By the time they had reached the spot where the herd had first been sighted, it had moved some distance away; but it was easily tracked, and by dint of careful stalking up the wind the party got within three hundred yards without being discovered by the keen-scented beasts. Then, however, the country became so open that to approach nearer unseen was impossible, and Jack decided to take a shot at them without going farther.
He had brought the heavy sporting rifle which had accounted for Imbono's enemy the hippopotamus in the river. Selecting the largest of the herd—they were the red buffaloes of the district, a good deal smaller than the kind he had seen in America—he fired and brought it down. The others broke away towards a clump of euphorbias, and Jack got another shot as they disappeared; but neither this nor the small-bore bullets of the chiefs' rifles appeared to take effect, for in an instant, as it seemed, the whole remaining herd vanished from sight.
Jack slipped two more cartridges into his empty chamber, and, leaving the bush from behind which he had fired, ran towards his kill. It was his first buffalo, and only those who have known the delight of bagging their first big game could appreciate his elation and excitement. He outstripped the rest of his party. The two chiefs, chagrined at their failure to bring down the animals at which they had aimed, seemed to have lost all interest in the hunt. Samba left them discussing with Lepoko the relative merits of their rifles, and hurried on after his master.
Jack bent over the prostrate body. Despite the tremor of excitement he had felt as he cocked his rifle he found that his aim had been true: the buffalo had been shot through the brain. At that moment—so strange are mental associations—he wished his school chum Tom Ingestre could have been there. Tom was the keenest sportsman in the school; how he would envy Jack when he saw the great horns and skull hanging as a trophy above the mantelpiece when he paid that promised visit to New York!
But while recollections of "Tiger Tom," as the school had nicknamed him, were running through his mind, Jack was suddenly startled by a bellow behind him and a couple of shots. Springing erect, he faced round towards the sound, to see Samba's dark body darting between himself and a second buffalo plunging towards him from the direction of the bushes. As happened once to Stanley travelling between Vivi and Isangila, the suddenness of the onset for the moment paralysed his will; he was too young a sportsman to be ready for every emergency. But the most seasoned hunter could not have dared to fire, for Samba's body at that instant almost hid the buffalo from view, coming as it did with lowered head.
The animal was only ten yards away when Samba crossed its track; but the boy's quick action broke its charge, and it stopped short, as though half inclined to turn in pursuit of Samba, who had now passed to its left. Then it again caught sight of Jack and the dead buffalo, and with another wild bellow dashed forward. In these few instants, however, Jack had recovered his self-possession, and raised his rifle to his shoulder. As the beast plunged forward it was met by a bullet which stretched it inert within a few feet of Jack's earlier victim.
"Bonolu mongo!"[[1]] exclaimed Jack, clapping Samba on the shoulder. "But for your plucky dash I should have been knocked over and probably killed. You saw him coming, eh?"
"Njenaki!"[[2]] replied Samba, with his beaming smile.
Meanwhile the two chiefs had run up with Lepoko and were examining the second buffalo, with an air of haste and excitement. They began to talk at one another so loud and fiercely, and to gesticulate so violently, that Jack, though he could not make out a word of what they were saying, saw that a pretty quarrel was working up.
"Now, Lepoko," he said, putting himself between the chiefs and sitting on the buffalo's head, "what is all this about?"