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 peculiarly 
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 cover- 
ing 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 hyaena 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. 
