THE WESTERN BEND 227 



his visage had been sliced into fragments and one eye 

 . . . well, it wasn't in its normal site. That poor stricken 

 savage might have been at Louvain or Aerschot but 

 those horrors had not then shocked the world. With 

 averted gaze, I requested him to pilot me out of that 

 Serbonian bog. From his reply I gathered that he had 

 urgent business elsewhere, but that he would send 

 someone else. With that he vanished amidst the 

 tasselled sedges, a pathetic memory. 



None who have had experience with big-game can 

 have failed to notice that, even under the stress of 

 terrible injuries, animals often appear callous, actually 

 unpained, hardly even inconvenienced. But to see a 

 human being so -bearing his wounds without a flinch, 

 though without hope of relief- created a different sensation. 

 Surely in their respective perceptions of pain, the margin 

 between wild beasts and savage man must be narrow ? 



Within five minutes the substituted guide, a stalwart 

 and smiling young Shilluk, arrived, and without spoken 

 word took the lead ; soon we had regained a firm foothold. 

 Those big nests drew blank they generally do in 

 mid-winter (though one of them, it was obvious, had 

 recently been occupied by youngsters) but I am not 

 here going into ornithological detail. Suffice it to say 

 that we enjoyed a delightful morning and later secured 

 in these forests many specimens. 1 



On the outskirts of the forest, where it thins out into 

 scattered trees, our guide led us into his native village, 

 and a truly primitive settlement it proved. This was, I 

 imagine, a temporary "cattle-camp," for the Nilotic 

 tribes live as a rule in grass-built huts of the beehive 

 pattern. Here, aboriginal architecture was reduced to 



1 Such as tchagra (see over), masked and helmet-shrikes, colics and 

 wood-hoopoes ; glossy starlings brilliant in iridescent purples, lilacs, and 

 chestnut ; babblers, barbets, "nd bee-eaters in grass-green with crimson 

 contrasts ; sun-birds, serins, and silver-bills ; drongos, finch-larks, spot- 

 winged doves, a honey-guide ; and an eagle-owl (Bubo cinerascens) killed 

 with the -410 Tomtit gun ! 



