It was of
course now too late to hunt up the three genuine buffaloes of
this ill-assorted group.
In fact our main necessity was to get through the river jungle
before the afterglow had faded from the sky, leaving us in pitch
darkness. I sent Memba Sasa across to pick up the effects we had
left on the opposite ridge, while I myself struck directly across
the flat toward camp.
I had plunged ahead thus, for two or three hundred yards, when I
was brought up short by the violent snort of a rhinoceros just
off the starboard bow. He was very close, but I was unable to
locate him in the dusk. A cautious retreat and change of course
cleared me from him, and I was about to start on again full speed
when once more I was halted by another rhinoceros, this time dead
ahead. Attempting to back away from him, I aroused another in my
rear; and as though this were not enough a fourth opened up to
the left.
It was absolutely impossible to see anything ten yards away
unless it happened to be silhouetted against the sky. I backed
cautiously toward a little bush, with a vague idea of having
something to dodge around. As the old hunter said when, unarmed,
he met the bear, "Anything, even a newspaper, would have come
handy." To my great joy I backed against a conical ant hill four
or five feet high.
