The Old Grey shied
considerably and became very unmanageable, and on one occasion, in
consequence, the rhinoceros, finding herself hemmed in by a bend in a
watercourse, turned round to charge, I had a very narrow escape.
Presently, galloping up on one side, I gave her a bad wound in the
shoulder, soon after which she came to bay in the dry bed of a river.
Dismounting from my horse, I commenced loading, but before this was
accomplished she was off once more. I followed her, putting on my caps
as I rode, and coming up alongside, I made a fine shot from the
saddle, firing at the gallop. The ball entered somewhere near her
heart. On receiving this shot she reeled about, while torrents of
blood flowed from her mouth and wounds, and presently she rolled over
and expired, uttering a shrill screaming sound as she died, which
rhinoceroses invariably do while in the agonies of death.
The chase had led me close in along the northern base of a lofty
detached mountain, the highest in all that country. The mountain is
called, by the Bechuanas, the Mountain of the Eagles. The eland which
I had shot in the morning lay somewhere to the southward of this
mountain, but far in the level forest. Having rounded the mountain, I
began to recognise the ground.
I had the satisfaction to behold a few vultures soaring over the
forest in advance, and, on proceeding a short distance farther, large
groups of these birds were seated on the grey and weather-beaten
branches of the loftiest old trees of the forest.
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