432 A HUNTER'S WANDERINGS ch. 



place, we argued that after firing the shot we all 

 heard, which sounded flir away towards the river, 

 and a long way off, he must have again walked on 

 in the same direction, right away from the camp, 

 and gone so far that when I reached the grass fire 

 near where he must have discharged the shot we 

 had heard, he was so far in front of me — still in the 

 direction of the river — that he did not hear my shot, 

 and we therefore concluded that he was striking 

 straight for the water. What misled us as much as 

 anything was some remarks French had made a day 

 or two previously, when we were at the other pit 

 of water, to the effect that now we had left the river 

 it might be difficult to find our way back to camp if 

 we got belated, in which case the safest plan would 

 be to make for the river at once during the cool 

 hours of night. It was, too, a fine moonlight night. 

 There was one other step we thought he might have 

 taken, which was to make straight for the path along 

 which we had come from the river ; for as the 

 Kafirs accompanying us numbered over a hundred 

 altogether, and had all walked in single file, they 

 had made a track that must have been plainly visible, 

 even by moonlight. Of the two Kafirs who were 

 with French, one was a Bamangwato boy, whom I 

 knew to have been in the habit of going in hunting 

 every year to the Mababe, and whom I always found 

 very good at finding his way about, taking game 

 spoor, or anything else of that nature required of a 

 Kafir in the bush. Besides this, French had his 

 compass with him, knew the course of the river, and 

 the moon and Southern Cross were both shinino^ 

 brightly. Unfortunately, he was a very self-willed, 

 obstinate man, and there is little doubt that he lost 

 his life through disreeardino; the Kafirs' advice, and 



