animal
have vanished yet from Africa. Some of the cruelty is more refined;
some of the herds are smaller; some good is making headway but Africa
is unchanged on the whole. It is a land of nightmares, with lovely
oases and rare knights errant; a land whose past is gloom, whose
present is twilight and uncertainty, but whose future under the rule of
humane men is immeasurable, unimaginable.

In my dream din followed crash and confusion until the engine's
screaming at last awoke me. My blanket had fallen to the floor and I
was shivering from cold. I jumped down to recover it and realized it
was dawn already. We were bowling along at a fine pace past green
trees and undulating veld, and I wondered why the engine should keep on
screaming like a thing demented. I knelt on Fred's berth to lean from
the window and look ahead. We were going round a slight curve and I
could see the track ahead for miles.

Three hundred yards away a full-grown rhinoceros stood planted on the
track, his flank toward us and his interest fixed on anything but
trains. He was sniffing the cool morning, looking the other way.

"Wake up, you fellows!" I yelled, and Fred and Will put their heads
through the window beside me just in time to see the rhino take notice
of the train at last. When the engine was fifty yards from him he
wheeled, took a short-sighted squint at it, sniffed, decided on war,
and charged. The engineer crowded on steam.

"He's a game enough sport!" chuckled Fred.

"He's a fool!" grinned Will.

He was both, but he never flinched. He struck the cow-catcher head-on
and tried to lift it sky-high. The speed and weight of the engine sent
him rolling over and over off the track, and the shock of the blow came
backward along the train in thunderclaps as each car felt the check.
The engineer whistled him a requiem and a cheer went up from fifty
heads thrust out of windows. But he was not nearly done for.

He got up, spun around like a polo pony to face the train, deliberately
picked out level going, and charged again. This time he hit the car we
were in, and screams from the compartment behind us gave notice that
Lady Saffren Waldon's maid was awake and looking through a window too.
He hit the running-board beside the car, crumpled it to matchwood,
lifted the car an inch off the track, but failed to disrail us. The
car fell back on the metal with a clang, and the rhino recoiled
sidewise, to roll over and over again. Thi