The man seemed to think that he was drawing near to the quarry. “Do you hear?” he called, “you’re not dealing with anybody; you’re dealing with me. I don’t give up when I begin a thing: I do it. This cast or the next you’ll be sorry, my little sucking swine.” He came back, upon his new line, beating as before, and muttering to himself: “Oh, not in there? No, but not far off and not much longer. Damn these flies. If I’d a dog I’d damn soon flush this puppy. Come on out of it, you young swine. My good golly, I’ll take your pelt off in return for all these midges: so much I’ll promise you.”
He came slowly along, drawing nearer to Hi. He seemed to take hours over each few yards of ground. Hi understood now how it comes to pass that hunted men, with prices on their heads, will sometimes give themselves up. He had not come to that point yet, but it was no longer out of his thought. The man came near to Hi, passed him, still muttering, beating and singing, and so slowly went to the end of his beat.
“Now for it,” Hi thought. With the utmost care he moved his hand, so as to smear it, for one delicious instant, over his face: it was the only relief possible: the next instant, he heard the man turn and come swiftly straight towards him. Could he have heard or seen him moving?
“That’s where you are, is it, my cock,” the man called. “Right you are.”
Hi was tempted to leap and run for it. The words went through him like shots; but he gripped himself, and said, “No, this man deals in bluff; he’s bluffing now to make me stir.” He lay still, while the man came straight towards him. There was no song of the flies now, he was walking with some fixed intention as though to a mark. He stopped at about nine yards from where Hi lay. Hi could see both his leggings and boots.
“Now then,” the man said. “Now then, my sucking dove; you’re somewhere just about here. I know you must be. I’m quite content to stay here all day, waiting till you squeal. I’ve done as much for a rabbit I’d got no quarrel against. I’d do more for you, let me tell you. You won’t tire me, when I’m fixed on a thing. Are you going to surrender and ask my pardon? Well, if you won’t answer, you’re wise; for you’re going to get a bullet in your guts before you’re much older: you can save your breath to squeal with.”
He came two paces nearer through the scrub. Hi could see the fronds of the talpas moving above him as he forced his way through. Just beyond the talpas was a space of earth littered with yellow fungus. “When the beast comes on to that,” Hi thought, “he’ll be bound to see me; he must see me.”
The man wrestled through the talpas on to the bare space and kicked the fungus aside. “Yellow stink-horn,” he said. He was within six feet of Hi; he had only to stoop to see him.
Then at that instant, with a sudden startling leap, somewhere to the right of the man and behind Hi, something big arose in the cover and ran for it. The man was prepared for a jump of the sort: he leaped to one side with a cry: “Ah, there you go. So you think you’ll try that.” Hi saw him clearly for an instant, standing tense, trying to see the leaping thing, whatever it was. Then, as he could not see, he leaped into the covert after it, shouting, “Stop, or I’ll plug you.” Two yards further on, he may have had a glimpse of a quarry, for he fired, jerked out the shell, snapped in a second shell and fired again, quicker than Hi had thought possible. Hi heard him mutter: “Got him. That touched him where he lived; but I’ve got to get to him, to make sure.”
The man stood for an instant, trying to see. “He’s down,” he muttered. “Or is he down?” The noise still came to them of something moving: perhaps after all he hadn’t got him. Hi heard him jerk out the shell and snap in another. “Well, I’ll soon make sure,” he muttered. “It wasn’t a bad shot for nine-tenths guess-work, if I did get him. I’d have given something to have seen him cop the spike. These stinking kids think themselves someone at school: then they come here as though the earth belonged to them: they have to learn what they amount to.”