And Sukhâm was left in the place where he made his onset.”
There the description breaks off. In spite of the haunting cry of the
cow of Lucretius, in spite of the immortal tears of Shakespeare’s “poor
sequester’d stag”—no vision of a desperate animal in all literature
seems to me so charged with every element of pathos and dramatic
intensity as this cow of Lebid. How fine is the altogether unforeseen
close, which leaves us wondering, breathless: Will she escape? Will no
revengeful arrow reach her? Will the archers do as Om Piet did to the
wildebeest?—
“A wildebeest cow and calf were pursued by Om Piet with three
hunting-dogs. The Boer hunter tells the tale: ‘The old cow laid
the first dog low; the calf is now tired. The second dog comes
up to seize it; the cow strikes him down. Now the third dog
tries to bite the little one, who can run no more, but the cow
treats him so that there’s nothing to be done but to shoot him.
Then Om Piet stands face to face with the wildebeest, who snorts
but does not fly. Now though I come to shoot a wildebeest yet
can I not kill a beast that has so bravely fought and will not
run away; so Om Piet takes off his hat, and says, “Good-day to
you, old wildebeest. You are a good and strong old wildebeest.”
And we dine off springbuck that night at the farm.’”[7]
Footnote 7:
“A Breath from the Veldt,” by Guille Millais, 2nd edition, 1899.
I ought to explain that, like the “cow” of Om Piet, Lebid’s “cow” is an
antelope—the _Antilope defassa_—of which a good specimen may be seen in
the Natural History Museum at South Kensington. The old Boer’s hunting
yarn brings an unexpected confirmation of the Arabian poet’s testimony
to its courage and maternal love.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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