Following a wounded buffalo bull up a tree-clad and stony kloof is no game for children, as these beasts have a habit of returning on their tracks and then rushing out to gore you.  So I went on with every sense alert, keeping Anscombe well behind me.  As it happened our bull had either been knocked silly or inherited no guile from his parents.  When he found he could go no further he stopped, waited behind a bush, and when he saw us he charged in a simple and primitive fashion.  I let Anscombe fire, as I wished him to have the credit of killing it all to himself, but somehow or other he managed to miss both barrels.  Then, trouble being imminent, I let drive as the beast lowered its head, and was lucky enough to break its spine (to shoot at the head of a buffalo is useless), so that it rolled over quite dead at our feet.

“You have got a magnificent pair of horns,” I said, contemplating the fallen giant.

“Yes,” answered Anscombe, with a twinkle of his humorous eyes, “and if it hadn’t been for you I think that I should have got them in more senses than one.”

As the words passed his lips some missile, from its peculiar sound I judged it was the leg off an iron pot, hurtled past my head, fired evidently from a smoothbore gun with a large charge of bad powder.  Then I remembered the war-horn and all that it meant.

“Off you go,” I said, “we are ambushed by Kaffirs.”

We were indeed, for as we tailed down that kloof, from the top of both cliffs above us came a continuous but luckily ill-directed fire.  Lead-coated stones, pot legs and bullets whirred and whistled all round us, yet until the last, just when we were reaching the tree to which we had tied our horses, quite harmlessly.  Then suddenly I saw Anscombe begin to limp.  Still he managed to run on and mount, though I observed that he did not put his right foot into the stirrup.

“What’s the matter?” I asked as we galloped off.

“Shot through the instep, I think,” he answered with a laugh, “but it doesn’t hurt a bit.”

“I expect it will later,” I replied.  “Meanwhile, thank God it wasn’t at the top of the kloof.  They won’t catch us on the horses, which they never thought of killing first.”

“They are going to try though.  Look behind you.”

I looked and saw twenty or thirty men emerging from the mouth of the kloof in pursuit.

“No time to stop to get those horns,” he said with a sigh.

“No,” I answered, “unless you are particularly anxious to say good-bye to the world pinned over a broken ant-heap in the sun, or something pleasant of the sort.”

Then we rode on in silence, I thinking what a fool I had been first to allow myself to be overruled by Anscombe and cross the river, and secondly not to have taken warning from that war-horn.  We could not go very fast because of the difficult and swampy nature of the ground; also the great heat of the day told on the horses.  Thus it came about that when we reached the ford we were not more than ten minutes ahead of our active pursuers, good runners every one of them, and accustomed to the country.  I suppose that they had orders to kill or capture us at any cost, for instead of giving up the chase, as I hoped they would, they stuck to us in surprising fashion.