IMPROMPTU SPORT ON THE VELDT 



ULKA, haas ; Jcu die " 

 (Rise, sir ; it is dawn), 

 cried my Kaffir servant, 

 Jacob, as he passed a 

 steaming cup of coffee 

 through the fly of the 

 waggon bucksail. '' There 

 are great hundreds of 

 birds on the pan, but no 

 flesh-meat in the staan- 

 flek^^ (camp), continued 

 the native as a gentle 

 reminder that he and his fellow loup-boys and drivers 

 had not been doled out their usual ration of antelope 

 venison for several days. 



Telling Jacob to call Baas H , my fellow transport- 

 rider, and to muster all the available boys, I jumped 

 into my clothes, and having made the best breakfast it 

 was possible to make from the now somewhat limited 

 commissariat of tinned provisions, I took my 12-bore 

 and a goodly number of Nos. 3, 6, and 9 shot cartridges 

 (the latter for snipe and quail) and cantered off on a 

 poor-looking, but wonderfully hardy, Basuto pony to 



H 's outspan, which lay about a mile and a half 



185 



