TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND hi 
mostly because the kindest course was to put the beast 
out of pain. His horns were the horns of a mighty 
fighter, and his shield bore the cuts and indents of 
many battles. But his day was over, and his harem 
passed to a new lord. 
The ground was all ploughed up with the scuffle. 
The head of the dead oryx was poor. It looked old, 
and was moreover the worse for strenuous living, 
being in parts hairless. As I now had better heads, I 
took his shield merely, as a souvenir of the great 
fight. It is now a little tea-tray from which I peace- 
fully drink tea. 
We struck camp next day, and trekked along the 
borders of the Ogaden country. That night we had a 
camel looted. A camel seems a bit of an undertaking 
to run off with, as more often than not he won’t move 
when you want him to. I suspect there was some 
collusion on the part of the camel-man in charge, but 
I never could bring it home to one of them. 
Our clothes were now in a shocking state of repair, 
or disrepair. What with wait-a-bit thorns, drenching 
rain, torrid sun, wriggling on the ground, kneeling and 
grovelling about, we were the most awful scarecrows 
you ever saw. But we were intensely happy. That is 
the wonder of the wild. One forgets clothes — and 
that is much for a woman to say — newspapers and 
letters. What was going on in the world we knew 
not, nor did we care. I cannot conceive the heart of 
man desiring more than was ours just then. The 
glories of the jungle were all for us ; every dawn 
brought something new, and everywhere we could 
