94 LARGE GAME. CHAP. n. 



not distinguish their outlines. Two hours passed like 

 this, during which I amused myself by watching the huge 

 bats and goatsuckers as they skimmed round me, and by 

 listening to a great owl (Bubo verrauxii) that from some 

 of the fissures of the mountain above me was imitating 

 the cry of the leopard with such precision that no one 

 unaccustomed to hear it could have detected the im- 

 posture. 



I was, however, beginning to doubt whether I should 

 see any game before morning, as the smaller animals had 

 already mostly quenched their thirst, and there was no 

 sign of the larger ones, when I heard a rumbling that I 

 knew could only be produced by one of two animals, either 

 an elephant or a rhinoceros, and as there had been no fresh 

 spoor of the former about for some time, I rightly concluded 

 that it was the latter. It seemed to issue from an open 

 glade between two thickets about sixty or seventy yards 

 off, and I waited for nearly half an hour, during which I 

 again heard the sound once or twice, momentarily expect- 

 ing to see the animal appear. At last, losing patience, 

 and suspecting, as was really the case, that it had drunk at 

 a smaller pool below me, and was now feeding, I got down 

 from the tree, and, stealing round the edge of the water, I 

 passed through the adjoining thicket, and crept forward 

 to its edge. The moon had been up for some time, but 

 was still looming large and misty through the moisture 

 rising from the earth, and directly between me and it I 

 saw the great black outline of a rhinoceros grazing broad- 

 side to me about forty yards off. I might no doubt have 

 fired from where I was, but seeing by the long front 

 horn that I had to deal with one of the white species, and 



