No Good Shooting At Them In Such
Circumstances, So We Watched Them Go, Still Keeping Up Their
Slashing Trot, Growing Smaller And Smaller In The Distance Until
Finally They Disappeared Over The Top Of A Swell.
We set ourselves methodically to following them.
It took us over
an hour of steady plodding before we again came in sight of them.
They were this time nearer the top of a hill, and we saw
instantly that the curve of the slope was such that we could
approach within fifty yards before coming in sight at all.
Therefore, once more we dismounted, lined up in battle array, and
advanced.
Sensations? Distinctly nervous, decidedly alert, and somewhat
self-congratulatory that I was not more scared. No man can
predicate how efficient he is going to be in the presence of
really dangerous game. Only the actual trial will show. This is
not a question of courage at all, but of purely involuntary
reaction of the nerves. Very few men are physical cowards. They
will and do face anything. But a great many men are rendered
inefficient by the way their nervous systems act under stress. It
is not a matter for control by will power in the slightest
degree. So the big game hunter must determine by actual trial
whether it so happens that the great excitement of danger renders
his hand shaky or steady. The excitement in either case is the
same. No man is ever "cool" in the sense that personal danger is of
the same kind of indifference to him as clambering aboard a
street car.
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