This came. Jambúla, who had been drawing the thing nearer and nearer to my side of the ground, now broke from his shelter, and ran with all the swiftness of which he was capable beneath my place of ambush. After him came the ghost-beast, right under me.
This was my chance, Nkose, and my only one. Swift as the movements of the horror itself, I dropped down upon the thing’s back, and clinging fast with the one hand, with the other I drove the point of my great assegai into the joint of the spinal bone behind the skull.
Whau, Nkose! That was a moment. I know not quite what I expected to happen. I felt the point of the great horn, thrown backward, narrowly graze my side; then I was hurled through the air, as the huge body, arrested in mid course, turned right over, falling with its head twisted under its own enormous weight.
I was on my feet in a moment—not daring to think I had slain the monster—although I had felt the blade of my noble spear bite deep into the marrow. But there it lay, a huge black mass in the moonlight. While I stood contemplating it, still panting after my exertions and the fall, I heard the voice of Jambúla:
“That was well done, my father. Those horns will deal out the Red Death no more.”
“I know not whether a headless ghost may come to life again, Jambúla,” I said, “but anyhow we will cut off the head of this one. But, first of all, this”—and I buried the blade of my great spear in the thing’s heart.
We were both strong men, Jambúla and I, yet it was with a vast deal of labour we at last succeeded in cutting off the head, which was twisted under the huge body.
“Whau!” exclaimed Jambúla, gazing upon the great deluge of blood which poured forth upon the ground. “It is as though the blood of all those slain by the Red Death were flowing there. But now, father, suffer me to ran to Maqandi’s kraal and fetch slaves to carry this, and indeed, the skin and hoofs, to lay before the King, for we have no time to lose.”
“No time to lose!” I repeated. “What mean you?”
He pointed upward with his blood-smeared assegai.