y through the air as it leaped over some of the lower rocks
which were in its way. _Hau_! Could this last? Would not Jambula, out
of breath, falter for one instant? Would not his foot stumble in the
tortuous rapidity of his flight? _Au_! Did that happen he were lost--
we both were lost.

Hither and thither he sped, the horrible beast ever behind him, roaring
in a fashion to turn a man's heart to water--the foam flying from its
mouth, the points of its huge horns tossing wildly, its savage eyes
seeming indeed to flash flame. Would they never come beneath the tree
where I--the great assegai gripped and ready--lay out along the bough
waiting my chance?

This came. Jambula, who had been drawing the thing nearer and nearer to
my side of the ground, now broke from his shelter, and ran with all the
swiftness of which he was capable beneath my place of ambush. After him
came the ghost-beast, right under me.

This was my chance, _Nkose_, and my only one. Swift as the movements of
the horror itself, I dropped down upon the thing's back, and clinging
fast with the one hand, with the other I drove the point of my great
assegai into the joint of the spinal bone behind the skull.

_Whau, Nkose_! That was a moment. I know not quite what I expected to
happen. I felt the point of the great horn, thrown backward, narrowly
graze my side; then I was hurled through the air, as the huge body,
arrested in mid course, turned right over, falling with its head twisted
under its own enormous weight.

I was on my feet in a moment--not daring to think I had slain the
monster--although I had felt the blade of my noble spear bite deep into
the marrow. But there it lay, a huge black mass in the moonlight.
While I stood contemplating it, still panting after my exertions and the
fall, I heard the voice of Jambula:

"That was well done, my father. Those horns will deal out the Red Death
no more."

"I know not whether a headless ghost may come to life again, Jambula," I
said, "but anyhow we will cut off the head of this one. But, first of
all, this"--and I buried the blade of my great spear in the thing's
heart.

We were both strong men, Jambula and I, yet it was with a vast deal of
labour we at last succeeded in cutting off the head, which was twisted
under the huge body.

"_Whau_!" exclaimed Jambula, gazing upon the great deluge of blood which
poured forth upon the ground. "It is as though the blood of all those
slain by the