yards from the Kaffir,
who suddenly uttered a warning cry, to indicate that the great bird was
beginning to run off straight away.

"All right, Jack, I see," cried Dyke; and pressing his cob's sides he
went off at a gallop, not, however, in pursuit of the bird, which ran
right forward, with its head turned to watch its pursuers all the time.

Dyke's tactics, the result of experience, were of quite another kind.
He turned his cob's head, and went off like the wind at right angles to
the course the ostrich was taking, and the effect was instantaneous.
There was all the open veldt, or plain, spreading out for hundreds of
miles before the bird, and it had only to dart off and leave the
swiftest horse far behind. But its would-be cunning nature suggested to
it that its enemy had laid a deep scheme to cut it off, and instead of
going straight away, it turned on the instant to spin along in the same
direction as that taken by the boy, and get right across him.

"Ah, you silly, muddled-brained, flat-headed idiot!" yelled Dyke, as he
raced along over the plain, his steed sending the red sand flying at
every spurn of its hoofs as it stretched itself out. "I'll be there
first, and cut him off. You can't do it--you can't do it. Ah-h-h-h!"

This last shout, ending in a rattle of the tongue, seemed to stimulate
the little cob to make fresh efforts; and laughing merrily to himself in
the exhilaration of the race, Dyke had only to keep slightly drawing his
left rein, to make the ostrich curve more and more round towards him,
till he had actually deluded the bird into taking the exact direction he
wished--namely, right for the pens from which it had escaped.

On sped the cob, running over the sand like a greyhound, and on rushed
the ostrich, its long legs going with a half-invisible twinkling effect
like that produced by the spokes of a rapidly revolving wheel; its wings
were half-extended, its plumage ruffled, and its long neck stretched
out, with its flattened head slightly turned in the direction of the
rider.

And so they rode on and on, till the low range of buildings in front
became nearer, the yellow sunflower disks grew bigger, and the sun
glared from the white house. Still the bird saw nothing of this, but
continued to run in its curve, trying to pass its pursuer, till all at
once it woke to the fact that there was a long range of wire fence
before it, over which were bobbing about the heads of Joe Emson's flock
of i