HARD TRACKING 83 



and shoot him, as it was too dark to take a photo, 

 and my men were clamouring for meat. Too 

 weak to carry out a successful stalk, I was forced 

 to open fire at long range, and owing partly to a 

 shaky hand, and partly to faulty ammunition, 

 which jammed at every shot, the sable escaped 

 wounded into the forest, where it was too dark to 

 follow. 



Leaving camp before dawn the next morning 

 with two men, we took up the spoor of the wounded 

 sable, and followed it for ten hours, the hardest 

 bit of tracking I have ever done. Though one 

 often spoors the elephant for a whole day, this 

 spooring is done with good trackers, whereas 

 here I had to rely largely upon myself and five 

 years of war and absence from the jungle had 

 made me rusty at the game. We came across 

 blood where the sable had rested, and from the 

 position of the blood-stains to the body it seemed 

 likely that he was only wounded in the neck, a 

 belief made certain by finding blood-stains below a 

 bush on which the bull had browsed, and below 

 where his neck would be when browsing. The 

 meeting with the sable brought us all misfortune, 

 as by leaving and returning to camp before and 

 after daylight, we had missed seeing an invasion 

 of malarial mosquitoes. 



Our camp was pitched 011 a bluff, high above 

 the Longoe River and at some distance from it, 

 but not fur enough to prevent nearly two hundred 

 of these deadly insects finding their way into my 

 tent, while several, gorged with my blood, were 

 within the mosquito netting. 



