On came the graceful animals across the sunlit plain, like living towers throwing long shadows before them. The trees in perspective seemed lower than their crested heads. When within about two hundred yards of the hunters, the latter were discovered by them. Turning suddenly in their tracks, the giraffes commenced a rapid retreat.
“Our horses are fresh. Let us run them down,” exclaimed Willem. “In spite of what Macora has said, I must kill a giraffe!”
The three leaped into the saddles, and started in pursuit of the flying drove, leaving Congo in charge of the pack-horse.
For some time, the horsemen could not perceive that they were gaining on the camelopards trotting before them in long shambling strides. They were not losing ground, however, and this inspired them to greater speed.
When the chase had been continued for about four miles, and the horses began to show signs of exhaustion, the pace of the giraffes was also observed to have become slower. They, also, were distressed by the rate at which they had been moving.
“One of them is mine,” shouted Willem, as he spurred forward in a final charge.
A huge stallion, exhibiting more signs of distress than the others, had fallen into the rear. The hunters soon came up with him; and, separating him from the herd, they fired a volley into his massive body. Their shots should have brought him down; but, instead of this, they seemed only to reinvigorate his wearied limbs, and he strode on faster than ever.
The hunters only paused long enough to reload, and then, resuming the chase, once more overtook the giraffe.
Another volley was fired, Groot Willem taking aim just behind the animal’s shoulder, the others firing skyward towards its head. The giraffe stopped suddenly in its tracks, and stood tottering like a forest-tree about to fall. Its head began waving wildly, first to the right and then to the left. A shuffle or two of its feet for a time, enabled it to maintain its equilibrium, and then it sank despairingly to the earth.
Proudly the hunters dismounted by the side of the now prostrate but once stately creature,—once a moving monument, erected in evidence of its Creator’s wisdom, but now with its form recumbent upon the carpet of the plain, its legs kicking wildly in the agonies of death.