348 LARGE GAME. chap. vii. 



showed no signs of distress, and seeing that the koodoo 

 was already flagging, I thought I would keep on and try 

 to ride it to a standstill. Maintaining, therefore, the 

 same pace, I gradually crept up until we reached more 

 stony ground, when I urged my horse a little more so as 

 to get him alongside, and just as his head was level with 

 the koodoo's haunches the latter made a stumble, and in 

 trying to recover itself lurched forward and fell on its 

 knees, and from this position it did not stir even when, 

 after pulling up and getting my horse turned, I rode up 

 to it and dismounted, when, pitying the pain its laborious 

 breathing showed the poor brute must be in, I at once 

 put an end to its sufferings by shooting it. 



The dog which I have already mentioned as having 

 been gored by the gnu recovered from the wound, and 

 was afterwards instrumental in saving my life from a Hon. 

 Native huts are, as everybody who has opened a book 

 about Africa knows, magnified bee-hives, and if the reader 

 can imagine what sleeping in such an erection during the 

 suffocating heat of a tropical night in summer must be, he 

 will not wonder much at my turning out, after an hour 

 or two's restless tossing, to lie on the ground outside, 

 particularly if it be remembered that for nine months pre- 

 viously I had never slept with anything, unless a tree, 

 between myself and the sky. 



Once in the open air again I soon slept, but was awoke 

 in the middle of the night by this dog, the only one I had 

 with me, growling savagely, upon which, placing my hand 

 on my gun never far off in these wild countries, I tried 

 to discover what was disturbing him. In Africa every- 

 thing goes by extremes ; on a clear moonlight night it is 



