Meanwhile, Henri, by dint of yelling, throwing his arms wildly about, and digging his heels into the sides of his long-legged horse, succeeded in coming close up with the bull, which once or twice turned his clumsy body half round and glared furiously at its pursuer with its small black eyes.  Suddenly it stuck out its tail, stopped short, and turned full round.  Henri stopped short also.  Now, the sticking out of a buffalo’s tail has a peculiar significance which it is well to point out.  It serves, in a sense, the same purpose to the hunter that the compass does to the mariner—­it points out where to go and what to do.  When galloping away in ordinary flight, the buffalo carries his tail like ordinary cattle, which indicates that you may push on.  When wounded, he lashes it from side to side, or carries it over his back, up in the air; this indicates, “Look out! haul off a bit!” But when he carries it stiff and horizontal, with a slight curve in the middle of it, it says plainly, “Keep back, or kill me as quick as you can,” for that is what Indians call the mad tail, and is a sign that mischief is brewing.

Henri’s bull displayed the mad tail just before turning, but he didn’t observe it, and, accordingly, waited for the bull to move and show his shoulder for a favourable shot.  But instead of doing this he put his head down, and, foaming with rage, went at him full tilt.  The big horse never stirred; it seemed to be petrified, Henri had just time to fire at the monster’s neck, and the next moment was sprawling on his back, with the horse rolling over four or five yards beyond him.  It was a most effective tableau—­Henri rubbing his shins and grinning with pain, the horse gazing in affright as he rose trembling from the plain, and the buffalo bull looking on half stunned, and evidently very much surprised at the result of his charge.

Fortunately, before he could repeat the experiment, Dick galloped up and put a ball through his heart.

Joe and his comrades felt a little ashamed of their exploit on this occasion, for there was no need to have killed three animals—­they could not have carried with them more than a small portion of one—­and they upbraided themselves several times during the operation of cutting out the tongues and other choice portions of the two victims.  As for the bull, he was almost totally useless, so they left him as a gift to the wolves.

Now that they had come among the buffalo, wolves were often seen sneaking about and licking their hungry jaws; but although they approached pretty near to the camp at nights, they did not give the hunters any concern.  Even Crusoe became accustomed to them at last, and ceased to notice them.  These creatures are very dangerous sometimes, however, and when hard pressed by hunger will even attack man.  The day after this hunt the travellers came upon a wounded old buffalo which had evidently escaped from the Indians (for a couple of arrows were sticking