58 THE REDISCOVERED COUNTRY 



At the end of ten miles we approached the edge of the 

 escarpment, and the last water before the plunge. 

 Therefore, I turned off to see if it were possible to land 

 any meat. It had been in the dark ages past since 

 either we or the men had had any, and one cannot work 

 long, even under the equator, for ten or twelve hours 

 a day without meat and plenty of it. 



All the game here was very wild. It saw us a long 

 way off and immediately ran without waiting to stare 

 for an instant as does even the wildest game anywhere 

 else. We finally hit on the reason: The Wasonzi are 

 great on snares for small stuff, and probably every head 

 of large game in the district has at one time or another 

 been caught and had to kick out of one of these snares. 

 That was no great job, of course, but it made them very 

 distrustful. 



At last I took a desperate chance at a zebra just 

 topping a ridge 450 to 500 yards away and hit him! 

 Lost him for the time being, but on returning from a 

 search got, by chance, the herd so fixed that they had 

 to run past, between me and a rocky butte 100 yards 

 away. How they did run, like runaway horses! I 

 saw my wounded beast and hit him again. He slowed, 

 so turned my attention from him and landed a second 

 zebra in the ribs. Had to aim ahead twice the length 

 of the animals. Followed them up and killed both 

 with four more shots, of which one was a miss. Just 

 then blundered on a kongoni that had not expected me 



