chap. vii. HUNTING WITH DOGS. 359 



aching, and my whole body exhausted with the hard 

 riding ; but I knelt down, took a long breath, and was 

 just going to pull the trigger when the hartebeest 

 stopped of itself. The dog had kept on, and it now ran 

 up to it, tried to fly at it, and then lay down by its side, 

 and I knew that horse, antelope, and dog were all three 

 dead beat. 



The first thing was to attend to my horse. I loosened 

 the girths, took the bit out of his mouth, and moistening 

 my handkerchief with a little water which I had in a 

 flask, I put it over his nostrils. This was sufficient, and 

 in a few minutes he stood up, and replacing the bit, I led 

 him forward towards the antelope, which, having seem- 

 ingly run until it could run no more, paid no attention 

 whatever to our approach. Hartebeest do charge some- 

 times, but this one, though a bull, did not even seem to 

 look at us, and fell to my first shot. On going up to it 

 I was surprised to see the dog dragging itself to me 

 instead of rising ; and fancying that it must be exhausted 

 from the great heat and from want of water during its 

 long run, I opened the hartebeest, and taking out the 

 stomach, squeezed the grass I found there until my hands 

 were full of water, which the dog eagerly lapped up, and 

 I repeated the operation until there was none left. After 

 examining my prize, and finding to my surprise that it 

 was not the one which I had wounded, I turned to go, 

 but finding that the dog would not get up and follow me, 

 I left him there, intending him to rest and return with 

 the men whom I should send for the meat ; but he was 

 dead before they got there. My horse, too, was long 



