90 MY SOMALI BOOK 



day's proceedings. There we found the usual con- 

 course of vultures, etc., but both skeletons were 

 already picked clean. We found, too, which was more 

 important, that these had been visited and inspected 

 during the night by the remainder of the troop, and 

 the trail of the latter we now took up. After an 

 hour's tracking, we reached a spot where they had 

 killed a gereniih, of which there was not a fragment 

 left. Their return to look for the other two, the 

 subsequent kill and feast, must have all taken time, 

 which together with the fact that their hunger had 

 been in some measure satisfied, tended to make our 

 chances of coming up with them much more hopeful 

 than they had seemed at first. But it took us quite 

 another hour before we could get fairly going again, 

 each beast having wandered off in a different direction 

 with some special tit-bit to be discussed at leisure, and 

 it took a lot of work before we hit off the line the 

 troop had eventually taken. And from this on they 

 had meandered about in an apparently aimless sort of 

 way, difficult to follow. Once we thought we had 

 them and beat some thick bush and grass : I felt my 

 heart beat faster as I noticed a rustle in the grass, then 

 out came a long-eared fox {otocyon), a handsome little 

 beggar, but not just what I was expecting. At last, 

 however, the tracks went into a long and rather thick 

 patch of durr grass and, there was no mistake about it, 

 did not emerge. 



We decided that firing the grass was the best thing 

 to xio, and it was done accordingly, while Abdilleh and 

 I took up our position behind a thorn tree, twenty 

 yards from the other end. Behind us again, to the 



