For a second he lay, half stunned. Fortunately, he had managed to dodge partially aside so as to escape the full shock, and the impetus had carried his assailant on a little way. Would the brute leave them, he wondered, if they both lay still. But no. It faced round, stamped, shook its head, bellowed, then came on again—this time straight for the prostrate girl.
Wagram rose to his feet with a shout—a loud, pealing, quavering shout. He had no clear idea as to what he was going to do, but the first thing was to get between the maddened beast and its intended victim.
Even at that moment, so strange are the workings of the human mind, there flashed across Wagram’s brain the irony of it all. The ecstasy of possession had culminated thus: that a sudden and violent death should overtake him in the midst of his possessions, and through the agency of one of them. The gnu, diverted from its original purpose, or preferring an erect enemy to a recumbent one, once more charged him. Then he literally “took the bull by the horns” and gripped them as in a vice. Throwing up its head the struggling, pushing beast strove to tear itself free, but those sinewy hands held on. Then it reared on its hind legs, and tall man as he was, Wagram felt himself pulled off the ground. Though considerably past his first youth, he was wiry and hard of condition, and still he held on, but it could not continue. He must relax his grip, then he would be gored, trampled, mangled out of all recognition. Already one of the pointed hoofs, pawing wildly downward, had ripped his waistcoat open, gashing the skin, when—he was somersaulting through the air, to fall heavily half-a-dozen yards away, at the same time that the sharp crack of firearms almost at his very ear seemed to point to a miracle in his swiftly revolving brain.
He raised his head. His late enemy was lying on the turf, a faint quiver shuddering through its frame, and, standing contemplating it, erect, unhurt, the form of her he had nearly lost his life to rescue, and in her hand, the smoke still curling from the muzzle, a rifle—his rifle.
Chapter Two.
Afterwards.
“How did you do it?” he asked, panting violently after his recent exertion and shock. “How?”
“I saw the cartridges fall out of your pocket while you fought the brute,” she answered. “That suggested it. I put one in the rifle and aimed just behind the shoulder, as I had read of people doing when shooting things of that sort. Thank Heaven it was the right aim. Do you know, I felt it would be—knew it somehow.”