XVII SABLE ANTELOPE SHOT 353 



to overtake them before sundown ; so, leaving 

 directions with Goulden, who stayed behind, to send 

 my waggon after me as soon as it arrived, I saddled 

 up without delay. That morning, I forgot to men- 

 tion, my dog caught a grys stein buck, which, as far 

 as I could judge, appeared to me to be identical with 

 the grys steinbuck of the Cape Colony. 



About mid-day, as I was riding quietly along the 

 road, I espied a solitary old sable antelope bull, 

 lying in the shade of a machabel tree, with a very 

 fine pair of horns ; so, dismounting, I stalked up to 

 and shot him, and then taking the skin of his head 

 and neck to preserve at the waggons, placed the 

 skull and horns in a tree on the roadside, where my 

 waggon-driver, I thought, could not fail to see them. 

 He was a very old bull, and when in his prime must 

 have had a magnificent pair of horns, for even as it 

 was, though very much worn down,. they measured 

 3 feet 7 inches along the curve. 



Late in the afternoon, while jogging quietly along, 

 and just after crossing a little rivulet, I heard a shout, 

 and saw three white men — at least three men wearing 

 clothes and broad -brimmed felt hats — and several 

 Kafirs, sitting on an ant-heap. Riding up to them, 

 1 found that, as I had already surmised, they were 

 my old friends, Messrs. Clarkson, Cross, and Wood, 

 and right glad was I to meet them once again. Our 

 hearty greetings over, I learned that the eight elephant 

 bulls they had shot four days previously lay just 

 beyond the next rise, and that the waggon was 

 outspanned a little farther on, on the banks of a 

 small stream, a tributary of the Umfule. My friends 

 had just returned from an unsuccessful chase after a 

 lion, which the Kafirs had seen feeding on one of the 

 dead elephants. They had sighted him — a fine male ; 



2 A 



