Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/127

Rh "Ten minutes more and I heard a shot, Monsieur de La Géronnière had just killed a stag. It was my turn next; hearing a great disturbance in front of me and seeing the brushwood move, I let fly blindfold. I cannot say my bullet hit the wild boar; rather the wild boar ran into my bullet. Everybody congratulated me on my magnificent shot. I had killed a rogue; that is what they call old solitary wild boars in your country, is it not? "

I nodded my head in affirmation.

"My wild boar was grallocked and loaded on the shoulders of four Tagals. I was invited to continue my exploits, and assured that my first shot had proved me a master of the craft.

"I tell you, sir, there is nothing like flattery for undoing a man. I thought now that I had killed a wild-boar, I was going to kill a tiger, a rhinoceros, and an elephant. I started off again through the forest, asking nothing better than to meet face to face all the monsters of the Philippines. In my ardour I failed to notice that little by little I was increasing my distance from the rest of the party. I had been told we should have to go uphill for two hours or so, and now after barely three-quarters of an hour's walking I found myself on a downward slope. Suddenly thirty paces away I heard a terrific bellow. I turned in the direction of the sound and saw a buffalo. It was a fair shot. Only, as my gun shook a little, I don't quite know why, in my hands, I rested it upon the branch of a tree as I pulled the trigger.

"Scarcely had I done so when I saw two bloodshot eyes coming towards me, while the animal's hoofs tore up the soil in a long furrow. I loosed my second shot; but instead of checking the animal's speed, this seemed only to increase it. I had only time to throw away my gun, seize a branch of a tree under which I stood, and haul myself on to it by the strength of my arms, and thence climb up into the higher branches.

"But I was far from being done with my buffalo yet. He could not climb the tree after me, but he could and did guard the trunk. For the first ten minutes I jeered at him: 'Oh! stamp about, my good fellow,' I said, ' stamp about; little I care for you.' However, after another ten minutes I began to realize that the matter was more serious than I had at first supposed. When "an hour had elapsed, I understood by the calm systematic way he marched round and round the tree that his mind was made up to be my jailor, until he could be my executioner. From time to time he would lift his head and look at me with his bloodshot eyes, bellowing defiance the while, then set to work cropping the grass around my tree as much as to say: ' There, you see I have all I want, grass to eat, the morning and evening dew to quench my thirst, while you, as you are a carnivorous animal, and have not yet acquired the habit of living on leaves, one day or another you will have to come down. And when you do, look out for my hoofs, beware of my horns! you are in for a bad time, I think! '

"Luckily Père Olifus is the kind of man who is quick to make up his mind and act upon his resolution. I said to myself: 'Olifus, my lad, the longer you wait, the worse it will be for you. Give your buffalo an hour to go away, and then if he is not gone, well, we shall see what we shall see.' I looked at my watch and found that it was eleven o'clock; I said: 'Good! at mid-day, there will be "a fight to the death.'

"As I had feared, the buffalo instead of leaving the tree, kept on his sentry-go, every now and again lifting his nose in the air and bellowing with all his might. For my part, every ten minutes I looked at my watch and took a drink from my flask. At the end of the fifteenth minute I said to him: 'Attention, my friend, you have only ten minutes more, and if within those ten minutes you don't go by yourself, we will go together.' But at the fifty-ninth minute, instead of going, he lay down, stretching out his head towards the foot of the tree, dilating his nostrils, and from time to time casting up at me an angry look that seemed to say: 'Oh! we shall be here a while yet; never fear.'

"Now I had made up my mind things should go differently. At the sixtieth minute I gulped down what was left of the rum in my flask, a gocdish drop. I put my knife between my teeth and jumped down, judging my distance so as to alight two feet behind my enemy, and laid hold of his tail with my left hand as I had seen the toreros do at Cadiz and Rio Janeiro.

"Quick as the buffalo was, I was quicker, and by the time he was on his