1 82 After Big Game in Central Africa 



it perhaps a long distance away to-morrow. We 

 shall know the truth when it is daylight." 



When daylight comes ! . . . That is the only 

 answer to the uncertainty of the result of these 

 nocturnal hunts when your weapon is hesitating, 

 your eye indecisive, and you lack confidence. 

 Those hours separating you from sunrise appear 

 interminable. 



At daylight we start on the trail, on which there 

 are here and there spots of blood, followed by spirts 

 and large clots. When we see that " the heart 

 laughs," as the natives express joy, and victory is 

 almost certain. Two hundred yards from the pool, 

 in fact, the rhinoceros is found to have fallen flat 

 on its stomach with its four legs bent under it. 

 It is the large rhinoceros reported by the research 

 brigade --a female animal with a very fine pair 

 of horns. One of the bullets pierced the heart, 

 the other passed a little above the lungs ; and both 

 went right through the animal, stopping at the 

 other side under the skin, where they formed pro- 

 tuberances. 1 



The death of a rhinoceros always brings joy to the 

 camp. Its feet and heart, like those of the elephant, 

 are almost the only parts which a European can eat ; 

 the rest is hard and at the most only good for making 

 pot-au-feu or biltong for the natives. 



1 These bullets, and those with which I have killed my principal 

 victims, I extracted from the body and preserved in a small collection 

 which I look upon with a certain pride. Flattened, crushed, twisted, 

 and deformed, my "celebrated bullets," as I call them, bear labels 

 recalling their histories. 



