‘What to do now? Not a tree near, and the bull was only seventy yards away. I could see his blazing eyes as he came on towards me. His horns, which had tempted me so, seemed poised ready to toss me up into the air, as only a wildebeest knows how. At this moment I saw a porcupine hole not far away. It seemed large enough to hold me, and, even though it was not deep, it would suffice, so long as I could keep out of reach of those terrible horns. I sprang towards the hole and crept into it. It was just large enough for me to lie in it, with my head pressed into a hole a little deeper at one end and my feet into a similar one at the other end. The hole seemed to have been originally two holes, with the intervening wall broken down, but not so deep as the two original holes. Into these two holes I hung with my head and feet, while my body was resting on the wall between, which was broken down just deep enough to leave my body slightly below the surface of the surrounding ground. The wildebeest bull was on me. I heard him snorting and tramping about where my horse was lying, and by the fall of a heavy body which I heard, I judged that he had completed the ruin of my hunting horse by tossing him. Now I heard him come towards me. I felt his hot breath on my back. What will he do now? I knew I was out of reach of his horns. Will he have sense enough to tread on me, and thus revenge himself by breaking my back? No; he knew a trick worth two of that it seemed. What do you think he did? He started licking me. Any harm in that? Have you ever seen the tongue of a wildebeest? It is as rough as a rasp, and as hard as a horn. At first I did not think much of his scratching my back with his horny tongue, but he had soon worn through my shirt, which was the only upper garment I had on at the time. Oh Lord! what a sensation it was when first his tongue reached my bare body; it was terrible. But you can easily feel what it was like by taking a coarse rasp and rasping your bare body. My God, I shall never forget that quarter-of-an-hour’s torture I endured that day. It felt as if he was tearing pieces of flesh out of my bare back. Soon the blood was streaming down my sides, and the blood seemed to make him madder than ever. Every time he tore his tongue through my lacerated flesh a shiver of horror and pain passed through my body. I prayed to God as I had never prayed before to let me die. When the horror and pain became too much for me to bear, I fainted. If I had not fainted I suppose I would either have died or gone mad. When I came to myself I was lying on my side; somebody was pouring water over me and down my throat. My companions had looked for me, had discovered my horse and the maddened bull, and shot the latter. They found me in the hole where the bull had been standing engaged in his fiendish work. They thought I was dead. But I recovered, and lived to dread the sight of a wildebeest. I have the horns of that brute still to-day at home. I have been offered £15 for them as they are such a splendid pair, but I will never sell them, and I will never risk a single-handed fight with a wildebeest bull again.’