tried to get behind the nearest fenced and ditched places; the bolder spirits took horse and rushed to follow and see the hazardous enterprise. All the gentlemen present began betting on the issue forthwith, and Master Jock himself hastened after the youths in his rustic cart. Possibly he thought that even the wild animal would know how to treat a Kárpáthy with due respect.
Scarce half an hour's journey from the town began the enormous morass which extends as far as Püspök-Ládany and Tisza-Füred, in which not merely a wild bull but a hippopotamus could make his home comfortably. On one side of it extended rich wheat-fields, on the other side the rich, dark green reeds marked the water-line, only a narrow dyke separating the meadow from the swamp.
It was easy to learn at the first of the shepherd huts scattered along the border of the morass where the errant bull happened to be at that moment. Amongst the shrubs of the little reedy island opposite he had made his lair; there you could see him crouching down. All night long he would be roaring and bellowing there, only in the daytime was he silent.
First of all, however, you must know what sort of a character the beast known as an "errant bull" really is.
When there are two bulls in a herd, especially if one of them be only a growing calf, they are quiet enough, and even timid all through the winter. If they meet each other they stand face to face, rubbing foreheads, lowing and walking round and round each other; but if the herdsman flings his cudgel between them they trot off in opposite directions. But when the spring expands, when the spicy flowers put fresh vigour and warmer blood into every grass-eating beast, then the young bulls begin to carry their horned heads higher, roar at each other from afar, and it is the chief
business of the gulyás to prevent them from coming together. If, however, on a warm spring day, when the herdsmen are sleeping beneath their gubas, the two hostile chiefs should encounter each other, a terrible fight ensues between them, which regularly ends with the fall or the flight of one of them. At such a time it is vain for the herdsman to attempt to separate them. The infuriated animals neither see nor hear him; all their faculties are devoted to the destruction of each other. Sometimes the struggle lasts for hours on a plot of meadow, which they denude of its grass as cleanly as if it had been ploughed. Finally, the beast who is getting the worst of it, feeling that his rival is the stronger, begins with a terrific roar to fly away through the herd, and runs wild on the puszta; with blood-red eyes, with blood-red lolling tongue, he wanders up and down the fields and meadows, frequently returning to the scene of his humiliation; but he mingles no longer with the herd, and woe betide every living animal he encounters! He begins to pursue whatever meets his eye in the distance, and he has been known to watch for days the tree in which a wayfarer has taken refuge, until casually passing csikóses have come up and driven the beast away.
From the information given by the gulyáses, it was easy to trace the lair of the bull. Two distinct paths led to it among the tall reeds, and the two youths, separating, chose each of them his path, and waded into the thicket in search of the furious beast. Meanwhile, the horsemen, who had come to see the sport, scrambled on to the high dyke, from whence they could survey the whole willow wood.
Martin had scarce advanced a hundred paces among the reeds when he heard the snorting of the bull. For a moment he thought of calling to the stranger youth, who had taken the other path,
but pride restrained him. Alone he would subdue the beast, and he boldly sought the spot from whence the snorting proceeded.
There lay the huge beast in the midst of the reeds. He had buried himself up to the knees in the swamp, and, whether from rage or for amusement, had trampled down a large area of rushes all round about him.