TWO DIANAS IN SOMALILAND 235 
without milk in our tea for weeks. Camel milk was 
not available, and the baby could not eat. I was 
thankful of a reasonable excuse to offer Clarence, and 
he saw the sense of it. I longed to restore the tiny 
creature to its mother, and Clarence said if we took 
it back to the place from whence it came the doe would 
assuredly find it. 
We decided to try this, but to secrete ourselves, 
and cover the baby buck with our protecting rifles, 
Otherwise, it was quite on the cards that a lion or 
leopard would make off with it ere its mother could 
retrieve it. In any case, I should imagine a violent 
death awaited it. It was so very youthful and easily 
stalked. I took the timorous creature across my 
saddle, it seemed all struggling legs and arms, and 
with Clarence for guide made for the place, some two 
miles off, where he first started the oryx. I confess 
I still had my doubts as to his tale and its veracity, 
but in this I wronged our shikari. 
We set the baby down alone, so fragile and small it 
looked, and then hid ourselves in a great thorn brake. 
We were as far off as we dared go, and the buck did not 
wander far. Sometimes it bleated in a little treble, 
once or twice it lay down, tucking its long legs beneath 
it, to rise again and wander, all lonely, among the low 
thorn bushes. Two hours or more we waited and 
then — a gentle whinny, and almost before we realised 
it, a perfect oryx doe cantered towards the fawn. She 
nosed it all over and her joy expressed itself in every 
imaginable way. It was a most beautiful and pathetic 
sight. We made some movement, and all alert again, 
