168 SAVAGE SUDAN 



troubled their keen instincts. How could it? They have 

 no ha'penny papers to instruct them in all they ought to 

 know and much more besides. But the lurking "rifle" 

 had sympathy, and for long forbore to disturb a scene of 

 the peaceful prime. Still, I had come out with an object 

 had travelled 7000 miles to effect that object and the 

 time for action had arrived. 



The game at this point could not be described as wild. 

 I had had no difficulty in gaining a position to landward 

 whence I could watch at leisure. 1 Ere daylight was fully 

 established the "teel" had drawn away from the water 

 and slowly moved inland, several passing unsuspicious 

 close by where I lay hidden. The range of colour- 

 variation was conspicuous, not to say confusing. 



During that memorable morning I shot three of my 

 four permitted specimens and obtained a fourth head 

 which had been killed by Shilluks. These stark savages, 

 by the way, had hung on our flanks all day, and on one 

 occasion helped me to secure a buck that had been hit 

 rather too low down on the shoulder, but only after a 

 run of a couple of miles before their dogs. It formed a 

 wondrously wild episode, and but for their assistance we 

 might not have retrieved that buck. At parting, we had 

 given them a couple of carcases and, after dark, when we 

 were already under-way, they hailed Candace, asking us to 

 send a boat ashore as they had a head they wished to 

 give us. Surely this was a bit of true natural courtesy 

 (by way of a return for our gifts) that was particularly 

 graceful, not to say amazing, on the part of the wildest 

 of wild savages? These Shilluks belong to a tribe 

 spreading eastwards from Kaka, and their chief, resident 



1 I ought not entirely to omit mention of the fact that during this 

 manoeuvre I passed within 20 yards of a mimosa-tree upon which was 

 roosting a golden eagle. At such close quarters every detail of plumage 

 was clearly discernible, and I set down the bird in my notebook as Aquila 

 chrysaetos with absolute confidence. Whether our European golden eagle 

 penetrates so far south, I do not know ; if not, he has here a local 

 "double." 



