Harley Greenoak's Charge

by Bertram Mitford

Seeming to rise out of the ground, something huge and black rose up in the moonlight. There it stood, the terrible beast, the manslayer, gigantic in its might, and for a moment the spectator stood petrified. This then was what he had come out to find, he in his puniness! The curved horns gleamed viciously, the fierce head with its mail-clad frontlet moved to and fro, the dilated nostrils sniffing the air as though scenting the presence of an enemy.

It was a nerve-trying sight, and the startling suddenness of the apparition rendered it more so. Dick Selmes’ nerves were sound and in good training, yet the thought that here he was, alone with this monster, certain death before him if he failed to kill at the first shot, might well have unsteadied him. The great bull was standing turned sideways, and did not seem actually to have seen him. By slowly sinking down behind the bush he might still escape.

But escape was not what he had come out for. He had come out to kill, and that to his own hand. So aiming carefully where he thought the heart should be, he pressed the trigger.

The effect was startling. There was a snort and then a series of savage bellowings rent the night. The huge, grisly head was tossed from side to side and the white foam poured from the open mouth. Quickly Dick Selmes slipped another cartridge into the rifle brooch, but before he could so much as bring the piece to his shoulder the brute sighted him, and came straight for him.

In a flash Dick realised that there was nothing to aim at but the mail-clad head. He turned and ran, and as he ran, the dictum of Harley Greenoak as to the buffalo holding first rank among dangerous game, and held in greater respect than any by old hunters, leapt through his mind. And he in his rawness had come out to tackle this terror single-handed, and at night. The thunder of his huge pursuer shook the ground beneath him, the savage growling bellow of its appalling voice was in his ears, the vision of its mangled victim in his brain. It was upon him. Then he missed his footing and fell—shot head first into a large ant-bear hole, which yawned suddenly at his feet. Nothing else on this earth could have saved him. He felt the vibration as that vast bulk thundered past, and wormed himself with a mighty effort still further in, not without fears that those dreadful horns might still contrive to dig their way to him.

Suddenly the din ceased, but what was this? In front of him, in the black darkness something growled.

It was not the original excavator of the hole, he knew, for the ant-bear, which is not a “bear” at all but a timid and harmless beast, does not growl. Well, at any rate, as the destroyer seemed to have retreated, he had better retire as he had come, and leave this most opportune hiding-place to its lawful owner. To that intent he made a move to draw back.

But even with that slight move the growl grew more prolonged, more vicious. And then Dick Selmes realised that the peril which he had just escaped was as nothing to the ghastly peril he was in now. He could not withdraw.

The hole slanted downwards at an angle of forty-five, and even then it had required all the effort of despair to squeeze himself in where it narrowed. But to do this from above was one thing, to squeeze himself up again, and that backwards, was another. He could not do it.

The blood, all run to his head, seemed to burst his brain, and the perspiration streamed from every pore, as his most violent and powerful efforts failed to release him by a single inch. He was imprisoned by where the tunnel narrowed over his legs. If he could have got at his knife he might have done something, but his hands and arms were extended straight out in front of him, nor could he draw them back. He had performed his own funeral.