When Finally
We Arrived I Fired The Ardour Of My Companions
By Relating The Adventures Of The Afternoon And
Telling
Them of the wonderful herd I had seen;
and it was at once agreed that we should stay
where we
Were for a day or two in the hope
of good sport being obtained.
As soon as it was daylight the next morning
I sent out a party of our porters with full
instructions where to find my eland, which I was sure
must be lying somewhere in the thicket close to
the hill from where I had shot him; and very
shortly afterwards we ourselves made a start.
After a couple of hours' travelling we were lucky
enough to catch sight of a portion of the herd
of eland, when we dismounted and stalked them
carefully through the long grass. All of a sudden
one popped up its head unexpectedly about fifty
yards away. One of my companions
immediately levelled his rifle at it, but from where I
was I could see better than he that the head
was a poor one, and so called out to him not
to fire. The warning came too late, however,
for at that moment he pulled the trigger. It
was rather a difficult shot, too, as the body of
the animal could not be seen very well owing to
the height of the grass; still, as the head
instantly disappeared we hoped for the best and
ran up to the place, but no trace of the eland
could be found. Accordingly we pushed on again
and after a little rested for a short time under the
shade of some trees. We had gone about three
miles after resuming our search for game, when
one of the porters remembered that he had left
the water-bottle he was carrying at the trees
where we had halted, so he was sent back for it
with strict injunctions to make haste and to rejoin
us as quickly as possible. Curiously enough, this
trifling incident proved quite providential; for the
porter (whose name was Sabaki), after recovering
the water-bottle, found himself unable to trace us
through the jungle and accordingly struck home
for camp. On his way back he actually stumbled
over the dead body of the eland which I had shot
the previous day and which the search party I
had sent out in the morning had failed to find.
They were still looking for it close at hand,
however, so Sabaki hailed them and they at once
set to work to skin and cut up the animal, and
then carried it to the camp.
Meanwhile, of course, we knew nothing of all
this, and continued our hunt for game. Shortly
after noon we had a light lunch, and while
we were eating it our guides, Uliagurma and
Landaalu, discovered a bees' nest in a fallen tree
and proceeded to try to extract the honey, of
which the Masai are very fond. This interference
was naturally strongly resented by the bees, and
soon the semi-naked youths ran flying past us
with the angry swarm in full pursuit.
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