CHAPTER XIII 
WE CROSS THE MAREHAN 
They are as sick that surfeit with too much, 
As they that starve with nothing 
Merchant of Venice 
And now for a few days we struck a period of bad 
luck. Our larder was empty save for tins of food kept 
for dire emergencies, and the men affected to be weak 
from scant rations. In any other caravan they would 
never, or hardly ever, have had them supplemented by 
flesh food ; but we had thoroughly spoiled them. 
Game grew scarce, even the ubiquitous dik-dik was 
absent, and any shot we got on these flying excursions 
of ours away from the base camp we bungled. The 
more we failed the more disconcerted we became. 
How true it is nothing succeeds like success ! At last 
matters got so bad we both of us always politely 
offered the other the chance of a miss. I would first 
decline to take it, and then Cecily. Meanwhile the 
buck made good its escape. We both got backward 
in coming forward, and, in American parlance, were 
thoroughly rattled. 
At last I volunteered to go out early one morning 
with Clarence, and we put up a bunch of aoul some 
five hundred yards away. They winded us, and went 
off at their best pace. In desperation I spurred on 
