274 NIGHT-WATCHING FOE GAME. [chap. ix. 



wall about two feet nine inches high is much the 

 most convenient to shoot over, as a man's position is 

 not cramped when he kneels down and fires from 

 behind one of these : they ought to be six or seven 

 feet across. A hole in the ground is sometimes made 

 instead of a wall ; but generally speaking, the neighboui'- 

 hood of large watering-places in these parts is a mass 

 of limestone rock, into which one cannot dig. 



It is one of the most strangely exciting positions 

 that a sportsman can find himself in, to lie behind one 

 of these screens or holes by the side of a path leading to 

 a watering-place so thronged with game as 'Tounobis. 

 Herds of gnus glide along the neighbouring paths in 

 almost endless files : here standing out in bold relief 

 against the sky, there a moving line, just visible in the 

 deep shades ; and all as noiseless as a dream. Now 

 and then a slight pattering over the stones makes you 

 start ; it jars painfully on the strained ear, and a troop 

 of zebras pass frohcking by. All at once you observe, 

 twenty or thirty yards off, two huge ears pricked up high 

 above the brushwood ; another few seconds, and a sharjj 

 solid horn indicates the cautious and noiseless approach 

 of the great rhinoceros. Then the rifle or gun is 

 poked slowly over the wall, which has before been 

 covered with a plaid, or something soft, to muffle all 

 grating sounds ; and you keep a sharp and anxious 

 look-out through some cranny in your screen. The 

 beast moves nearer and nearer ; you crouch close up 

 mider the wall, lest he should see over it and perceive 

 you. Nearer, nearer still ; yet somehow his shape is 

 indistinct, and perhaps his position unfavourable to 



