them they had already crossed and were disap- 

 pearing again into the bush. In both cases the 

 sound of the human voice and the relief of being 

 ' found,' made them collapse. The knees seemed 

 to give way : they could not remain standing. 



The man who loses his head is really lost. He 

 cannot think, remember, reason, or understand ; and the 

 strangest thing of all is that he often cannot even see 

 properly he fails to see the very things that he most 

 wants to see, even when they are as large as life before 

 him. Crossing the road without seeing it is not the 

 only or the most extraordinary example of this sort of 

 thing. We were out hunting once in a mounted party, 

 but to spare a tired horse I went on foot and took up 

 my stand in a game run among some thorn trees on the 

 low spur of a hill, while the others made a big circuit 

 to head off a troop of koodoo. Among our party 

 there was one who was very nervous : he had been lost 

 once for six or eight hours, and being haunted by the 

 dread of being lost again, his nerve was all gone and 

 he would not go fifty yards without a companion. 

 In the excitement of shooting at and galloping after 

 the koodoo probably this dread was forgotten for a 

 moment : he himself could not tell how it happened that 

 he became separated, and no one else had noticed him. 

 The strip of wood along the hills in which I was 

 waiting was four or five miles long but only from one 

 to three hundred yards wide, a mere fringe enclosing 

 the little range of kopjes ; and between the stems of 

 the trees I could see our camp and waggons in the open 

 a quarter of a mile away. Ten or twelve shots faintly 



124 



