Introductory Chapter 



carry in dead meat, come back with them, and 

 return to camp. He might be sent off on a 

 hundred and one errands. It is all his job ! He 

 knows it ! So he is made to be bored. In the 

 same way, when you take out porters to bring in 

 the meat that one hopes to kill, make them follow 

 400 yards or 500 yards behind. If, on the other 

 hand, I am by myself, as I say, with a small-bore, 

 and a rhino or a lion appears on the scene, it makes 

 one think ! I remember hoisting the white flag 

 very badly on one occasion when a rhino arrived. 

 I fled, and just met my gun-bearer half-way, he 

 having taken it all in and run like a hare towards 

 me in time. That is my own look-out; but I may 

 say I have never been wandering round without 

 a " solid " since — just in case! In the pursuit of 

 dangerous game, when one "goes out for to meet 

 them," one's gun-bearer is, or ought to be, so 

 close behind that one can touch him. That is 

 another occasion on which he is likely to be 

 bored ! 



About my gun-bearers. In India I had a 

 Mohammedan from the Punjab — a thoroughly bad 

 lot, but plucky to the backbone ; a hill man for 

 work in the hills, from the district I was shooting 

 in ; and a pet Bheel for anywhere in the Central 

 Provinces. In Somaliland I had a first-rate 

 Somali ; but Somalis are proverbially plucky with 

 game, and good at all dangerous game. To show 

 the pluck of the ordinary savage, on one occasion 



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