a choking and melancholy voice from the
top of the rock, "I am dead, quite dead. That evil spirit of a silwana
[i.e. wild beast] has killed me. Oh! why did I think I was a hunter; why
did I not stop at my kraal and count my cattle?"

"I am sure I don't know, you old lunatic," I answered, as I scrambled up
the rock to bid him good-bye.

It was a rock with a razor top like the ridge of a house, and
there, hanging across this ridge like a pair of nether garments on a
clothes-line, I found the "Eater-up-of-Elephants."

"Where did he get you, Umbezi?" I asked, for I could not see his wounds
because of the smoke.

"Behind, Macumazahn, behind!" he groaned, "for I had turned to fly, but,
alas! too late."

"On the contrary," I replied, "for one so heavy you flew very well; like
a bird, Umbezi, like a bird."

"Look and see what the evil beast has done to me, Macumazahn. It will be
easy, for my moocha has gone."

So I looked, examining Umbezi's ample proportions with care, but could
discover nothing except a large smudge of black mud, as though he had
sat down in a half-dried puddle. Then I guessed the truth. The buffalo's
horns had missed him. He had been struck only with its muddy nose,
which, being almost as broad as that portion of Umbezi with which it
came in contact, had inflicted nothing worse than a bruise. When I was
sure he had received no serious injury, my temper, already sorely tried,
gave out, and I administered to him the soundest smacking--his position
being very convenient--that he had ever received since he was a little
boy.

"Get up, you idiot!" I shouted, "and let us look for the others. This
is the end of your folly in making me attack a herd of buffalo in reeds.
Get up. Am I to stop here till I choke?"

"Do you mean to tell me that I have no mortal wound, Macumazahn?" he
asked, with a return of cheerfulness, accepting the castigation in good
part, for he was not one who bore malice. "Oh, I am glad to hear it, for
now I shall live to make those cowards who fired the reeds sorry that
they are not dead; also to finish off that wild beast, for I hit him,
Macumazahn, I hit him."

"I don't know whether you hit him; I know he hit you," I replied, as I
shoved him off the rock and ran towards the tilted tree where I had last
seen Scowl.

Here I beheld another strange sight. Scowl was still seated in the
eagle's nest that he shared with two nearly fledged young birds, one of
which, having been injured, w