“‘Well,’ said Henrick, ’if you are so anxious to shoot, you may if you please.  Here is my powder-and-shot belt, and my gun lies under the tree.  The man immediately descended from the tree, loaded the gun, and approaching the rhinoceros he fired and wounded it severely in the jaw.  The animal was stunned, and dropped on the spot.  Thinking that it was dead, we all descended fearlessly and collected round it; and the man who had fired was very proud, and was giving directions to the others, when of a sudden the animal began to recover, and kicked with his hind legs.  Henrick told us all to run for our lives, and set us the example.  The rhinoceros started up again, and singling out the unfortunate man who had got down and fired at it, roaring and snorting with rage, thundered after him.

“The man, perceiving that he could not outrun the beast, tried the same plan as the other hunter did when the rhinoceros charged him:  stopping short, he jumped on one side, that the animal might pass him; but the brute was not to be balked a second time; he caught the man on his horn under the left thigh, and cutting it open as if it had been done with an ax, tossed him a dozen yards up in the air.  The poor fellow fell facing the rhinoceros, with his legs spread; the beast rushed at him again, and ripped up his body from his stomach to almost his throat, and again tossed him in the air.  Again he fell heavily to the ground.  The rhinoceros watched his fall, and running up to him trod upon him and pounded him to a mummy.  After this horrible tragedy, the beast limped off into a bush.  Henrick then crept up to the bush; the animal dashed out again, and would certainly have killed another man if a dog had not turned it.  In turning short round upon the dog, the bone of its fore-leg, which had been half broken through by Henrick’s first shot, snapped in two, and it fell, unable to recover itself, and was then shot dead.”

“A very awkward customer, at all events,” observed the Major.  “I presume a leaden bullet would not enter?”

“No, it would flatten against most parts of his body.  By the by, I saw an instance of a rhinoceros having been destroyed by that cowardly brute the hyena.”

“Indeed!”

“Yes, patience and perseverance on the hyena’s part effected the work.  The rhinoceros takes a long while to turn round, and the hyena attacked him behind, biting him with his powerful jaws above the joint of the hind leg, and continued so to do, till he had severed all the muscles, and the animal, forced from pain to lie down, was devoured as you may say alive from behind; the hyena still tearing at the same quarter, until he arrived at the vital parts.  By the track which was marked by the blood of the rhinoceros, the hyena must have followed the animal for many miles, until the rhinoceros was in such pain that it could proceed no further.—­But if you are to hunt to-morrow at daybreak, it is time to go to sleep; so good-night.”