They were about three hundred yards from us, and therefore practically out of shot, but Good, who was walking ahead, and who had an express loaded with solid ball in his hand, could not resist temptation.

Lifting his gun, he let drive at the last, a young cow.

By some extraordinary chance the ball struck it full on the back of the neck, shattering the spinal column, and that giraffe went rolling head over heels just like a rabbit.

I never saw a more curious thing.
"Curse it!" said Good--for I am sorry to say he had a habit of using strong language when excited--contracted, no doubt, in the course of his nautical career; "curse it! I've killed him." "_Ou_, Bougwan," ejaculated the Kafirs; "_ou! ou!_" They called Good "Bougwan," or Glass Eye, because of his eye-glass.
"Oh, 'Bougwan!'" re-echoed Sir Henry and I, and from that day Good's reputation as a marvellous shot was established, at any rate among the Kafirs.

Really he was a bad one, but whenever he missed we overlooked it for the sake of that giraffe.
Having set some of the "boys" to cut off the best of the giraffe's meat, we went to work to build a "scherm" near one of the pools and about a hundred yards to its right.