Death waited for him in his path. Death in a mass of a coiled black mamba. The serpent reared its head and struck him, again and again.

Why was the hunter so unfortunate, to die on his own? Why was there no one to help him when, alone, he perished in the jungle? Were there no guardian angels that could have held him back from his tread into nemesis? Why so cruel a fate?

At home, why were there no bad omens that could have stopped him from carrying out his fateful enterprise? Why were there no nightmares to awaken his wife at midnight? Or among the neighbours' kids - who fattened on the game meat he often brought in abundance from the forest everyday - why were their dreams not shaken by malformed visions?

Perhaps the bushbucks he had clubbed to death with hunter's pride, or the daisies he had struck with a predatory gusto, or the buffaloes he had slaughtered with callous greed, may have voiced their woe from the dead and one beast had risen to exact a cruel vengeance: chopping down the hunter in the same way he had cut several game.