ANTELOPES 273 



my boy divested himself of his water-bottle, which we had 

 emptied, and we followed a zebra which I had also wounded. 

 Though we got very near the zebra, in fact within tifty yards 

 of it, I found that my remaining five cartridges were useless, 

 as they would not fit the rifle. As neither of us felt inclined 

 to attack the zebra with a knife, for it can give quite as bad a 

 bite as any horse, we retraced our steps. 



Hitherto I had placed the utmost reliance on a native finding 

 his way about by a sort of instinct. I was therefore taken 

 aback, when my boy could not discover, where the dead harte- 

 beest lay. I began to be anxious about our finding our way 

 back to camp, when I noticed some birds at a distance alighting 

 on the grass. My boy promptly pronounced them to be guinea- 

 fowls, but I felt convinced they must be gigantic guinea- 

 fowls, to be seen at that distance. Then the thought flashed 

 through my brain, that they might be vultures at my harte- 

 beest. This proved to be the case, and they had already 

 pecked out one of the eyes, devoured half the tongue, ripped 

 open the abdomen, and polished off most of the entrails. 

 The empty water-bottle however assured us that it was the 

 hartebeest which I had shot. 



My confidence in the native topographical instinct was 

 restored, by seeing that we were after all so near the dead 

 antelope, though we had discovered it by an accident. As we 

 were both under the impression, that the camp was pretty 

 near, perhaps at the utmost half-an-hour off, we held a short 

 consultation, and decided that he should hurry back to the 

 camp with the hartebeest's head and horns, in order to guide 

 a sufficient number of men to carry the meat to the camp. 

 I was to remain on guard, lest vultures or hyaenas should 

 quite devour the carcass. As my rifle was useless, except 

 that in an emergency I could use it as a club, I told the boy 

 to leave me the kitchen-knife which, in the hurry of starting 

 from camp, he had taken with him instead of my hunting- 

 knife. The boy went, and I was left alone. 



The broiling sun drove me to seek the shelter of the meagre 

 shadow cast by a thorn-tree, while the vultures, a score or more, 

 perched patiently a few yards off. At last the amount of shade 

 barely sufficed to cover my head, while I lay stretched at full 

 length on the ground. The vultures seemed to know to a 

 nicety, how long I remained awake. Not one of them ventured 



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