"Even as I said it Mashune clutched my arm, and pointed to the stunted
thorn just by us. Even now, gentlemen, it makes me feel sick when I
think of what I saw.

"For fixed in a stout fork of the tree some eight feet from the ground
was Hans himself, or rather his dead body, evidently tossed there by the
furious buffalo. One leg was twisted round the fork, probably in a dying
convulsion. In the side, just beneath the ribs, was a great hole, from
which the entrails protruded. But this was not all. The other leg hung
down to within five feet of the ground. The skin and most of the flesh
were gone from it. For a moment we stood aghast, and gazed at this
horrifying sight. Then I understood what had happened. The buffalo, with
that devilish cruelty which distinguishes the animal, had, after his
enemy was dead, stood underneath his body, and licked the flesh off
the pendant leg with his file-like tongue. I had heard of such a thing
before, but had always treated the stories as hunters' yarns; but I had
no doubt about it now. Poor Hans' skeleton foot and ankle were an ample
proof.

"We stood aghast under the tree, and stared and stared at this awful
sight, when suddenly our cogitations were interrupted in a painful
manner. The thick bush about fifteen paces off burst asunder with a
crashing sound, and uttering a series of ferocious pig-like grunts, the
bull buffalo himself came charging out straight at us. Even as he came
I saw the blood mark on his side where poor Hans' bullet had struck him,
and also, as is often the case with particularly savage buffaloes, that
his flanks had recently been terribly torn in an encounter with a lion.

"On he came, his head well up (a buffalo does not generally lower his