We were close at his heels when the level of the plain was reached, and pursuer and pursued shot out upon it together. A large herd, feeding not five hundred yards away, was speedily in full flight northward. "A stern chase is a long chase," is no less true in buffalo hunting than in nautical matters. After considerable experience in the sport, I would recommend amateurs to get as near their game as possible before starting, and then try their horses' full metal. Once by the side of the game, he can keep there to the end. And so, after a terrible chase, when at times we had almost despaired of overtaking the old fellow, we now found it easy to keep alongside. Our bull was a huge one, even among his species, and in such moments of excitement the imagination seems to have a trick of entering the chambers of the eye, and sliding its mirrors into a sort of double focus arrangement. With blood boiling until my heart seemed to bob up and down on its surface, I found myself riding parallel with the brute, and had I never seen him afterward, would have been almost willing to make oath that his size could be represented only by throwing a covering of buffalo robes over an elephant. Every one in the party was firing, some having dropped their reins to use their carbines, and others yet guiding their horses with one hand, while they fired their holster revolvers with the other. Shooting from the saddle, with a horse going at full speed, needs practice to enable one to hit any thing smaller than a mammoth. You point the weapon, but at the instant your finger presses the trigger, the muzzle may be directed toward the zenith or the earth. An experienced hunter steadies his arm, not allowing it to take part in the motion of his body, no matter how rough the latter may be. But we were not experienced hunters, and so, although such exclamations as, "That told!" "Mine went through!" and "Perfectly riddled!" were almost as numerous as the bullets, it was easy to see that the flying monster remained unharmed. From the first, Mr. Colon had fired without taking any aim whatever, and so it happened that his gun, in describing its half circle consequent upon the rising and falling motion of the horse, at length went off at the proper moment, and we heard the thud of the ball as it struck. Dropping his head into position as if for a charge, the buffalo whirled sharply to the right, and passing directly between our horses, made off toward the main herd. But he soon slowed down to a walk, and as we again came up with him, we could see the blood trickling from his nose, which he held low like a sick ox.