voice. "It is the

buffalo with the cleft horn!"

I heard him; I saw. All the scene in the hut of Zikali rose before

me--the old dwarf, his words, everything. I lifted my rifle and fired at

the charging beast, but knew that the bullet glanced from its skull. I

threw down the gun--for the buffalo was right on me--and tried to jump

aside.

Almost I did so, but that cleft horn, to which hung the remains

of Umbezi's moocha, scooped me up and hurled me off the river bank

backwards and sideways into the deep pool below. As I departed thither I

saw Saduko spring forward and heard a shot fired that caused the bull to

collapse for a moment. Then with a slow, sliding motion it followed me

into the pool.

Now we were together, and there was no room for both, so after a certain

amount of dodging I went under, as the lighter dog always does in a

fight. That buffalo seemed to do everything to me which a buffalo

could do under the circumstances. It tried to horn me, and partially

succeeded, although I ducked at each swoop. Then it struck me with its

nose and drove me to the bottom of the pool, although I got hold of its

lip and twisted it. Then it calmly knelt on me and sank me deeper and

deeper into the mud. I remember kicking it in the stomach. After this I

remember no more, except a kind of wild dream in which I rehearsed

all the scene in the dwarf's hut, and his request that when I met the

buffalo with the cleft horn in the pool of a dried river, I should

remember that he was nothing but a "poor old Kafir cheat."

After this I saw my mother bending over a little child in my bed in the

old house in Oxfordshire where I was born, and then--blackness!

I came to myself again and saw, instead of my mother, the stately figure

of Saduko bending over me upon one side, and on the other that of Scowl,

the half-bred Hottentot, who was weeping, for his hot tears fell upon my

face.

"He is gone," said poor Scowl; "that bewitched beast with the split

horn has killed him. He is gone who was the best white man in all South

Africa, whom I loved better than my father and all my relatives."

"That you might easily do, Bastard," answered Saduko, "seeing that you

do not know who they are. But he is not gone, for the 'Opener-of-Roads'

said that he would live; also I got my spear into the heart of that

buffalo before he had kneaded the life out of him, as fortunately the

mud was soft. Yet I fear that his ribs are broken"; and he poked me with

his finger on the breast.




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