It seemed inevitable that the father or daughter, or both, should
have fallen victims to the impending danger, when a shot from the
neighbouring thicket arrested the progress of the animal. He was so
truly struck between the junction of the spine with the skull, that the
wound, which in any other part of his body might scarce have impeded his
career, proved instantly fatal. Stumbling forward with a hideous bellow,
the progressive force of his previous motion, rather than any operation
of his limbs, carried him up to within three yards of the astonished
Lord Keeper, where he rolled on the ground, his limbs darkened with the
black death-sweat, and quivering with the last convulsions of muscular
motion.
Lucy lay senseless on the ground, insensible of the wonderful
deliverance which she had experience. Her father was almost equally
stupified, so rapid and unexpected had been the transition from the
horrid death which seemed inevitable to perfect security. He gazed on
the animal, terrible even in death, with a species of mute and confused
astonishment, which did not permit him distinctly to understand what had
taken place; and so inaccurate was his consciousness of what had passed,
that he might have supposed the bull had been arrested in its career by
a thunderbolt, had he not observed among the branches of the thicket the
figure of a man, with a short gun or musquetoon in his hand.
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