256 STALKS ABROAD 



I found another nice water-buck and brought him 

 down with a long shot. Burton's gun-bearer began 

 shouting behind us, and, as I thought he had seen 

 a lion, we ran back. It was not a lion but a rhino, and 

 by the time we had got back to where the water-buck 

 had fallen he had picked himself up and made off; so 

 we lost him. Burton went after the rhino and I after 

 a water-buck, which I fancied was my wounded beast. 

 He turned out, however, to be one of a party, and 

 I managed to get a right and left at two fair heads. 



Some impala appeared directly afterwards, but the 

 buck had an ugly, narrow head, as had two others 

 I subsequently saw ; nothing like the fine heads we 

 obtained farther north. The skin of my second water- 

 buck had been badly scraped. There were some deep 

 scratches on his flanks and several small holes about 

 the size of bullet wounds in his neck, so he had 

 probably escaped a lion. 



Whilst the porters were skinning out the heads I 

 heard some shooting, and on the ridge opposite saw a 

 rhino charging about, and several porters running 

 madly for the shelter of trees. The rhino disappeared 

 (Burton afterwards killed him), and almost imme- 

 diately my Kamba gun -bearer drew my attention to 

 another of the great brutes moving up a hill six or 

 seven hundred yards off. A second appeared at some 

 little distance, and, as we moved out, on a small bare 

 plateau a third strolled out of some bushes within 

 a couple of hundred yards but vanished again 

 directly. 



