THE FIRST GAME CAMP 



all. Therefore, once more we dismounted, lined up 

 in battle array, and advanced. 



Sensations? Distinctly nervous, decidedly alert, 

 and somewhat self-congratulatory that I was not 

 more scared. No man can predicate how efficient 

 he is going to be in the presence of really dangerous 

 game. Only the actual trial will show. This is not 

 a question of courage at all, but of purely involuntary 

 reaction of the nerves. Very few men are physical 

 cowards. They will and do face anything. But a 

 great many men are rendered inefficient by the way 

 their nervous systems act under stress. It is not a 

 matter for control by will power in the slightest de- 

 gree. So the big game hunter must determine by 

 actual trial whether it so happens that the great ex- 

 citement of danger renders his hand shaky or steady. 

 The excitement in either case is the same. No man 

 is ever "cool" in the sense that personal danger is 

 of the same kind of indifference to him as clambering 

 aboard a street car. He must always be lifted above 

 himself, must enter an extra normal condition to 

 meet extra normal circumstances. He can always 

 control his conduct; but he can by no means always 

 determine the way the inevitable excitement will 

 affect his coordinations. And unfortunately, in the 

 final result it does not matter how brave a man is, but 

 how closely he can hold. If he finds that his ner- 



67 



