A CENTRAL PROVINCE SHOOT 33 



myself for I had to go into H. to motor out a 

 non-shooting guest who came to stop with me. 



When I got to the maehan it was dusk. It 

 was badly made and badly tied to a thin tree on 

 the top of a bank, above a nullah with a drop of 

 ten feet. The maehan must have been some 

 twenty feet up in the tree itself, for there were 

 three men, one above the other, passing up the kit. 



No sooner had the men gone than down came 

 the vultures in clouds. There would shortly be 

 no kill left. I threw everything I had at the 

 birds and then started to get down to put up 

 some form of stick scarecrow. 



I had one hand on a branch and one foot on 

 another, when both broke, and I found myself 

 thirty feet down in the nullah. I was knocked 

 out and unable to move, but not unconscious. 

 After a little I got up and found my left arm 

 broken. I felt rather groggy and stupid. Having 

 taken my boots off for quietness, they, with my 

 rifle and all the kit, were in the maehan. 



It was now dark, but the evening light was still 

 in the west. I was in a bit of jungle I had not 

 seen before, thickly wooded, with winding nullahs 

 and intervening higher ground, skirting the main 

 river, which lay about a mile to the west. 



If I could gain the main river I knew that I 

 could get home. I tried following the nullah, 

 but it wound so much and the going was so heavy 

 that I took a line across country, over nullahs 

 and up and down hills, steering for the fading 

 light. There was no path. I had to hold up my 

 left arm with my right, and could not stoop to pick 

 out thorns from my feet ; but these were not bad. 



D 



