The shikari's grip tightened on Hillyard's arm.

The moment of danger had come.

It would be the smash of his breast-bone against the forehead of the beast, hoofs and knees kneading his broken body and the thrust and lunge of the short curled horns until long after he was dead, or--the new test and preparation to add to those which had gone before! Suddenly the shikari cried aloud.
"They are off"; and while he spoke came a loud snapping of boughs, the sound of heavy bodies crashing against trees and for a moment against the grey light in that cathedral of a forest the huge carcases of the buffalo in mad flight were dimly visible.

Then silence came again for a few moments, till the boughs above them shrilled with birds and the morning in a splendour of gold and scarlet, like a roar of trumpets stormed the stars.
Hillyard drew a breath.
"Let us go on," he said.
They advanced perhaps fifty yards before the second miracle of that morning smote upon his eyes.

A solitary Arab, driving a tiny, overladen donkey, was advancing towards him, his white robes flickering in and out among the tree-boles.
Hillyard looked at his shikari.