So I Started On A Jog Trot, Trying To Hit The
Golden Mean Of Speed That Would Still Leave Me Breath To Shoot.
This Was An Affair Of Some Nicety In The Tall Grass.
Just before
I reached the actual slope, however, I revised my schedule.
The
reason was supplied by a rhino that came grunting to his feet
about seventy yards away. He had not seen me, and he had not
smelled me, but the general disturbance of all these events had
broken into his early morning nap. He looked to me like a person
who is cross before breakfast, so I ducked low and ran around
him. The last I saw of him he was still standing there, quite
disgruntled, and evidently intending to write to the directors
about it.
Arriving at the top, I looked eagerly down. The cliff fell away
at an impossible angle, but sheer below ran out a narrow bench
fifty yards wide. Around the point of the hill to my right-where
the herd had gone-a game trail dropped steeply to this bench. I
arrived just in time to see the sing-sing, still trotting, file
across the bench and over its edge, on some other invisible game
trail, to continue their descent of the cliff. The big buck
brought up the rear. At the very edge he came to a halt, and
looked back, throwing his head up and his nose out so that the
heavy fur on his neck stood forward like a ruff. It was a last
glimpse of him, so I held my little best, and pulled trigger.
This happened to be one of those shots I spoke of-which the
perpetrator accepts with a thankful and humble spirit. The
sing-sing leaped high in the air and plunged over the edge of the
bench. I signalled the camp-in plain sight-to come and get the
head and meat, and sat down to wait. And while waiting, I looked
out on a scene that has since been to me one of my four
symbolizations of Africa.
The morning was dull, with gray clouds through which at wide
intervals streamed broad bands of misty light. Below me the cliff
fell away clear to a gorge in the depths of which flowed a river.
Then the land began to rise, broken, sharp, tumbled, terrible,
tier after tier, gorge after gorge, one twisted range after the
other, across a breathlessly immeasurable distance. The prospect
was full of shadows thrown by the tumult of lava. In those
shadows one imagined stranger abysses. Far down to the right a
long narrow lake inaugurated a flatter, alkali-whitened country
of low cliffs in long straight lines. Across the distances proper
to a dozen horizons the tumbled chaos heaved and fell. The eye
sought rest at the bounds usual to its accustomed world-and went
on. There was no roundness to the earth, no grateful curve to
drop this great fierce country beyond a healing horizon out of
sight.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 6 of 189
Words from 2545 to 3049
of 97210