158 SAVAGE SUDAN 



reeds. However, we always picked him up again, and at 

 length, after a suspense that had seemed eternal, marked 

 him into a patch of green flags half a mile away. That 

 patch was merely one amidst hundreds all precisely 

 similar ; so I spent ten minutes in taking exact " bearings " 

 and identification-marks even to counting the bulrush- 

 heads in that crucial clump. Then off we set, and more 

 than an hour we spent in suffocating heat, plunging and 

 wallowing through quagmire and morass. Then, when 

 200 yards from the well-recognised marks, we sighted, 

 standing on the very fringe of the guiding flags, the 

 vision of our half-lost trophy what a beauty! By aid 

 of friendly clumps of canes I crept in to 100 yards, 

 when a clean shoulder-shot dropped him, stone-dead, 

 where he stood. 



We were not long in reaching the spot and then, while 

 feasting enraptured eyes on the prostrate prize surely 

 one of the rarest in the whole gamut of the hunter ? we 

 were startled by a deep-drawn groan, evidently from a 

 dying beast, close alongside. Within the fringing flags 

 and certainly not two yards away, lay the animal first fired 

 at. The one I had just now unwittingly killed was the 

 second of the pair ; in short, I had shot them both. Note 

 that the licence allows but one. 



Now during the whole of this long-protracted pursuit, I 

 had never (since shortly after firing the original shot at his 

 pal) set eyes on this second buck at all. Then, when last 

 seen, he, with his harem, was holding away northward, 

 and I presumed that all had cleared right out of the 

 country. So undoubtedly they had, for I saw it myself. 

 Yet on second thoughts, and actuated obviously by pure 

 sympathy, this devoted animal had changed his mind 

 and returned to safeguard his stricken friend. Thus had 

 he met his death, standing actually alongside. I did not 

 then, nor do I now, feel that reproach can attach to me ; 

 since to anticipate what had actually occurred passes the 

 scope of human diagnosis. 



