The bull charged again and again, sometimes coming with such force against the tree that he fell on his knees, sometimes bending the saplings behind which I stood until his horns almost touched me. There was not a branch I could lay hold of to climb up. How long this awful game of ‘_touchwood_’ lasted, I know not; it seemed hours; after the first excitement of self-preservation passed off, weariness again took possession of me, and it required all the instinct of self-preservation to keep me on my feet; several times the bull left me for a few seconds, pacing suddenly away, bellowing his malignant discontent; but before I could cross over to a better position he always came back at full speed. My tongue clave to the roof of my mouth, my eyes grew hot and misty, my knees trembled under me, I felt it impossible to hold out until dark. At length I grew desperate, and determined to make a run for the opposite covert the moment the bull turned towards the water-hole again. I felt sure I was doomed, and thought of it until I grew indifferent. The bull seemed to know I was worn out, and grew more fierce and rapid in his charges, but just when I was going to sit down under the great tree and let him do his worst, I heard the rattle of a horse among the rocks above, and a shout that sounded like the voice of an angel. Then came the barking of a dog, and the loud reports of a stockwhip, but the bull with his devilish eyes fixed on me, never moved. Up came a horseman at full speed; crack fell the lash on the black bull’s hide; out spirted the blood in a long streak. The bull turned savagely—charged the horseman. The horse wheeled round just enough to baffle him—no more—again the lash descended, cutting like a long flexible razor, but the mad bull was not to be beaten off by a whip: he charged again and again; but he had met his match; right and left, as needed, the horse turned, sometimes pivotting on his hind, sometimes on his fore-legs. The stockman shouted something, leapt from his horse, and strode forward to meet the bull with an open knife between his teeth. As the beast lowered his head to charge, he seemed to catch him by the horns. There was a struggle, a cloud of dust, a stamping like two strong men wrestling—I could not see clearly; but the next moment the bull was on his back, the blood welling from his throat, his limbs quivering in death. The stranger, covered with mud and dust, came to me, saying as unconcernedly as if he had been killing a calf in a slaughter-house, ‘He’s dead enough, young man; he won’t trouble anybody any more.’ I walked two or three paces toward the dead beast; my senses left me—I fainted. When I came to myself, my horse was saddled, bridled, and tied up to a bush. My stranger friend was busy flaying the bull. ‘I should like to have a pair of boots out of the old devil,’ he observed, in answer to my enquiring look, ‘before the dingoes and the eagle hawks dig into his carcase.’