I don’t know which of them looked the most frightened.  Presently Gobo touched my leg; I glanced round, and saw him pointing slantwise towards the left.  I lifted my head a little and peeped over a mass of creepers; beyond the creepers was a dense bush of sharp-pointed aloes, of that kind of which the leaves project laterally, and on the other side of the aloes, not fifteen paces from us, I made out the horns, neck, and the ridge of the back of a tremendous old bull.  I took my eight-bore, and getting on to my knee prepared to shoot him through the neck, taking my chance of cutting his spine.  I had already covered him as well as the aloe leaves would allow, when he gave a kind of sigh and lay down.

“I looked round in dismay.  What was to be done now?  I could not see to shoot him lying down, even if my bullet would have pierced the intervening aloes—­which was doubtful—­and if I stood up he would either run away or charge me.  I reflected, and came to the conclusion that the only thing to do was to lie down also; for I did not fancy wandering after other buffaloes in that dense bush.  If a buffalo lies down, it is clear that he must get up again some time, so it was only a case of patience—­’fighting the fight of sit down,’ as the Zulus say.

“Accordingly I sat down and lighted a pipe, thinking that the smell of it might reach the buffalo and make him get up.  But the wind was the wrong way, and it did not; so when it was done I lit another.  Afterwards I had cause to regret that pipe.

“Well, we squatted like this for between half and three quarters of an hour, till at length I began to grow heartily sick of the performance.  It was about as dull a business as the last hour of a comic opera.  I could hear buffaloes snorting and moving all round, and see the red-beaked tic birds flying up off their backs, making a kind of hiss as they did so, something like that of the English missel-thrush, but I could not see a single buffalo.  As for my old bull, I think he must have slept the sleep of the just, for he never even stirred.

“Just as I was making up my mind that something must be done to save the situation, my attention was attracted by a curious grinding noise.  At first I thought that it must be a buffalo chewing the cud, but was obliged to abandon the idea because the noise was too loud.  I shifted myself round and stared through the cracks in the bush, in the direction whence the sound seemed to come, and once I thought that I saw something gray moving about fifty yards off, but could not make certain.  Although the grinding noise still continued I could see nothing more, so I gave up thinking about it, and once again turned my attention to the buffalo.  Presently, however, something happened.  Suddenly from about forty yards away there came a tremendous snorting sound, more like that made by an engine getting a heavy train under weigh than anything else in the world.

“‘By Jove,’ I thought, turning round in the direction from which the grinding sound had come, ’that must be a rhinoceros, and he has got our wind.’  For, as you fellows know, there is no mistaking the sound made by a rhinoceros when he gets wind of you.