With Flashlight and Rifle ^ 



the ground, I approach the herd. In this direct contact 

 with the glowing, burning soil, one's knees and hands 

 can scarcely endure the heat. My own hands are not 

 precisely pampered — they have long since been hardened, 

 though it is true that they have got cracked in the course 

 of photographic manipulations. My hands, my constantly 

 exposed arms, and the upper part of my body, which 

 except in the hottest hours of the day is often entirely 

 bare and exposed to the effects of the sun — these all 

 have acquired a brownish hue ; so much so that on my 

 return from the Dark Continent, it has often amazed 

 even old and well-tanned seafarers. 



It takes me a orood half-hour to Q-et near them ; the 

 scouts of the herd of antelopes peer more and more 

 curiously at the place, less than a mile off where my 

 people have remained behind in the shadow of a euphorbia. 

 In the course of my crawlings I startle two small hares 

 from their warrens, and they seek safety in flight. 



At last I am within range, and a brace rewards 

 my labour. In long, even-measured tiight, their heads 

 sunk close to the earth, and wrapped in a cloud ot dust, 

 the surviving ten antelopes disappear in the distance. 

 This time, by a lucky chance, I have succeeded in kilHng 

 the two animals with one bullet. 



In isolated places I find several deeply trodden 

 rhinoceros-tracks, all leading to the Xjiri marshes ; they 

 gleam in the sunlight, for the grasses which have been 

 trodden down are more completely withered by the 

 sun than the darker yellowish grasses of the velt. 

 These paths I follow now for a league further, and then 



580 



