A Voyage round the World: A book for boysKingston, William Henry Giles
General
A Voyage round the World: A book for boys
Kingston, William Henry Giles
Voyages around the world -- Juvenile fiction
bull; the rock was a dozen yards before us, and he was not much further
off in our rear. We sprang on; Jerry tripped over a lump of decayed
grass, but he picked himself up, and, crying to me not to stop, followed
me. The face of the rock was too perpendicular directly in front to
allow me to get up it, but a little to the right it was more broken. I
sprang towards the place, and scrambled up. Jerry reached the foot of
the rock; the bull was making for the right side, where he had seen me
climb up. In another moment he would have pinned Jerry to the rock, or
tossed him up to me.
"Help me! help me, Harry!" he sung out, with good reason dreadfully
alarmed. I had just time to throw myself down at full length, and, by
loaning over the rock, to seize his hand, before the bull, seeing him,
with a terrific bellow made a full butt at him. With a strength I did
not think myself capable of exerting, I hauled him up to me, the bull's
horns actually passing between his feet! In his hurry, however, he
dropped his gun at the foot of the rock, and the bull vented his rage
and disappointment by giving it several butts as it lay on the ground;
and I was in great hopes that he would strike the lock and make it go
off--it would have astonished him not a little. Jerry almost fainted
with the fright the brute had given him, but he very speedily recovered,
and then we looked round to see what sort of a place we were on. We
found that it was, fortunately, inaccessible on all sides; so we
returned with much greater composure to watch the proceedings of our
bovine enemies. The other bulls had now come up, with their tails in
the air, bellowing at the top of their voices, and tearing the ground up
on all sides, and throwing the grass over their heads. They appeared
for some reason to be fearfully enraged against us. There were seven
bulls altogether. Placed in the convenient position we were, we agreed
that we could easily shoot them, and thus raise the siege; but on
examining the contents of our pockets, we found that we had only got
five bullets between us. Now, supposing every bullet to have had in
this case its billet, and to have mortally wounded an animal, that would
have left two unprovided for; and even with two we had no desire to
contend on the level ground. Still we determined to do what we could;
so I loaded and took a steady aim at the beast which had led on the
attack. The bullet struck him on the head; but his skull was thick, and
though it wounded him severely, it did not enter his brain. The pain
made him tear up the ground more furiously, and bellow louder than
before. Jerry said he would try the next time; so I loaded, and he took
the gun. I thought he was going to make a good shot, but he was
nervous, and the bullet only struck the beast's shoulder, nor did it
increase the sweetness of his temper. We had thus only three bullets,
and all our enemies as vicious as ever. The most important thing we
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account