Northern Nigeria 



hidden in the trees. They had heard us, and 

 were slowly moving off. My Bariba now per- 

 formed a most astounding feat. Doubling himself 

 up he ran, without a sound, clean round them; 

 then, showing himself, caused them to gallop back 

 past me. Unluckily, my trigger of the right 

 barrel had worked a bit loose, becoming a sort of 

 hair-trigger, and I let my first shot off before I 

 meant, losing thereby an easy chance. I was the 

 more sorry as my Bariba had never seen me kill 

 a beast. He rubbed it in by pointing to his bow 

 and nodding then to my rifle and shaking his 

 head. 



Thank goodness I was able to retrieve the 

 situation soon after. Going through the bush, we 

 spotted hartebeest and lay down. They had not 

 heard or seen us, and I made one out standing 

 broadside on at 120 yards. It was an easy shot, 

 and I so far staked my reputation that I pointed 

 to his bow and shook my head, then to my rifle 

 and nodded, and finally took a careful aim and 

 plugged the beast through the heart, so that he 

 fell to rise no more. The Bariba threw no more 

 aspersions on my rifle, and I saw him describing 

 the whole thing to his son over the camp-fire that 

 night. 



We soon after moved to a very pretty little 

 camp on the river Moshi. No elephants were 

 about now, but during the rainy season they had 



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