122 TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 
are fierce beyond belief an oryx at bay is something to 
be afraid of. His swift forward rush, head down, with 
horns just fixed at the right angle for impaling an 
enemy, and sideway strike render him a formidable 
foe at close quarters. 
The Midgans were very friendly. They were very 
ragged, and the quivers full of poisoned arrows hung 
on quite bare shoulders. They kindly showed us a 
track to our betterment, for the going now was stony 
and difficult. In and out among rocky nullahs were 
week-old pugs of lion, and farther, where rain had 
fallen, well-defined spoor of more lion, together with 
massed tracks of oryx and aoul. The spoor of the 
former is broad in the forefoot, somewhat resembling 
two pears set together, and the hind foot makes a much 
longer, narrower impress. We followed the rough 
track for a mile or more, being led to an open “bun,” 
not extensive, where some few bunches of aoul grazed 
and an odd bull oryx also. We got off our ponies, and 
making the hunters into syces pro tem ., did a stalk 
on all fours. Cover there was not, and the centre of 
the “ bun ” was the centre of attraction to all the buck, 
the best grass probably growing there. It was com- 
pletely out of reasonable range. A crackle, a rustle, 
or possibly a vision gave the alarm, and away went the 
oryx, out of sight instantly. The aoul fled affrightedly 
for a hundred yards or so, then brought up in a thick 
bunch to stare. One, inquisitive beyond others, trotted 
towards us, advancing in short bounds in his anxiety 
to solve the mystery of these new squirming creatures. 
Head on, the aoul presented the position for the most 
