Sporting Trips of a Subaltern 



deluge about midnight and lasted till midday 

 next day. Draining the tent in the loose sandy 

 soil was impossible, and as I had no bedstead, but 

 was sleeping on the ground, I always lay in pools 

 between soaked blankets. I, however, slept very 

 well ; but as never once all this time did we get 

 any chance of drying anything, it got somewhat 

 irksome. Eustace began to feel the effects of 

 it, while my first hunter, Hassan, was quite 

 knocked up, and did not get over it for a fortnight, 

 when, as he was still very " groggy/* I sent him 

 on a camel back to the coast. Midday on the 

 fifth day the rain stopped, so we brought out all 

 our clothes and bedding and arranged them on 

 store boxes in the feeble sun to dry, for which 

 purpose also we ourselves sat on a box apiece, 

 clothed in damp wringing wet, in fact pyjamas. 

 Scarcely was this satisfactorily arranged when 

 in came a Somali with the welcome shout of 

 "Libbah." He had seen a lion four miles off, he 

 said. We were soon into some damp clothes and 

 started off; the four miles, however, got longer 

 and longer, and at half-past four he said we were 

 still two miles away. It had now commenced to 

 rain again in torrents, and the light was very bad ; 

 also, the cartridges of my lion-rifle, 12-bore, were 

 paper ones great mistake this and so swollen by 

 damp that they wouldn't go into the rifle, so we 

 gave it up, much to my second hunter, Spots' 



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