Wild Camels 281 
had any of us. As a duck-shoot it was a dismal failure. By eight 
o'clock the sun was quite. hot, so I tried to find a stomach—for break- 
fast. Failed again; but drank some sherry, and then lay down till noon 
in decomposing and malodorous reed-mush and mud. Never a duck 
came near, so shifted my stye to an old dry ridge—apparently an 
antediluvian division between two equally noisome swamps. Here 
I tried to sleep, but that was no good, for a headache had set in— 
possibly the effects of sun and sherry combined! I felt the sweeping 
wind of a marsh-harrier who had found me too suddenly and was half a 
mile away ere I could get up to shoot. 
At four o’clock I signalled for Bufalo to take me back to our hut, 
distant eight miles, the only guide being that morning’s outward tracks. 
It was on this ride that there occurred the incident of the day— 
thrilling indeed had it not been for the headache that left me cheaper 
than cheap. Having traversed some three miles of mud and water, 
suddenly I saw ahead the “camels a-coming!”—eleven of them in 
line, the last a calf, and what 
a splash they made! Know- 
ing how horses hate the smell 
and sight of camels, and Bufalo 
being a rearing and uncom- 
fortable beast at best, I felt 
perhaps unduly nervous. The 
camels were marching directly 
across my line of route and 
up-wind thereof. If only I 
could pass that intersecting point well before them, Bufalo, I hoped, 
might not catch the unwholesome scent. I tried all I could, but the 
mud was too sticky. The camel-corps came ou, splashing, snorting, and 
striding at high speed. Bufalo saw them quick enough, I can tell you— 
he stopped dead, gazed and snorted in terror, spun round pirouetting 
half-a-dozen times, reared, and would certainly have bolted but that he 
stood well over his fetlocks in mud and nigh up to the girths in water. 
I could not induce him to face them anyhow; but remember, please, 
that I was handicapped by the mass of accoutrements and luggage slung 
around both me and my mount, to wit:—Several empty bottles and 
bags, remains of lunch, some 500 cartridges, three dozen ducks, a Paradox 
gun, waders, and brogues! 
Meantime the camels passed my front within 100 yards and then 
“rounded up.” Having loaded both barrels with ball, I felt safer, and 
pushed Bujalo forwards—to fifty yards. Then the thought occurred to 
me, “Do camels charge?”  Bufalo reared, twisted, and splashed about in 
sheer horror, and then—thank goodness—the corps, with a parting roar, 
or rather a chorus of vicious gurgling grunts, in clear resentment at -my 
