130 AFRICAN GAME TRAILS 



half-grown pigs for the table, but I am sorry to say that I 

 missed several chances at good boars. Finally one day I 

 got up to just two hundred and fifty yards from a good boar 

 as he stood broadside to me; firing with the little Spring- 

 field I put the bullet through both shoulders, and he was 

 dead when we came up. 



But of course the swarms of game consisted of zebra 

 and hartebeest. At no time, when riding in any direction 

 across these plains, were we ever out of sight of them. 

 Sometimes they would act warily and take the alarm when 

 we were a long distance off. At other times herds would 

 stand and gaze at us while we passed within a couple of 

 hundred yards. One afternoon we needed meat for the 

 safari, and Cuninghame and I rode out to get it. Within 

 half a mile we came upon big herds both of hartebeest and 

 zebra. They stood to give me long-range shots at about 

 three hundred yards. I wounded a zebra, after which 

 Cuninghame rode. While he was off, I killed first a zebra 

 and then a hartebeest, and shortly afterward a cloud of dust 

 announced that Cuninghame was bringing a herd of game 

 toward me. I knelt motionless, and the long files of red 

 coated hartebeest and brilliantly striped zebra came gallop- 

 ing past. They were quite a distance off, but I had time 

 for several shots at each animal I selected, and I dropped 

 one more zebra and one more hartebeest, in addition, I 

 regret to add, to wounding another hartebeest. The four 

 hartebeest and zebra lay within a space of a quarter of a 

 mile; and half a mile further I bagged a tommy at two 

 hundred yards his meat was for our own table, the kon- 

 goni and the zebra being for the safari. 



On another day, when Heatley and I were out together, 



