The Haussas obeyed with one exception—Bela Moshi.
The sergeant, slipping a clip into the magazine, stood right in the centre of the path along which the second bush-cow was tearing, eager to avenge its mate.
Wilmshurst made no further attempt to order Beta Moshi to take refuge. He realised that to do so would flurry the imperturbable sergeant, but he was entirely at a loss to understand why the Haussa was apparently courting disaster in precisely the same way as the luckless Nara Gilul had done.
A rifle bolt clicked in the bush on the sergeant's flank.
"Unload!" he hissed, knowing that the risk he ran from an excited man with a loaded rifle was greater than that confronting him.
At a terrific pace the bush-cow bore down. Twenty yards from the motionless man the brute lowered its head. In that position its vision was obscured by the thick tufts of long hair. Having taken its final "sighting position" the animal relied upon its momentum to achieve the destruction of its human enemy.
The moment the bush-cow lowered its head Bela Moshi, with every sense on the alert, leapt sideways behind a tree. Then, as the infuriated quadruped thundered past, the Haussa brought his rifle to the shoulder and fired.
Thirty yards further the bush-cow dropped and died with a bullet through its heart, while the victor, grinning as only a black can grin, strode magnificently up to his victim and planted one foot upon the quivering carcass.
The injured man having been sent back and the carcasses of the two animals dragged aside—they would provide excellent meat if the task of sun drying the flesh was not unduly delayed—the march was resumed, until on gaining the summit of a low hill the wings of the broken-down seaplane were visible as they rose obliquely above the scanty scrub at a distance of nearly two miles.
Halting his men, Wilmshurst made a careful survey of the ground by means of his binoculars. A number of large birds—aasvogels, or African vultures—were circling over the derelict. It was therefore safe to conclude that no human being, unless helpless to lift a hand, was in the vicinity.