Three hundred yards away a full-grown rhinoceros stood planted on the track, his flank toward us and his interest fixed on anything but trains.  He was sniffing the cool morning, looking the other way.

“Wake up, you fellows!” I yelled, and Fred and Will put their heads through the window beside me just in time to see the rhino take notice of the train at last.  When the engine was fifty yards from him he wheeled, took a short-sighted squint at it, snifted, decided on war, and charged.  The engineer crowded on steam.

“He’s a game enough sport!” chuckled Fred.

“He’s a fool!” grinned Will.

He was both, but he never flinched.  He struck the cow-catcher head-on and tried to lift it sky-high.  The speed and weight of the engine sent him rolling over and over off the track, and the shock of the blow came backward along the train in thunderclaps as each car felt the check.  The engineer whistled him a requiem and a cheer went up from fifty heads thrust out of windows.  But he was not nearly done for.

He got up, spun around like a polo pony to face the train, deliberately picked out level going, and charged again.  This time he hit the car we were in, and screams from the compartment behind us gave notice that Lady Saffren Waldon’s maid was awake and looking through a window too.  He hit the running-board beside the car, crumpled it to matchwood, lifted the car an inch off the track, but failed to disrail us.  The car fell back on the metal with a clang, and the rhino recoiled sidewise, to roll over and over again.  This time the impetus sent him over the edge of a gully and we did not doubt he was dead at the bottom of it.

The guard stopped the train and came running to see what the damage amounted to.

“Any gent got his rifle handy?” he shouted.  “The train’s ahead o’ time.  There’s twenty minutes for sport!”

We dived for our rifles, but Coutlass had his and was on the track ahead of us, his eye a ghastly sight from the guard’s overnight attentions, his face the gruesome color of the man who has eaten and drunk too much, but his undamaged eye ablaze, and nothing whatever the matter with his enthusiasm.

“Give me a cartridge—­a cartridge, somebody!” he yelled.  Gassharamminy!  He’s not dead!  I saw him kick as he went over the edge legs upwards!  Give me one cartridge and I’ll finish him!”

By that time every male passenger was out on the track, some in night-shirts, some in shirts and pants, some with next-to-nothing at all on, but nearly all with guns.  Somebody gave Coutlass a handful of cartridges that fitted his Mauser rifle and he was off in the lead like a hero leading a forlorn hope, we after him.  We searched high and low but lost all trace of the rhino, and at the end of half an hour the engine’s whistle called us back.  There were blood and hair all over the engine—­blood and hair on our car, but the rhino had been as determined in defeat as in attack, and if he died of his wounds he contrived to do it alone and in dignity.