With Flashlight and Rifle -^ 



move forward like autoiiiatous, adding thousand after 

 thousand of footsteps to the thousands we have left 

 behind. 



Suddenly our eyes note a black speck rising in the 

 vicinity of a group of lofty acacia-trees. My excellent 

 field-glass discloses to us that it is a bull criraffe which 

 has taken up this solitary position. Nearer and nearer 

 we come to him, until, eyeing us curiously and anxiously, 

 he takes to flight and ambles away unmolested. 



We have now to get over an unusually deep river-ljed, 

 dried up since the rains. Reaching the oj)posite l)ank 

 at the head of my men, I suddenly espy in front of me, 

 about sixty steps away, a dark mass under a rather tall 

 salvadora-bush. At once I sink noiselessly on my knee, 

 my men doing the like, acting in unison like clockwork. 

 At the same moment a number of twittering rhinoceros- 

 birds fiy away from the dark mass to a l)ush hard by, 

 while the mass itself, in which we now recognise a 

 rhinoceros, quickly assumes a sitting position, and a young 

 rhinoceros appears suddenly beside it, as though out of 

 the ground. At a sign from me, my camera, always kept 

 in readiness, passes into my hands fVom the hands of 

 the bearer told off to carry it. Unluckily, just at this 

 moment the sun goes behind some clouds. After a few 

 minutes of anxious suspense, however, 1 am able to take 

 a photograph, and then my rifle rings out Hke the crack 

 of a whip ; it is worth while to get hold alive of that 

 much-sought-after prey, a young living rhinoceros. While 

 the mothcT goes raging aljout in a circle, snorting and 

 si)ittin<>", in a cloud of dust, lookintjf for its toe, I "et 



1 72 



