“Not it,” replied Dick, “or those dogs wouldn’t face it as they do. They’ve only found a lizard. Here, here, here, Pomp, Caesar, Pomp. Hey, dogs, then! Look out, Jack! Gallop?”
Dick fired a random shot at something that charged at them from out of the high grass. The next instant their horses had swerved round and were galloping away over the rough surface as hard as they could go.
They had been grumbling at not being able to find any large game. Now they had found some with a vengeance, for a monstrous rhinoceros had been disturbed by the dogs, and with all its angry passions roused it was charging down upon the young horsemen as hard as it could go.
It seemed incredible that so great and clumsy an animal could gallop so fast; but gallop it did, at a tremendous rate, paying no more heed to the bitings and yelpings of the dogs than if they had been flies. But, tossing its curious snout, armed with two horns, high in the air, it uttered a loud, angry, snorting noise as it thundered along threatening to overtake the horses at every stride. The dogs behaved very well, but they might as well have snapped at the trunk of a tree as at that horny hide, and at last in despair they contented themselves with galloping on by the animal’s side.
To shoot was impossible; to avoid the creature, just as impossible; and so the boys used their whips more than once to try and get their cobs faster over the ground.
It went against the grain to use a whip to the sleek sides of the cobs, but the rhinoceros was gaining upon them, and to be overtaken meant to be trampled to death.
“Come along, Jack; use your whip again,” cried Dick. “We can’t shoot.”
“Shall we separate?” said Jack back from his horse, as they tore over the grass.
“No, no; let’s keep together.”