A minute later the lamp was lighted, and I proceeded hurriedly to get into my clothes. Then, taking my rifle, and instructing Jan to follow me with the double-barrel, I emerged from the wagon, to find a well-grown Basuto lad of about eighteen years of age impatiently waiting to guide me to the scene of action.
“Well, ’mfaan,” said I, “so the leopard is abroad. Whereabout is he?”
“He is somewhere on the other side of that ridge, ’Nkos’,” answered the lad. “He came out from behind the krantz and, entering the long grass, disappeared. But my brother yonder is watching his movements, and if we hasten we may cut him off before he reaches the village. See, ’Nkos’, there is my brother—you can see his head and shoulders above the ridge; he is waving us to hasten.”
I looked in the direction toward which the lad pointed. The moon was high in the heavens, almost overhead in fact, and the entire scene was flooded with her white rays. Before us the ground rose slightly to a ridge about one hundred yards distant; past this lay a depression through which a small stream ran, while beyond the stream the ground rose again in a long, bush-clad slope, which swept away into the extreme distance, grey and mysterious, forming the background of the scene. The foreground and nearer distances were brilliantly illuminated by the cold rays of the moon, rendering objects within a quarter of a mile almost as distinct as though it were midday; and, clearly defined against the ghostly grey of the grass-clad ridge, I could see the head and shoulders of a savage, the white moonlight gleaming upon his ebony skin as he waved his arm, signalling to us.
“This way, ’Nkos’, this way!” whispered my guide excitedly, leading the way toward the lower edge of the depression; and, walking fast, I followed him, with Jan bringing up the rear. Five minutes of quick wading through the long, dew-saturated grass carried us over the ridge, but much lower down than where the watcher was stationed; and the depression—which was scarcely deep enough to be termed a ravine—lay before us. Here we paused a moment to reconnoitre, but, seeing nothing, moved rapidly forward again, aiming for a small clump of bush that stood solitary at a distance of about fifty yards from a wide-open space which the leopard must needs cross on his way to the village. Behind this we all three posted ourselves, to await the arrival of the brute, for the position was an excellent one in every respect, the bush being between us and the spot where we supposed the leopard to be, while what little wind there was blew from that direction toward us, and in front stretched a wide, open, grassy space, with the stream trickling through its midst.
We had scarcely settled ourselves behind the bush when our Basuto guide gently touched me on the arm and silently pointed between the branches toward a spot where the grass seemed to be swaying a little more strongly than the soft breathing of the wind alone would account for; and, looking intently, I presently perceived that this peculiar swaying motion of the grass was stealthily progressing across the open space, as though something hidden by the tall growth were cautiously moving there. Apart from the peculiar motion of the grass, however, nothing was to be seen, which was not surprising, since the growth down there was breast-high; but a little farther on, where the village herd had been turned out to graze, it was not so long. The oxen were there now, at the far side of the patch of short grass, lying down asleep in charge of a couple of boy herds, and it seemed to me that the mysterious movement in the grass was progressing toward them. Presently one of the oxen suddenly flung up his head, seemed to sniff the air for a few moments, and then, with a low moan, rose to his feet, switching his tail from side to side. The movement aroused the rest of the herd, who in turn scrambled to their feet and stood, switching their tails, and all facing the same way, namely, toward the spot where I had observed the suspicious motion of the grass. But the motion had ceased now, and for nearly a quarter of an hour we all stood there tense, waiting and watching.
Then suddenly I detected anew the curious quivering and swaying of the tufts, though so slight was it that for at least a couple of minutes I could not be sure that my senses were not deceiving me. At length, however, the movement grew sufficiently pronounced to convince me that the leopard was once more creeping forward, and a few minutes later it reached the spot where the grass had been kept comparatively short by the grazing of the herd. The next instant I caught the merest glimpse through the shortened herbage of a moving something that I knew could only be the back of a crouching animal of some sort sneaking toward the now fully awakened herd; and throwing up my rifle, I tried to imagine the entire animal from the little of it that I saw, aimed for the spot among the grass which I pictured as being just behind the shoulder, and pulled the trigger. The sharp crack of the rifle broke in upon the stillness of the night with startling effect. I heard the thud of the bullet, instantly followed by a savage snarl that ended in a moan, and as the smoke drifted away I caught a momentary glimpse of a great, tawny, black-spotted form writhing convulsively in the air from its death spring and then collapsing inertly where it fell. Jan and the Basuto, uttering yells of delight, instantly started to run in upon the fallen leopard; but I stopped them with the reminder that the beast might not yet be dead, and, exchanging weapons with the Hottentot, proceeded to approach, with all due caution, the spot where it lay. But we need not have been under any apprehension, for when we came to it we saw that the animal—which, by the way, was the biggest leopard that I had ever seen—had been shot clean through the heart, and was stone-dead.