TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 115 



harder to come on and account for than the king of 

 beasts himself. Some of my ostrich found its way to 

 the stock-pot, and a portion was roasted. We were 

 quite unable to get our teeth through it. Cecily said I 

 had undoubtedly shot the oldest inhabitant. The 

 stewed ostrich, after being done to rags, was eatable, 

 but no great treat. 



The next day I was taking a breathing space in 

 between moments of stalking an aoul with pecu- 

 liarly turned horns, a regular freak amongst aoul, when 

 I suddenly heard that weirdest of sounds, the hunting 

 call of a hyaena when the sun is high. I got up and 

 gazed about, and at some distance there flashed into 

 my vision a disabled buck, I could not then tell of 

 what variety, haltingly cantering and lurching along. 

 The hyaena was on his track, running low, but covering 

 the distance between them magically quickly. In 

 shorter time than I can write it the hyaena sprang on to 

 the haunches of the spent buck, and down, down it 

 sank, with head thrown back, into a pitiful heap, the 

 fierce wolf-like creature worrying it at once. I threw 

 up my rifle, in the excitement I had been allowed to 

 approach very near, and the hyasna paid toll. He was 

 a mangy brute of the spotted variety, but the strength 

 of his teeth was amazing. He hung on to a piece of 

 the aoul long after death. I kept his head, but the 

 skin was useless. The buck was an old aoul, evidently 

 in shocking condition and run down generally. He 

 was dead, or I would have put him out of his misery. 

 I took the head for the sake of the horns. These 

 measured on the curves seventeen and a half inches. 



