A MORNING AMBUSCADE ON WITTEBERG. 375 



protect their families from some prowling wild cat or 

 swooping eagle. Fifty paces behind this charming 

 family group comes a clump of two more rams and 

 three ewes — two of the latter barely full grown. 

 These are marked for our quarry, for they have no 

 young. Motionless as the rocks we lie till the first 

 party is gone, and then, as the last ones trot slowly 

 past, we let fly. They are scarcely thirty-five paces 

 from us, and at the discharge the two rams leap 

 forward — one dead, the other severely wounded ; 

 while one ewe, with a broken shoulder-blade, is 

 down. Three seconds later, we hear two reports 

 away on our left, and afterwards we find that, 

 unfortunately, one of the rams of the family party 

 had fallen to the shot. The wounded ram ran on as 

 far as the second ambush, where he was stopped by 

 Bob. It is not often that so many as ten or eleven 

 klipspringers are found together; usually they are 

 seen in pairs, or perhaps as many as four together, 

 but occasionally, as in this instance, when returning 

 to their favourite habitat from water, they may be 

 happened upon in a small "clumpje," as the Boers 

 call it. 



But Tobias assured us that, despite the shooting, 

 we shall see yet more game — klipspringer or rhebok — 

 and, true enough, in three minutes there is a helter- 

 skelter, and seven or eight larger antelopes, red and 

 grey coloured, came flying past in a very tempest of 

 fear and fright. They were evidently scared by the 

 noise of the firing, which (as Tobias afterwards 

 told us) rolled and re-echoed round the valley 

 bewilderingly about their ears. There were five of 

 the vaal (grey) rhebok, and three of the rooi (red) 

 kind. These latter usually keep to the lower ground. 



