104 AFRICAN CAMP FIRES. 



were made some of the low rounded knolls 

 that for an instant we were respectively back in 

 the hills of Surrey or Michigan, and told each 

 other so. 



Thus we moved slowly out from the dense cover 

 to the grass openings. Far over on another ridge 

 F. called my attention to something jet-black 

 and indeterminate. In another country I should 

 have named it as a charred log on an old pine 

 burning, for that was precisely what it looked 

 like. We glanced at it casually through our 

 glasses. It was a sable buck lying down right 

 out in the open. He was black and sleek, and 

 we could make out his sweeping scimitar horns. 



Memba Sasa and the Swahili dropped flat on 

 their faces while F. and I crawled slowly and 

 cautiously through the mud until we had gained 

 the cover of a shallow ravine that ran in the 

 beast's general direction. Noting carefully a 

 certain small thicket as landmark, we stooped 

 and moved as fast as we could down to that point 

 of vantage. There we cautiously parted the 

 grasses and looked. The sable had disappeared. 

 The place where he had been lying was plainly to 

 be identified, and there was no cover save a tiny 

 bush between two and three feet high. We were 

 quite certain he had neither seen nor winded us. 



