And the daylight drained away and the minutes ticked by!

Finally, as I could see no end to this performance save that to which we
had been so sickeningly accustomed in the last four days, I motioned to
Memba Sasa, and together we glided like shadows into the thicket.

There it was already dusk. We sneaked breathlessly through the small
openings, desperately in a hurry, almost painfully on the alert. In the
dark shadow sixty yards ahead stood a half dozen monstrous bodies all
facing our way. They suspected the presence of something unusual, but in
the darkness and the stillness they could neither identify it nor locate
it exactly. I dropped on one knee and snatched my prism glasses to my
eyes. The magnification enabled me to see partially into the shadows.
Every one of the group carried the sharply inturned points to the horns:
they were all cows!

An instant after I had made out this fact, they stampeded across our
face. The whole band thundered and crashed away.

Desperately we sprang after them, our guns atrail, our bodies stooped
low to keep down in the shadow of the earth. And suddenly, without the
slightest warning we plumped around a bush square on top of the entire
herd. It had stopped and was staring back in our direction. I could see
nothing but the wild toss of a hundred pair of horns silhouetted against
such of the irregular saffron afterglow as had not been blocked off by
the twigs and branches of the thicket. All below was indistinguishable
blackness.

They stood in a long compact semicircular line thirty yards away, quite
still, evidently staring intently into the dusk to find out what had
alarmed them. At any moment they were likely to make another rush;
and if they did so in the direction they were facing, they would most
certainly run over us and trample us down.

Remembering the dusk I thought it likely that the unexpected vivid flash
of the gun might turn them off before they got started. Therefore I
raised the big double Holland, aimed below the line of heads, and was
just about to pull trigger when my eye caught the silhouette of a pair
of horns whose tips spread out instead of turning in. This was a bull,
and I immediately shifted the gun in his direction. At the heavy double
report, the herd broke wildly to right and left and thundered away. I
confess I was quite relieved.

A low moaning bellow told us that our bull was down. The last few days'
experience at being out late had taught us w