NEW YEAR ON THE VELDT 237 



with the news that Baas Vilgee was awaiting breakfast. 



De V was a widower, having lost his wife many years, 



and as his house was not graced by the presence of the 

 fair sex, we formed what our American cousins would 

 call a " stag party." An appetising breakfast of tender 

 bleshoJc cutlets, green mealies and coffee, having been 

 done ample justice to, some twelve or fifteen native 

 farm hands were recruited from mealy field and stables 

 to act as beaters, and away started the guns towards a 

 small lagoon or pan of water about a mile distant ; the 

 intervening veldt being interspersed with patches of rank 

 waist-high grass and sage. As the latter looked very 

 likely ground for francolin, quail, and hares, we agreed 

 to walk through it in line, and we had not been on the 

 move a couple of minutes when a covey of seven francolin 



rose between de V and S . The birds offered 



S a very easy crossing shot, but he " muffed " with 



both barrels, and it was a " feather for the cap " of the 

 old Boer when he " wiped the eye " of the rooinek by 

 dropping a brace of francolin with a very long " right 

 and left." The remaining five birds, after flying straight 

 away for a couple of hundred yards or so, suddenly 

 swung round left-handed and were soon lost to sight 

 behind a belt of low thorn scrub. A hare was next 

 set afoot by the beater on my right, and although the 

 tips of her ears alone showed above the rank herbage, 

 I managed to bowl her over at my first attempt. Then, 

 for some httle time, nothing wearing feather or fur was 

 moved. Suddenly, however, a wild yell from the 



