54 LARGE GAME. chap. i. 



so that when the flesh gave way and he fell, it did not see 

 him, and gave him time to crawl with what remaining 

 strength he had left under the shelter of a friendly 

 shrub, which concealed him when it, still unsatisfied, 

 came back in search of him before finally taking itself off. 

 He told me that his bowels were protruding from the 

 wound in his side, and from the position and great size of 

 the scar I could believe it, and that his thigh was dread- 

 fully torn, as it must have been, for it still had a hole in 

 it into which I could almost place my fist, and that he 

 was eight or nine miles from the nearest village, and twelve 

 or fourteen from his own home. It was a position in 

 which most men in utter despair would have lain down 

 and awaited death ; giving in, however, must have been, 

 from the way in which he spoke, the last thing that he 

 thought of. He bound up the edges of the wound in his 

 side with some of the long Umqokolo thorns every native 

 carries in his hair ; he fastened his belt above the one in 

 the thigh ; and then, slowly but surely, he made his way 

 homewards, sometimes lying for an hour or two in a semi- 

 conscious state, but on waking up always resuming his 

 journey, till at length, more dead than alive, he reached 

 the nearest kraal, which, very fortunately for him, for it 

 is otherwise very doubtful whether they would have 

 allowed him to enter, belonged to his uncle. He hovered 

 between life and death for a long time, but his vegetable 

 diet and healthy life turned the scales, and he lived to 

 enter my service, having become a refugee from his native 

 country, and he still hunts, though with the gun now, as 

 much and as pluckily as ever. 



Personally I have had fewer narrow escapes than most 



