SYCE'S ADVENTURE 287 



one, of fully fifty great black beasts charging in column 

 across the veldt which was very uneven here, some 400 yards 

 away. It would have been easy, but useless and cruel to 

 fire into that plunging line. You are allowed only one 

 buffalo and that a bull, and to select and kill at that distance 

 would have been impossible. 



Now comes in syce's adventure. He was, as I have said, 

 standing by his grazing mule some five hundred yards off, 

 when this living tornado burst from the wood. He and his 

 mule took in the situation with wonderful promptness. 

 He was on that mule's back with an ease and quickness 

 that no one would have credited to my slow-going syce, 

 and if he had been one of those who are born to "witch the 

 world with deeds of noble horsemanship " he could not have 

 ridden faster or better. The mule saw what was coming, 

 and did his best and Amesi splendidly seconded his efforts. 

 The mule took the road be knew, the road to camp, and 

 needed little whipping, but whipped soundly he certainly 

 was. 



When I got back in the evening I found a somewhat 

 anxious encampment. Syce stoutly asserted that I had been 

 tracking ten lions when suddenly I was charged by a whole 

 herd of buffalo. He stood his ground, he said, till all my 

 men gun bearers had bolted and left me. Then he came 

 to camp and if he arrived there before the others it was only 

 because the mule was so frightened he could not stop it. 



Syce had scarcely disappeared and the great dark column 

 of jungle beasts with him, when right behind where I stood, 

 in the dense fringe of thicket, suddenly there arose a mighty 

 hubbub and a crashing and trampling louder and nearer 

 than anything we had yet heard. The herd had somehow 

 been cut in two, one-half going off on a long circular wheel, 

 to return as it proved, -to their loved cover after a round 

 of a couple of miles. The other half had not yet emerged, 

 but getting our wind rushed, as buffalo sometimes will, in a 



